A Response to the Unknown Rumors

I've gotten several calls and emails over the past week, and I just wanted to write a brief note to respond to the rumors swirling about the electronic literature community that the Unknown are planning to write a second hypertext novel together in 2004. They are completely unfounded. Putting the band back together at this point in our careers is almost completely unthinkable. Sure, there's a short reading planned for February in Philadelphia, but that doesn't mean that the three or four of us are actually talking about putting together a second album or for that matter hypertext novel on the scale of the first. I don't know where these things get started, but frankly, I suspect that Rob Wittig is behind the rumors. I never underestimate that evil genius or the power of his invisible broadcasting network operating out of a bunker somewhere in Duluth. The bunk stops here. Let me state this clearly — there is not now, nor has there ever been, any plan to write a second gargantuan hypertext novel which would resolve all the cliffhangers of the first. The rumors that Dirk, William and I have intitiated talks on resuscitating The Unknown Time Machine or for that matter started Being and the Unknown are completely untrue. Whoever called Wired and the New York Times and Rain Taxi and The New York Review of Books and The Iowa Review and Seventeen should be ashamed of him or herself or themselves. There is not now, nor has there at any time been, any plan to publish The Unknown 2 or UnK2 or The Unknowncameron or whatever code word you happen to assign to the nonexistant project. It simply doesn't exist, even as a figment. Stop the calls now. The joke, funny after the first call, is no longer amusing. We haven't negotiated anything, nor have our attorneys been talking to each other, nor any of the major studios. We're all involved in solo projects at this time, and don't have any plans for a reunion tour.