An illustration can be found in the second book of Zelazny’s [1999] Amber
series. The hero, Corwin, is driving a horse-drawn wagon along a dust road that twists
and turns through a hilly countryside. From time to time, between the hills on his left,
he can see a stretch of misty, blackened terrain in which odd shapes seem to move,
but it is too far away to distinguish, and the advance of the wagon along another
incline makes it disappear again behind the horizon. While the wagon advances, the
black land continues to reappear and disappear, depending on the perspective, like a
distant road that advances in parallel with his own road. As the black road seems
menacing, Corwin tries to steer away from it. Yet, the road he is following does not
leave him any option but to continue in the same direction, until the two roads
eventually intersect. At that moment, Corwin is forced to enter the blackness and thus
confront the mystery—which will turn out to be decisive for the further epic.
More generally, a strong excitement, feeling of freedom and sense of
adventure is created by the sensation of movement along an irregular terrain, so that
the vista continuously changes, and things that were hidden (mystery) come into plain
view (prospect), while those that were clearly to be seen (prospect) disappear again
behind the horizon (mystery). This sensation is efficiently exploited in many
computer games, where the gamer can steer a car, motorcycle or a running “avatar”
through a virtual, 3-dimensional landscape containing plenty of surprises. This
sensation may also explain the intense pleasure that people can experience while
hiking through forests and hills, or driving a motorcycle or car along a scenic,
winding road.
This joyful experience can be seen as an instance of flow: a feeling of total
absorption into an activity that is accompanied by a sense of being in control and the
vanishing of all anxiety, doubt and self-consciousness [Csikszentmihalyi, 1990].
People are likely to experience flow when the following conditions are met:
• their activity has clear goals;
• they receive immediate feedback on the actions they perform.
• the degree of difficulty or challenge of the task remains in balance with their
level of skill.
The first two rules express the essence of the cybernetic paradigm of regulation, while
the third one implicitly adds the exploration necessary to find a new challenge
(affordance or disturbance) when the present one has been met.
In the case of driving, elucidating the mystery of the as yet concealed
landscape elements provides a goal and challenge for further exploration. The
experienced driver or hiker normally has the necessary navigating skills to meet that
challenge. The new prospect that opens up behind the hill or bend in the road is the
feedback signal confirming that the chosen action was indeed sufficient to meet the
challenge. But his prospect immediately creates a new challenge, as further hills or
twists in the road come into view, defining a new mystery that calls out for
resolution...
A similar flow-producing dynamic of mysteries being resolved just in order to
reveal new mysteries is efficiently exploited by writers in the mystery and suspense
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