Mark Sample is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at George Mason University, where is he also an affiliated faculty member with GMU’s undergraduate Honors College, its Cultural Studies doctoral program, and the Center for History and New Media. Professor Sample’s research focuses on contemporary fiction, electronic literature, and videogames. His examination of the representation of torture in videogames was recently published in Game Studies, and he is working on a collaboratively written book about the computational, aesthetic, and cultural dimensions of the Commodore 64 home computer (forthcoming from MIT Press in November 2012).