Whether you consider IF to be retro, minimalist, or a throwback, you introduce the genre to a general audience as a historical lesson – one which answers the anticipated first question ?why does IF looks so old?? But history is only a stone-throw away from nostalgia, and so it is easy for even staunch advocates of the contemporary IF scene to come off sounding wistful… Jeremy Douglass —IF is history! Interactive Fiction in the news (WRT: Writer Response Theory)

Another great resource is Interactive Fiction news resources.

Academic articles on interactive fiction often follow their own pattern, with a significant chunk devoted to a transcript-based introduction to the command line. It’s not at all hard to find good reviews, but academic scholarship on IF doesn’t offer very many close readings or deep analyses of individual works beyond Zork or Adventure. (Espen Aarseth’s treatment of Deadline in Cybertext is a notable exception.)