Kristin Krauth describes it as "a satire on publishing and promotion as well as a tough and funny look at the nature of creating hypertext".
[3][4] A journalist writing about the event for PC Magazine noted that "A group of authors gave a reading of a funny hypertext novel called "The Unknown," which had different tracks you move among.
[8] Journalists writing about The Unknown when it was new tend to emphasise both the novelty of reading a story on the web, and the humour of the work.
The deep irony, fragmentation and deathlessness of the work, the satirical use of pastiche, are all classic tropes of the postmodern genre.
[12] The Unknown was a co-winner of the first trAce/Alt-X prize in 1999 and was performed live at the ACM Hypertext conference in San Antonio in 2000.