Hypertext fiction takes
advantage of the possibility of inserting hyperlinks within a text.
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Links can be internal to the document
or they can go outside. Most are internal
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Links can be used to give supplemental
information, in which case they are similar to footnotes or endnotes
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Links can also be used to give
the reader choices in the way the story develops
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The Hyperizons
site
at Duke University gives a comprehensive guide to hypertext fiction.
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Yahoo and other search engines
also provide links
to hypertext fiction.
One example is The
e-ville Dialogues which permits you to go to "the restaurant" where
you find out what various residents think.
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The site includes illustrations,
but no graphics of the characters.
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It seems confusing at first, one
doesn't know what to do. This may be characteristic of hypertext
fiction.
Another example is Indecent
Communication, "an electronic novel about Internet censorship, anarchy,
bondage, Taoism and other fun things."
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This one raises some issues about
pornography and censorship, and includes links with the author's opinions
on that subject.
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The site provides the option of
a sanitized version of the story
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Since January 10, 1996,
over 30,000 people have looked at this novel, but there is no information
about how many have read the whole thing.
The
Story of X, on the Feed Magazine home page, offers two ways of reading
the story.
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One option allows the reader to
select the topics he or she is interested in. The story is then edited
to include only those topics.
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Another option allows you to simply
read the story in the conventional way.
Hyperlinks also facilitate collaborative
projects, where many authors contribute to a text.
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An example is the Mother
Millennia project which , "will be an accumulating body of linked works
on the subject of Mother, told from the perspective of as many different
cultural backgrounds as possible, world-wide. On this site, all of these
works will be called stories, and will come in a variety of forms, including
memoirs, graphical narratives, fiction, oral histories, poetry, essays,
video, and sounds. We are at the beginning stages and seek your participation."
A well known WEB author, Carolyn
Guyer, is involved in this project, but I am not sure anything is actually
being published.
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Another collective writing project
is Dark Lethe. which does
have material up on its site.
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Collaborative projects may be
meaningful experiences for those participating, even if they do not attract
many readers.
Another well known Hypertext author
is
Mark Amerika.
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His site informs us that his first
novel, The Kafka Chronicles, is now in its third printing and his most
recent novel, Sexual Blood, is already being translated into three other
languages. The Philadelphia Inquirer recently said "the real counterculture
is not gone and Mark Amerika is proof of that...his work is not so much
a book as it is a Dadaist demonstration, once again honoring the dictum
that it's the artist's sacred duty to destroy what commerce has made common."
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Amerika is also the creator of
Hypertextual
Consciousness, which he describes as "a breakthrough study in electronic
writing and publishing." It includes, ""an exploration into cyborg-narrators,
virtual reality and the teleportation of narrative consciousness into the
electrosphere..."
Hypertext fiction need never be
finished, since it never goes to the publisher to be printed.
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An example of this is Children
of the Sunrise, of which the author says "This book is not finished. If
I am successful, it may never be. I am currently writing threads for other
characters. These additions will be put on-line when they are ready.
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The author states that "this novel
uses
hypertext but it is not "about" hypertext. It is a story...not an example
of digital technology." He uses hypertext to allow the story to move
faster, while making supplemental information available.
The future of electronic publishing
of fiction is not yet certain.