So, what is all the fuss about hyperlink fiction?! What does it really mean? What does it need? Hmmmm……good questions.

The marriage between hypertext and fiction has struggled because the new digital medium needs a non-linear space to exist and spread it’s wings.  It calls into question the traditional plot lines and story structures that we have all be taught and are accustomed to. It challenges conventional tactics like:

1. Fixed sequence

2. A defined beginning and end

3. A story’s “certain definite magnitude”

4. and the conception of unity or wholeness associated with all these other concepts

(Landow, 1992)

Landow goes on further to say that, ” Either one simply can not write hypertext fiction or Aristotelian definitions and descriptions of plot do apply to stories read and written within a hypertext environment” (Landow, 1992)

Bolter made a similar comparison within hypertext use, that comparison was to the Cartesian Ego but still draws from the same principle.

Now, 1992 was a LONG time ago in internet years. To this day there has not truly been an author to come forward and embrace this challenge. (You can read more info in the FLOP! post)

However,there are moves at least at the platform and software level to house Hypertext Fiction in ways that have not been possible in the past. The video below, specifically if you skip to the 3:00 minute mark, shows ALICE- a digitil fiction e-reader specifically designed to let the flexibility of hypertext fiction fly free.

It could very well be that many of the reasons explained in FLOP! could be cured due to the fact that a physical environment that mimic e-readers has been created. Trying to match the traditional book metaphor created a static environment that was too restrictive for what hypertext fiction needed. However, now that  many are familiar and comfortable with e-readers, that platform can easily be used as the connection between traditional reading and writing and new forms of digital pieces of fiction.

References

Landow, G. P. (1992). Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Bolter, J. D. (2000). Writing space computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.