Subjects of particular interest in this regard include: The Book, The Book of Nature, The Bible, The End of the Book, Death of the Author, Writing, Readerly and Writerly Texts, Closure, The Novel, Romance, Realism and the Realist Novel, Modernism and the Modern Novel, Postmodernism and the Postmodern Novel, The Mystic Writing Pad, The Literature of Exhaustion, The New Novel, Marshall McLuhan and The Gutenberg Galaxy, Illumination and the Electronic Sign, Hypertext, The Rhetoric of Hypertext, Writing Hypertext, Writing Space, Archeological Fiction, and Connections Without Centre: Infinite Hypertext.
Topics of interest include ISAST, Postmodern Culture, Ejournal, Leonardo, ARTCOM, Perforations, Hypertexture, Narrabase Press, TapRoot, SwiftCurrent, Intertext, Computers and Texts, Computer Mediated Writing, The Centre for Text and Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, The Internet Companion, and Writing on the Edge.
Readers may wish to consider Readers of Hypertext, Difficulties with Reading Hypertext, Cognitive Overhead, Disorientation, and Missing Context Clues.
Conceptual considerations include The Rhetoric of Hypertext, Decentring, Contour, Landow and the Politics of Connection, Computer Pedagogy and Composition, The Library of the Future: A New Electronic Canon and Connections Without Centre: Infinite Hypertext.
No discussion of reading and writing electronic texts would be complete without mentioning the contributions of Vannever Bush, Douglas Engelbart, and Ted Nelson.
Print works of interest include: Sterne's Tristram Shandy; Robbe-Grillet's In The Labyrinth; Nabokov's Pale Fire; Cort 's Hopscotch; O'Brien's At Swim-Two Birds; Ballard's Atrocity Exhibition; Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies; and Pavi_'s Dictionary of the Khazars and Landscape Painted With Tea.
A wide and various range of hyperbooks has already been produced which greatly extend the boundaries of The Book. From Michael Joyce's experiments with narrative in the groundbreaking Afternoon, A Story to the mixed-media HyperCard stack of Beyond Cyberpunk!, the short history of the electronic hypertext already augurs for a bright future.
Other electronic works of interest include: Willmot's Everglade; Moulthrop's Dreamtime; Gess' Mahasukha Halo; FitzGerald's Yet Still More; Malloy's Its Name Was Penelope, Wasting Time and Thirty Minutes in the Late Afternoon; Joyce's WOE and Guyer & Petry's Izme Pass.
We have evaluated commercially available software for three environments.
In addition, we have included evaluations of a number of important research systems. An understanding of their features provides an important historical perspective on the field.
Our evaluations are based on product literature, published reviews, demos, working copies, and full copies of the software. Thus, we have not had equal access to information on all of the systems. Contact addresses have been provided so you can obtain up-to-date pricing and configuration information.
To begin with, you may wish to contrast the terms: hypertext and hyperbook
Hypertext Fiction and the Literary Artist Version 1.0
(c) 1993 Keep, McLaughlin, and robin
Individual contributions are copyright their respective authors.
This project was made possible through the assistance of the Canada Council.
Thanks to Katherine Hajer for her unfailing devotion to this project. Thanks also to the University of Western Ontario Philosophy Department and William McLaughlin for access to their computer equipment.
We kindly acknowledge all who have contributed materials for review, criticism, and other information. We welcome further correspondence at:
Hypertext Fiction and the Literary Artist 3 Westcott Upper London, Ontario, Canada N6C 3G6 (519) 679-7459