Forget about computers. Hypertext is not a new thing. It has been around since the bards took requests to tell one part of The Epic at a wedding feast, and another part in honor of a hero. Hypertext happens whenever children interact with their bedtime stories. It happens every time you tell a story differently.
Technically, Hypertext is "text that branches and allows choices to the reader". Theodor H. Nelson put the word hypertext together. It is associative, rather than linear. Memory is associative. Even though events in time happen in a this-then-that order, much like the pages of a book, one thing can remind you of another, somehow. Your memory is a hypertext. The story of a game of make believe is hypertext, because it is chosen, "written" and "read" all at once. Yes, those "Choose Your Own Adventure Books" are hypertext, too. They're fun, aren't they?
Hypertext offers a wealth of creative possibilities, and I am inspired by them. Its about more than "you choose what happens next!", for me. It is more about those associative qualities. As a writer, choices about how to tell a story are very important. As a reader, choices about what to read are the primary concern. A branching text can open up the doors for those choices, in new ways that books and movies cannot do.
This is a growing collection of hypertext fiction, and things I have written about the idea of hypertext.
"A House Without Walls" is made out of one thread of the story I told with my first Hypertext. Inspired by the Orpheus Myth, and by certain actual events, this story is about self-mutilation.
I wanted, more than anything, to write a creative work for the graduating thesis requirement at my College. That's what I did, and this is it, so in that sense the work was a success. I got a good grade on it, too. I'll let you be the judge of whether it has any literary merit.
I think the result is very difficult to read, so here it is in summary. Don't read this paragraph. "To Win, Simply Play" is about making choices, and the (interconnected?) lives of three people who have choices to make, and it is about whether they make those choices or not. There is an interesting poker-game theme in this story. I would like to write about that again someday.
If you still want more advice about how to read this document, seek your own.
Read "Aesthetics in a Hypertext Age".
" Aesthetics in a Hypertext Age" is the second half of the academic portion of my thesis. I wrote this nearly a year and a half after the first part, after all the research had come together into something cogent, so that it reads less like a book report.
Skim the aesthetics chapter and then skip to the novella.
No Categories began as a collection of research notes, discoveries, and opinions regarding hypertext theory and literature. These were collected into an ongoing weblog.
Since then I have perused the subject further as an intern at Eastgate Systems. Along the way, I have collected a variety of things that might be of use to a fellow student of the subject. Those are shared here.
Read "History & Development of Hypertext & Hypertext Literary Theory"."
The title is self-explanatory.
Read "Eastgate Hypertext Compendium of Academic Resources"."
After finishing my thesis work with hypertext, I travelled to Boston to work a summer internship with Eastgate Systems, a pre-eminent publisher of serious hypertexts. Part of my work there was to compile the information that began the Eastgate Hypertext Compendium of Academic Resources.
We hope that this compendium of hypertext resources will give students and instructors, now and in the future, a better sense of what has been done elsewhere and what might be accomplished, and to facilitate communication among everyone interested in studying and teaching hypertext.
© Dylan Kinnett : December 14, 2006