Talk:Hypertext fiction

Grammatron
An influential work, to be sure, but the fulsomeness of the newly-added sentence gives the historically-false impression that it is the crucial work, that afternoon and Victory Garden and Patchwork Girl were just exercises leading up to its achievement. I think this misrepresents the current critical consensus as well as historical thought, as reflected (for example) in Coover's two New York Times Book Review surveys of early hypertext fiction.

I don't relish having to write this, but the way the addition was crafted leaves no other good option. Since I am close to the field and its controversies, and since the factual assertions are not incorrect, I'd prefer to leave the revert to other hands. If this stands, though, it threatens to create a race of competing claims for the excellence of each early fiction, all seeking to assert their own honors and excellences. MarkBernstein 13:12, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

First
Was Judy Malloy's Uncle Roger first or was Michael Joyce's Afternoon, a story? Malloy's story appeared in 1986 on The WELL. Binksternet (talk) 05:39, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * What about this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfland_catacombs  It says it was the first.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.101.94.100 (talk) 08:49, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I have a few problems with Elfland Catacombs: 1) No information about the program exists outside the wikipedia article (which was written by the author). 2) No information about the publisher exists.  3) From the recently published online version, it isn't any different from any other work of branching plot fiction. (Putting a Choose Your Own Adventure book on a computer does not a hypertext fiction make.) While we can debate that branching plot fiction is a form of hypertext fiction, it's nothing like Afternoon or other seminal work of hypertext fiction.  4) Even if we could agree that Elfland Catacombs was a work of hypertext fiction and that it was the first of it's kind, it had absolutely no influence at all on subsequent works.  Drichardson (talk) 04:18, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I have a few problems with your 'arguments': 1)Not True. Why don't you try using Google 3) Of course it does, it even says so in the article. hypertext fiction is basically the exact same thing as branching plot fiction, there's no need to debate this. Make sure you understand the terms you're referring to. 4) Has absolut no relevance whatsoever to the question which was first. 84.253.26.225 (talk) 15:49, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * In any discussion of precedence, some measure of influence is necessary. Afternoon is considered the first significant hypertext in a broad range of important monographs: Coover's two essays in the New York Times, Bolter's Writing Space, Landow's Hypertext: the convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology, and many others.  Malloy's work in Uncle Roger is widely known, but has been less influential. Elfland Catacombs is completely without influence in hypertext fiction; none of the major essays or books on the subject mention it, and I believe it never been cited by a paper at The ACM Hypertext Conference. MarkBernstein (talk)
 * Please make sure, you understand the particular question before you try to answer it. the question 'which was first' is in absolutely no way connected to influence. What you're referring to ist 'which was the first influental' and that is a different questions. These are really basic issues and one should not have difficulties in grasping them. 84.253.26.225 (talk) 15:54, 6 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Mark Bernstein and Eastgate are very important not only in publishing literary hypertext, beginning with afternoon. And he is also my publisher for its name was Penelope and Forward Anywhere.

But I don't think it takes anything away from the importance of Eastgate and Joyce's afternoon to note that The Wall Street Journal reporter who researched this for their Centennial issue told me in a 1989 telephone interview that Uncle Roger was the first, and it is thus credited in the WSJ Centennial Issue. (Michael Miller "A Brave New World: Streams of 1s and 0s" Wall Street Journal Centennial Issue, June 23, 1989)

Our works were developed independently and initially appeared in different literary/art circles, so it should also be noted that Art Com Electronic Network where Uncle Roger was first published and the Art Com Catalog that carried the disc version of Uncle Roger were very widely known in international performance art, video art, and experimental literature circles. See the San Francisco Chronicle Obituary for Art Com Founder and Director Carl Loeffler at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/03/17/MNL185890.DTL

-- Judy Malloy

Another possible source of influence
might be the works of French literary critic Roland Barthes, who once wrote about the freedom of the reader over the tyranny of the writer. (Addendum: I was thinking here of his essay "Death of the Author".) It was a statement that didn't make sense to me until I saw my first example of hypertext fiction, back in 1994. (And that example probably no longer exists, even at the Internet Archive.) -- llywrch (talk) 15:38, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Most sprawlingly massive and popular work of hypertext fiction ever made... is not mentioned in the article
Seriously, why is there not even a passing mention of Homestuck in this article? Sarr Cat ∑;3 23:20, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I am a scholar of hypertext fiction and had not heard of this work. I see nobody has added it to the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base, either, and there are several dozen contributors to that database. So presumably it was not added because not many people who have worked with hypertext fiction have heard about it. It looks like an interesting work though - thanks for mentioning it. I'll take a look at it. --Lijil (talk) 06:42, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Some useful sources on early hypertext fiction

 * https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/27/specials/coover-hyperfiction.html
 * https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/27/specials/coover-end.html
 * http://www.eastgate.com/patterns/Patterns.html
 * http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/4/1/2158244014528915
 * http://www.eastgate.com/download/OnHypertextNarrative.pdf
 * http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.100/10.2hayles.txt
 * http://jilltxt.net/txt/afternoon.html

Just a start, selected off the top of my head as readily accessible and providing abundant lead references. MarkBernstein (talk) 19:32, 24 June 2015 (UTC)


 * This looks like a lot of pointers to potential sources about Afternoon Rhoark (talk) 20:22, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

afternoon, a story is discussed by most if not all surveys of early hypertext. Coover's second essay focuses on Victory Garden and has capsule reviews of perhaps a dozen works. My HT96 paper has a ton of footnotes to early works, and the HT09 "On Hypertext Narrative" has almost as many. (The following year's "Criticism" would also make sense, but we'll leave that for another day.) Hayles’ primary foci are Patchwork Girl and The Humement. Modir et al is a survey; Landow might be a better source, but it's a book and Wikipedians prefer online sources. MarkBernstein (talk) 20:48, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that Interactive novel be merged into Hypertext fiction. I think that the examples and content in the Interactive novel article can easily be explained in the context of Hypertext fiction, and the Hypertext fiction article is of a reasonable size that the merging of Interactive novel will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned.


 * I agree, though there's not much at Interactive novel that adds a great deal to what we have here. Instead of it's emphasis on the obscure "wovel", it might be more useful -- whether there or in the merged article -- to include a brief discussion of Interactive Fiction/IF with pointers to some characteristic work and critics (e.g. Em Short). MarkBernstein (talk) 16:49, 24 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Ok, will merge if there are no objections. Not sure what you mean in regards to interactive fiction, the Interactive fiction page has a description of Interactive novels and there is description of Interactive fiction on the Hypertext fiction page. I have added a section on the Interactive Fiction page outlining discussion of Interactive Fiction/IF with pointers to some characteristic work and critics (e.g. Emily Short), see Interactive_fiction.

Issue: Incorrect description of the Garden of Forking Paths
Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths" is incorrectly described as hypertext fiction. It actually has a more-or-less conventional linear structure. It is significant to the topic because it describes a novel (in-universe) that has a labyrinthine branching structure in order to depict all possible outcomes of the character's choices. --Tristan 24.86.151.114 (talk) 19:54, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Characteristics Source
While looking for more information on the axiel/arborescent/networked stories described in the Characteristics section, I stumbled upon an article from 2015 that has the exact text of that section. I'm not sure if the section in question predates the article or not. If not, the section should be rephrased and the article cited. If so...well, somebody's plagiarizing Wikipedia in journals, so that's a fun thing to know. Also, if this section predates that article, I'd love to have some sources for where that information came from originally. It's very interesting, but many of the links that come back on Google appear to be dead. This information might be disappearing. 99.109.56.50 (talk) 21:08, 17 August 2017 (UTC)