TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Of course, Hopscotch is the most famous example of a hypertext novel (and not an entirely successful example, INMHO). Thanks for mentioning the Pessoa book; it’s been sitting unread on my nightstand for over a year. (BTW, another good example in the genre of rambling/notetaking novels is Georgi Gospodinov’s Natural Novel).

The hypertext novel has evolved quite a bit in its web incarnations, but the ebook readers have been ill-equipped to take advantage of hypertext. At heart the reason is that ebooks (like print books) are closed/finite forms and not generally extensible. I’m not a fan of wikibooks, but the possibility of using wiki software to extend a story across a shared universe holds a lot of promise.

Actually, the linear novel can do a lot of experimentation even if does immediately not strike one as “daring”. Stories within stories, stories told from multiple angles, stylistic novelties. Experimental novels in the true sense can be unendurable; experimental films remain more accessible–even only because they are shorter and require less effort from the audience. I recently watched Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century which had one of the strangest forms I had ever seen (and yet remained accessible and pleasant to watch). Perhaps more puzzle-oriented films (Primer, Mullholland Drive, etc) benefit from multiple viewings (in that way, we are travelling multiple paths).

It’s hard to make multiple path text novels absolutely seamless (especially if you are depending on one person to write everything). On the other hand, anthologies can gather related stories (by theme, setting, time period, etc) and produce an interesting grabbag. Consider Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles (which btw, Bradbury had not originally intended to be a novel at all). That would have made a great online hypertext novel, where people could add parallel stories and perhaps even hyperlinks (when referring to characters or events which appear elsewhere in the anthology). If a Martian story by Robert Nagle referred to a line in a Ray Bradbury story, the Ray Bradbury would not need to link back to mine (although perhaps it would be nice if it did).

As you pointed out, the issue starts to turn into one of ownership and control. What happens if someone extends a character in a shared universe which the original author does not approve of? It’s not merely a matter of copyright (although that is a huge concern). But how can we have multiple people contribute in such a way that does not undermine what the overarching story theme is all about? My solution is a separate but equal rule. People can add onto a story universe as long as 1)they do not damage previous stories and 2)writers of the previous story have control about whether to link/reference them.

I’d add to the list Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov. And with a bit of modesty [not much ] I also add Santos Dumont Number 8, a novel I wrote that was launched in 2006 and that can be read at least in two different ways [ http://www.universodoslivros.com.br/dumont.php ]. Best, Claudio

Vernor Vinge had some interesting prognostications to make in the introduction to the “annotated” edition of his novel A Fire Upon the Deep (written in 1993). He thought at the time that the existence of hypertext would naturally lead to the rise of the hypertext novel:

When tools of great power are invented, an interesting thing often happens: The original problem that the tools were invented for suddenly seems less important, and a whole new field of endeavor is created: “Invention is the mother of necessity” (not my quote, but I don’t know the source). This is exactly the situation with groupware and hypertext and multimedia tools. Notice that all my discussion of such things has been in support of classical, written fiction. Even a hypertext version of the annotations of A Fire Upon the Deep is simply the working support for a conventional novel. It is not to be confused with the idea of hypertext fiction. I believe hypertext fiction will ultimately be an entirely new art form, as different from novels as motion pictures are from oil paintings. (We don’t have many prototypes of this yet. In some sense, computerized adventure games are an example. Marc Stiegler’s pioneering hypertext version of his novel David’s Sling is a more direct example.) I believe that some of the most significant aspects of the new medium are yet to be recognized. Guessing: There may not be hypertext sequels so much as the instantiation of new windows on the “reality” of the story. Group participation both during initial construction and in expanding the ongoing reality may be one of the most striking features of the art form. (See Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer, “The Lessons of Lucasfilm’s Habitat”, in Cyberspace: First Steps, edited by Michael Benedikt, MIT Press, 1992.) Hypertext fiction may evolve into immense art works that combine the essence of professional production teams with independent artists with the interests and efforts of the ultimate viewers.

All this is awesome, wonderful stuff. And the skills needed for success in true hypertext fiction are very different from those needed to write a conventional novel. But I believe that the efforts of “classical” novelists will continue to find acceptance in the marketplace, even as those novelists use more and more advanced tools to support their craft. Just as the art of painting in oils still flourishes alongside cinema, so there will be a place for novels and novelists.

I actually exchanged emails with Vinge about this, way back in the mists of time before Gmail came about to archive everything. The missives are now lost, alas, to the ravages of time and missing email backup CDs. But I recall feeling that Vinge’s prediction was a bit of overly rosy “if-you-build-it-they-will-come”-ism. There was no sign that any demand for hypertextualized fiction had grown since Vinge originally made the predictions.

I can’t remember the substance of Vinge’s response. Maybe someday that missing disc will turn up.

But in a way, the idea of hypertextual fiction was realized more recently in the Ficlets.com website, where writers could contribute stories in the form of 1024-byte-or-shorter “ficlets,” which they or others could then continue. Because these stories could branch forward or backward, they were very much hypertext-based tales. Sadly, AOL shut it down, but there are at least three different successor projects in the offing and sooner or later one of them will be complete.