March 6, 2009
I have just gone online searching for “multimedia novel” and “online fiction” and can’t find anything that remotely approaches what I’m trying to do, though I did see a novel on a T-shirt and a mobile phone (no kidding) and plenty of online short stories and novels. For some reason I’ve had no fear that I was missing anything for fifteen years and now I have an idea why: the concept is overwhelmingly difficult (see above) and there’s no money in it. So lots of luck to anyone who tries it.

I finally figure out “hypertext” seems to be the active phrase these days. (Note the word “text” betraying historical origins in print.) The “hypertext” entry from Wikipedia, circa today:

The first hypertext fictions were published prior to the development of the World Wide Web, using software such as Storyspace and Hypercard. Michael Joyce‘s Afternoon, a story, first presented in 1987 and published by Eastgate Systems in 1991, is generally considered one of the first hypertext fictions. Afternoon was followed by a series of other Storyspace hypertext fictions from Eastgate Systems, including Stuart Moulthrop‘s Victory Garden, its name was Penelope by Judy Malloy, (whose hyperfiction Uncle Roger was published online on Artcom Electronic Network on The WELL from 1986-1987) Carolyn Guyer’s Quibbling, Shelley Jackson‘s Patchwork Girl and Deena Larsen’s Marble Springs. Judy Malloy’s l0ve0ne, created in 1994, was the first selection in the Eastgate Web Workshop.

Douglas Cooper‘s Delirium (1994) was the first novel serialized on the World Wide Web; it permitted navigation between four parallel story strands. Shortly thereafter, in 1997, Mark Amerika released GRAMMATRON, a significantly more multi-linear work which was eventually exhibited in art galleries. In 2000, it was included in the Whitney Biennial of American Art. [1][2]

Some other web examples of hypertext fiction include Adrienne Eisen’s Six Sex Scenes (1995), Stuart Moulthrop’s Hegirascope, (1995,1997) Sunshine 69, The Unknown (which won the trAce(Alt X award in 1998), The Company Therapist, and Caitlin Fisher’s These Waves of Girls (2001) (which won the ELO award for fiction in 2001).

The internationally oriented but U.S. based Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) was founded in 1999 to promote the creation and enjoyment of electronic literature. Other organisations for the promotion of electronic literature include trAce Online Writing Community, a British organisation that has fostered electronic literature in the UK, Dichtung Digital, a journal of criticism of electronic literature in English and German, and ELINOR, a network for electronic literature in the Nordic countries, which provides a directory of Nordic electronic literature. The Electronic Literature Directory lists many works of electronic literature in English and other languages.

The luck of the Irish, maybe: not much progress has been made, particularly when it comes to multiple media—though there have been some interesting attempts at graphical or visual interfaces. How can that be? How did the last 15-plus years go by without more innovation?

First off, the Web is an infant in diapers that has no idea how to speak, so to speak. The other reason is probably Storyspace, the authoring software from Eastgate Systems that became a focal point for these experiments. Storyspace started as software for the personal computer, and when the Web came along everything changed: you no longer needed specialized software to make this happen. So it’s taking some time for writers to make the transition from packaged software to a Web-based environment, the same transition software makers who want to survive face in 2009.

That may explain why everything seems so quiet after 2001—after Storyspace, before Kindle—things have slowed up in the world of the multiple-media novel, with very few experiments underway (if any) that embrace the possibilities before us for video, audio, photos, graphics et alia. It also means the original Eastgate authors of the 1990s are older now and probably a bit weary of this particular fight, I’m guessing, while younger authors have almost no connection to the historical novel as we know it. These circumstances leave a hole you could drive a truck through.

I need to dig deeper into this subject but even this little bit of research indicates we’re still crawling in a text-based fictional world.