This article, a "work in progress," is an adaptation of a talk delivered at the Computers and the Human Conference, held at Lewis and Clark College (Portland, Oregon) in 1991. The first part of the article is an elegy for the printed book. "No less than the sitcom or the Nintendo cartridge," writes Joyce, "the book too is merely a fleeting, momentarily marketable, physical instantiation of the network." According to Joyce, those who argue for the survival of the book through the electronic age--those who resist the inevitable incursions of the electronic text--are merely nostalgic for the smell of ink and the rustle of pages: "What we whiff is not the smell of ink but the smell of loss: of burning towers or men's cigars in the drawing room . . . . We are in the late age of print; the time of the book has passed."

From this rather lugubrious opening, Joyce proceeds to discuss what he characterizes as the two types of hypertext: exploratory hypertext and constructive hypertext. Exploratory hypertext, a transitional form, is usually read-only, and allows the reader to choose a path, deciding what to see and when to see it. The text does not, however, rearrange or transform itself in response to the reader's participation. By contrast, in constructive hypertext ("true electronic text") the interaction between reader and text is reciprocal; that is, the text is transformed in response to the choices the reader makes. This type of hypertext has been employed for the most part by creators of hypertext fiction. The article concludes with a discussion of hypertext fiction, which Joyce hails as the "new writing of the late age of print."

Rambling and perhaps too dismissive of the staying power of print, this piece is nevertheless valuable for its insights from a prominent practitioner of hypertext fiction. (Sarah Wadsworth.)

Return to Electronic Text: Selective Annotated Bibliography.
Return to home page. 
Michael Hancher

Department of English, University of Minnesota

URL: http://umn.edu/home/mh/ebibsw4.html

Comments to: mh@umn.edu

Created 29 April 1995

Last revised 17 September 1996