Hyperizons:
From Page to Screen

• General Fiction Converted From Print
• Precursors of Hypertext Fiction

General Fiction Converted From Print

Here I list works that are at least marginally hypertextual. I don't list texts solely for being in HTML, nor do I list ones whose only links are tables of contents, chapter and page turn buttons, and so on. By "marginally hypertextual" I mean that the texts need to at least have some linked notes, annotations, cross-referencing--words that "yield," to use Michael Joyce's useful term.

I haven't found as many of these online yet as I expected to a couple of years ago, but then again I haven't spent a lot of time looking for them. Those interested in this topic and texts may want to check the following sites in addition to the short of list of texts I present below ( 2/10/97):

• "Reading, Scholarship, and Hypertext Editions," an essay by John Lavagnino of the Scholarly Technology Group at Brown University (2/10/97).
• The Humanities Text Initiative at the University of Michigan (2/10/97).
• The Text Encoding Initiative Home Page at the University of Illinois at Chicago (2/10/97).
• The superb SGML texts at Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia, which are rendered into HTML on-the-fly.
• HyperBooks, a somewhat scattershot (shouldn't someone render the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs into prose before rendering them into hypertext?) collection of texts at Dartmough, converted into Hypercard 2.1 by by Espen Koth and Matt Williams ( 2/10/97).

Austen, Jane, Various works.

The Jane Austen hypertexts are created by Henry Churchyard at the University of Texas and are, to my knowledge, the most extensively indexed versions of print fiction on the Web as of March 1995. Austen researchers should also see Eric Johnson's review, "Oxford Electronic Text Library edition of The Complete Works of Jane Austen." The OETL edition is an SGML markup of the Chapman illustrated edition. (6/5/95)

• Love and Freindship. Annotated hypertext of one of Austen's best known pieces of juvenilia.
• Pride and Prejudice. Extensively indexed version of one of Austen's major novels. Also available at UVA for UVA users only.

Beowulf

The Electronic Beowulf is not exactly hypertextual yet, but what the hell--this in-progress project to digitalize the first English narrative is scholarship of the first rank, and the kind of thing that justifies all the money being spent on electronic technology. Not to be missed, but try to view it on a monitor with good resolution to truly appreciate it. A joint project of Oxford and the University of Kentucky. (1/7/96)

Doyle, Arthur Conan, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band,"

This Sherlock Holmes story has been annotated for the general reader by David Lelong as part of Jack Lynch's "From Epic to Hypertext" class at the University of Pennsylvania. Doyle considered "The Speckled Band" the best of the Holmes short stories, as has at least one reader's poll (see The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, ed. by William S. Baring-Gould, New York, C. N. Potter; Distributed by Crown Publishers [1967], Vol. II, p. 262). Also available at UVA, including the original Strand Magazine illustrations and from HyperBooks (6/17/95)

Irving, Washington, " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (Interactive version)

Part of the American Literature Survey Site under construction by Daniel Anderson's American literature class at the University of Texas. The text, while in HTML, is not hypertextual per se (it's in the same sequence as on the page); however, it is connected to a web of students' commentary, and via forms you may add your own comments. (5/14/95)

Melville, Herman, "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street" (Interactive version)

Part of the American Literature Survey Site under construction by Daniel Anderson's American literature class at the University of Texas. This text of "Bartleby," while in HTML, is not hypertextual per se (it's in the same sequence as on the page); however, it is connected to a web of students' commentary, and via forms you may add your own comments (unless, of course, you would prefer not to). The HTML text itself was borrowed from Columbia University's Project Bartleby, a valuable resource in its own right. (5/14/95)

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

The text of Frankenstein is online at a number of places. Some proclaim themselves hypertextual, but they're actually just online books with page turning links. Meanwhile, something more substantial is in the works with this fascinating project at the University of Pennsylvania: Shelley: Frankenstein revealed (November 1994). Until then, an unannotated SGML version is available at UVA.

Precursors of Hypertext Fiction

Borges, Jorge Luis, various works.

Seemingly, about any Borges story you read could be seen as a predecessor of hypertext, though I've been re-reading him lately and found a few of particular interest. I have not yet found a good Borges site and would be glad to hear of one. As far as I know his works are not available online, but several collections are in print, including Ficciones, available from Knopf under the Everyman imprint, and Labyrinths, available from Knopf's parent company, Random House.(9/20/95)

• "The Garden of Forking Paths" is about a fictional fiction writer named Ts'ui Pen who set out to construct a novel that was an enormous labyrinth of forking paths. The story suggests but does not actually embody some of the concepts of "tree fiction." The subject of a Storyspace hypertext by Stuart Moulthrop (Department of English, Yale University, 1987), which is briefly discussed by George Landow in Hypertext: the Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, pp. 40, 109, & 111. (Note: I do not find "Forking Paths" in Eastgate's catalog as of 9/19/95, but you may want to contact them to begin your search).
• "The Lottery in Babylon" introduces the concept of a God-like "Company" conducting a lottery that eventually takes in all possible actions--all of life.
• "The Library of Babel" sounds like a premonition of W3 itself--a library that contains all possible books and interpretations of books. Look at this quote: "This much is already known: for every sensible line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences." If that's not a description of the world of homepages, I don't know what is.
• "Three Versions of Judas" is just what it sounds like, a multiple fiction (though, like much of Borges, it sounds like an essay). The final version of Judas is quite intriguing.
• "Examen de la obra de Herbert Quain" In Ficciones (Buenos Aires: Emece, 1956). I have not read this yet--it was brought to my attention by both Prentiss Riddle and Christian Crumlish

Coover, Robert, "The Babysitter."

See George Landow's Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Johns Hopkins, 1992), Chapter 4, "Reconfiguring Narrative."

Cortazar, Julio, Hopscotch.

See Drew Norris's Vonnegut, Pynchon, and Cortazar: A Generation of Proto-Hypertext Authors, an essay written for Catherine Taylor's hypertext seminar at Duke, "Democracy, Technology, and Authorship in America."

Joyce, James

The entire oeuvre, but especially Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. There are a number of Joyce's texts in HTML, but none marked up as thoroughly as, say, Henry Churchyard's Jane Austen texts. I expect they'll be along any time now. An excellent place to keep an eye on is Rob Callahan's site at Temple University, Work in Progress: James Joyce in Cyberspace. Check his list of Current Joycean Hypertext Projects and don't miss the cartoon of Joyce as a "web-entangled question mark"--now there's a logo. (5/3/95)

Pavic, Milorad, Dictionary of the Khazars. (Originally in Serbo-Croatian New York : Knopf, 1988.

This novel, originally in Serbo-Croatian (and no, I don't know where to obtain it in that language), is often cited as a print hypertext fiction. See, for example, the brief discussion of it in The Electronic Labyrinth. Somewhere I've seen a discussion of the difference between the "male" and "female" versions, but can't recall where at the moment (2/10/97).

Pynchon, Thomas, Gravity's Rainbow and V.

I haven't read more than a couple hundred pages of Pynchon all put together, and am not a fan, so I can't say precisely how his work is a precursor of hypertext fiction. However, I feel that it is. For those wanting to seriously write about this, Tim Ware's Hyper-Concordance to Gravity's Rainbow is an excellent research tool. Tim is also completing a similar concordance for V (9/20/95)

Saporta, Marc, Composition No. 1, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962.

See Jay Bolter's Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing (Erlbaum, 1991), Chapter 8, "Interactive Fiction."

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