Hypertext: Past as Hypertext
(Posted originally at Spinning 01/02/09)
As always, I read and write with the basic idea of borders, nodes,
times and spatial levels in mind since messing around with a bit of
hypertext and interactive fiction some years back. One thing that hit
me along with all the other editing done in reading and reading and
reading my own work was the notion of the separation of time and place
via nodes or lexias that is the hypertext way. Perhaps because the past
in this piece is enclosed within the face of a four-slice toaster, a
visual space that separates the events; past and present, and the two
women who are so much alike.
I don't really do a good job of
hypertext writing, using it not to its complexity of levels of story,
so not really getting everything out of it for the reader's benefit, I
suppose. But even on the simplest mapping of two or three or four main
story paths, I cannot fail to see the past as an ongoing story that is
not only closely related to the present (the present becoming the past
in the flash of a nanosecond) but is responsible for it as it plays out
toward the future.
The other main appeal (for me) of hypertext
is the simultaneous happening of time within different space. Easier
put: I'm sitting here in CT typing on my laptop, but what's Willie
doing and where?
This particular story is not prime for hypertext, but perhaps all stories contain the possibilities.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology