Index

The Book

A Bit of Barthes

Modernism

Postmodernism

Decentred

Author Options

Hypertechniques

Bibliography

Present a title page with author and publication information. So we might say this privileges the meta-textual information over the contents of the work itself, but in practical terms the perception of the work is changed very little. After all, we must assume that the reader knows what work they are about to read. However, this option begs the question of what element of the actual fiction will appear first. Essentially doing little more than delaying the inevitable.

Start with the first page of the first chapter, or whatever node would be its equivalent in a linear text. We could call this the traditional option, this would reinforce a linear perception of the work. The author could also choose to start with a node selected at random. Of course, this makes some assumptions about the narrative content of the text. This method poses problems of narrative structure for the author, it can be difficult for the text to remain coherent; to make sense.

Another option is to start with a search dialogue or other mechanism, which forces the reader to "seed" the work. One might type "tree", and be sent to the first node containing that word. In essence, this is a pseudo-random beginning. Important to one's perception of the hyperbook is whether the reading experience is repeatable or not. All of the options except the random beginning are repeatable.

Built by Scott Spicer. [email protected]