Part I. Hyperfiction theory

Defining hypertext: 'Death of the Author'

What makes hypertext as such different from 'ordinary' text? What effect does the altered concept and perception of text have on the process of the reading and understanding of text ? These are the questions that the majority of hypertext writers devote most of their 'writing space' to investigating and answering, and I will briefly try to summarise and outline some of these answers, so far making no distinction between the kind of hypertext that is made up of factual information and the kind of hypertext that is made up of fictional prose. [3]

From this point of view, one might say that in hypertextual reading, active readership predominates over the more 'passive' readership of printed fictions, in which the reader is a more or less witness to the temporal, causal unfolding of story.[4]. In other words, one might say that in hypertexts what counts is no longer the 'result' or content of the reading, but rather the process of reading in itself.

Obviously, reading a book of fiction has always been a process that asked for the reader's active participation in the creation of the content of the text and, especially in this century, both literary theory and modern literary fiction have from various viewpoints been discussing and examining how 'making sense' positively depends on the reader's inscriptions in and on the text at hand. The 'schools' of Reader-Response criticism (Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish), Deconstruction (Jacques Derrida), Psychoanalysis (Julia Kristeva), Semiotics (Umberto Eco and his theory of the 'open work') spring to mind as well as the writings by Jorge Luis Borges, John Barth, Italo Calvino, Julio Cortazar, the group of French Nouveau Roman writers and logically, it is also these thinkers and writers that the hypertext theorists look to, when they look for theoretical validation and literary inspiration in 'the past'.[5]Hence, the statement that hypertext offers its reader much more author-ity than the printed literary texts needs further qualification. Thus, I find it worth noting that hypertext's authoritative empowerment of the reader is made possible only by the fact that he or she is able to interact physically with the text. The text must present the reader with a choice of links in the first place and then assimilate itself to the reader's 'input' (most often in the form of a 'click' with the mouse or a press on the 'Return'-key).

Hence, interaction ideally conceived of as equal exchange between reader and 'system' (the reader as interactor) becomes essential for the development of a hypertext 'aesthetics', since the degree and variety of interaction made available to the reader invariably frames the outcome and experience of the reading process and, in continuation of this, the eventual experience of the meaning 'extracted' from a particular reading. [7]. Not surprisingly, one will therefore find that latent assumptions of what 'good' or 'true' interaction is, informs many of the theoretical discussions of hypertextuality, including those I will be examining later in this chapter.

Finally, among those effects of hypertextual reading that are of relevance to a literary approach to the subject, is the altered nature of the experience of narrative, especially those aspects that pertain to the construction of narrative (i.e. story and narrative content). Since every reading is different and, furthermore, since, in theory, every reading can take its vantage point in whatever lexia is preferred, one can no longer talk of a closure of story or 'final' reading. There is no such thing as one final story that the reader can take away with him. 'Story' comes into being as the reader goes along, and although the reader proceeds from link to link in time, eventually combining events in his own causal and chronological order. Therefore, according to the theorists, an experience of simultaneity (an awareness of the fact that simultaneously to one's own reading, a lot of things are 'going on' in other lexias that one could also access) will come to dominate the experience of narrative 'unfolding' instead of the experience of events happening in one continuous linear time.

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The lack of finitude or perhaps, more appropriately 'one-ness' of story also has considerable implications for the authority of the author himself. The altered relationship between author and reader (the reader being solely responsible of inscribing particular 'meanings' to the text, the impossibility of writing just one story), would imply that in writing for a hypertextual environment the author is deprived of some of the traditional means of conveying a specific 'message' through his writing (such as the moral of the outcome of a particular story). One might in other words say that one can no longer grant the author very much intentional authority. Hence, the discussion of what an author is, and what he 'should' do, when he writes, become intrinsic to hypertext theory as well. Taken to its idealistic limits, hypertext writing is, to many hypertext theorists, a joint project where text expands infinitely and everybody through this process of expansion becomes a co-writer so that one can no longer speak of a 'master -author'.