On Fri, 30 Apr 1999, douglas eyman wrote:

And the Query: has anyone on-list experimented with either writing or teaching Hypertext fiction?

  my question is: how can you tell hypertext fiction apart from hypertext fact?

  background:
    Scholes and Kellogg wrote a book called __The Nature of Narrative__ years ago, that demonstrated the creation of modern modes relative to print, namely, the division of writing into fiction (novel) and fact (essay), a division that did not exist in the manuscript era.

    In some detail __Nature__ outlines how the novel and essay are composite or complex modes made up of "simple" forms, each with long histories and traditions of their own. They conclude that in an era of new media the print composites are breaking up (or down) back into their multitude of simple forms, with new composites coming into formation (and no guarantees about how "truth" will be sorted out, or what simple forms will recombine with which, this time.

    hmmmm: take this outline with a grain of salt, since it is from memory.

anyway,
    context:
        internet and the difficulties of sorting out truth in the anbsence of clear modality "contracts"--
                eg, such stories as "CIA started Crack epidemic"         it seems that this "story" is at once false AND true
                or fiction and fact

  THEREFORE
question
  is the goal of writing hypertext "fiction" a nostaligic use of digital media?

  CF
    McLUhan said: the content of the new media is/are the old media

        we could include in that content the old forms, genres, modes?

all best
Greg Ulmer