From Page to Screen - WRAP: Warwick Research Archive Portal ...

In the opening quote, Michael Heim asks questions about the revolutionary potential of
electronic writing. This element of newness, of break with tradition, ofa new start after
50 0 relatively stable years of print has been the dominant emphasis of hypertext and
hyperfiction criticism. But new artforms do not appear out of a vacuum, independently
ofwhat happened before. They rely on materials previously available, are based on
traditions (whether they expand them or reject them) as well as being produced by an
artist and received by an audience inescapably rooted in a set of conventions and
expectations formed by previous (reading) experience. The absolute new does not exist.
Hyperfiction draws on a number of traditions and influences. First of all, developments
in computer technology. The ability to realise a hypertext in electronic format has only
existed for about two decades, which does give the overwhelming impression of being a
new artform. And indeed, many features of hypertext (fiction) are unfamiliar. Its
distribution is different from print: traditional channels such as bookshops and libraries
are often not equipped for the new format, which leaves mail order or downloading from
computer networks. They are also texts that seem to require explanation: whereas
experimental, (post-Imodern texts, as Christopher Butler argues" , require a theoretical
framework to be accessible, hypertext fictions occasionally come not only with
instructions on how to understand them, but on how to read them.
Hypertext isa newmedium {...] because itis intimately tied to the computer; the trot hypertext
or byperdocument exists and can exist only on-line, and has no meaningful existence inprint. 42
(John Slatin).
While postmodern theory is widely acknowledged as a second main influence on
hyperfiction, as the subtitle to George P. Landow's influential hypertext study "the
41 Christopher Butler, After the Wake: An Essay on the Contemporary Avant-Garde (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1980).
42John M. Slatin, "Composing Hypertext: A Discussion. for Writing Teachers", in: Hyptr:ext /
Hypermedia Handbook, ed.by Emily Berk and Joseph Devlin (New York: Intertext Publications I
MacGraw Hill, 1991) , PP·55-65 (P.55).
Chapter I - page I'