Afternoon, a story

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Cover art for floppy disk case for afternoon Afternoon, a story cover.jpg
Cover art for floppy disk case for afternoon

afternoon, a story, spelled with a lowercase 'a', is a work of electronic literature written in 1987 by American author Michael Joyce. It was published by Eastgate Systems in 1990 and is known as one of the first works of hypertext fiction.

Contents

afternoon was first offered to the public as a demonstration of the hypertext authoring system Storyspace, announced in 1987 at the first Association for Computing Machinery Hypertext conference in a paper by Michael Joyce and Jay David Bolter. [1] In 1990, it was published on diskette and distributed in the same form by Eastgate Systems. It was followed by a series of other Storyspace hypertext fictions, including Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden, Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl and Deena Larsen's Marble Springs. Eastgate continued to publish the work in the 2010s and distributed it on a USB flash drive. [2]

Plot and structure

The hypertext fiction tells the story of Peter, a recently divorced man who witnessed a car crash. Hours later, he suspects that the wrecked car may have involved his ex-wife and their son.

The plot may change each time it is read if the reader chooses different paths.

Critical reception

Robert Coover reviewed this work i August 29, 1993 in the New York Times Book Review, "Hyperfiction; And Now, Boot Up the Reviews" [3]

This is a highly discussed work of electronic literature since it was one of the first electronic interactive novels, therefore many articles have been written about it. Espen J. Aarseth devotes a chapter of his book Cybertext to afternoon, arguing that it is a classic example of modernist literature. [4] It is however often thought of as a work of postmodern literature, as evidenced by its inclusion in the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction. [5]

Chapters of Jay David Bolter's Writing Space and J. Yellowlees Douglas's The End of Books or Books Without End also discuss afternoon, as does Matthew G. Kirschenbaum's Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination.

A number of scholars have discussed the extent to which afternoon extends or breaks with conventional definitions of narrative.

Early scholarship used and adapted the theory of narratology to understand afternoon. One of the first examples is Gunnar Liestøl's article "Wittgenstein, Genette, and the Reader's Narrative in Hypertext" in George Landow's Hyper/Text/Theory (1994). [6] Jill Walker's 1998 analysis explores "ways in which the text confuses the reader but also the many stabilising elements that aid the reader to piece together a story". [7] Rasmus Blok discusses "the sense of narrative" in afternoon. [8]

This work was analyzed in Astrid Ensslin's work, Pre-web Digital Publishing and the Lore of Electronic Literature (2022). [9]

Translations and editions

afternoon has been published in many different editions since it was first distributed on a floppy disk with a handwritten label in 1987. Dene Grigar has compiled an overview, with details about each edition. [10]

The hypertext fiction has been translated [10] into Italian, German, Polish [11] [12] and French. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hypertext</span> Text with references (links) to other text that the reader can immediately access

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically activated by a mouse click, keypress set, or screen touch. Apart from text, the term "hypertext" is also sometimes used to describe tables, images, and other presentational content formats with integrated hyperlinks. Hypertext is one of the key underlying concepts of the World Wide Web, where Web pages are often written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). As implemented on the Web, hypertext enables the easy-to-use publication of information over the Internet.

Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next, and in this fashion arranges a story from a deeper pool of potential stories. Its spirit can also be seen in interactive fiction.

Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. The term is an anglicisation of French narratologie, coined by Tzvetan Todorov. Its theoretical lineage is traceable to Aristotle (Poetics) but modern narratology is agreed to have begun with the Russian formalists, particularly Vladimir Propp, and Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of heteroglossia, dialogism, and the chronotope first presented in The Dialogic Imagination (1975).

Michael Joyce is a retired professor of English at Vassar College, New York, US. He is also an important author and critic of electronic literature.

Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature are usually intended to be read on digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. They cannot be easily printed, or cannot be printed at all, because elements crucial to the work cannot be carried over onto a printed version.

George Paul Landow was Professor of English and Art History Emeritus at Brown University. He was a leading authority on Victorian literature, art, and culture, as well as a pioneer in criticism and theory of Electronic literature, hypertext and hypermedia. He also pioneered the use of hypertext and the web in higher education.

<i>Patchwork Girl</i> (hypertext) Work of electronic literature by Shelley Jackson

Patchwork Girl or a Modern Monster by Mary/Shelly and Herself is a work of electronic literature by American author Shelley Jackson. It was written in Storyspace and published by Eastgate Systems in 1995. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story as an important work of hypertext fiction.

<i>Victory Garden</i> (novel) Novel by Stuart Moulthrop

Victory Garden is a work of electronic literature by American author Stuart Moulthrop. It was written in Storyspace and first published by Eastgate Systems in 1991. Victory Garden is one of the earliest examples of hypertext novels, and is notable for being very inventive and influential in its genre. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story as an important work of hypertext fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Yellowlees Douglas</span>

Jane Yellowlees Douglas is a pioneer author and scholar of hypertext fiction. She began writing about hypermedia in the late 1980s, very early in the development of the medium. Her 1993 fiction I Have Said Nothing, was one of the first published works of hypertext fiction.

Stuart Moulthrop is an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer. He is author of the hypertext fiction works Victory Garden (1992), which was on the front-page of the New York Times Book Review in 1993, Reagan Library (1999), and Hegirascope (1995), amongst many others. Moulthrop is currently a Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of English, at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He also became a founding board member of the Electronic Literature Organization in 1999.

Eastgate Systems is a hypertext publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cybertext</span>

Cybertext as defined by Espen Aarseth in 1997 is a type of ergodic literature where the user traverses the text by doing nontrivial work.

Hypertext, in semiotics, is a text which alludes to, derives from, or relates to an earlier work or hypotext.

Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink was an American writer, scholar, and teacher. Writing hypermedia fiction under the pen name M.D. Coverley, she is best known for her epic hypertext novels Califia (2000) and Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day (2006). A pioneer born-digital writer, she is part of the first generation of electronic literature authors that arose in the 1987–1997 period. She was a founding board member and past president of the Electronic Literature Organization and the first winner of the Electronic Literature Organization Career Achievement Award, which was named in her honor. Lusebrink was professor emeritus, School of Humanities and Languages at Irvine Valley College (IVC).

"I Have Said Nothing" is an early work of hypertext fiction written by J. Yellowlees Douglas. In 1993 it was published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. in The Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext , along with “Lust” by Mary-Kim Arnold. In 1997, Norton Anthology published an online version of the work, along with Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story as part of its print publication Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction.

<i>Figurski at Findhorn on Acid</i>

Figurski at Findhorn on Acid is a hypertext novel by Richard Holeton published on CD-ROM by Eastgate Systems in 2001 and republished on the open web by the Electronic Literature Lab, Washington State University, in 2021. Re-Imagined Radio presented a radio interpretation of this novel in 2022 in which Holeton made an appearance. It is a work of interactive fiction with various paths for readers to choose from, an early example of electronic literature, and one of 23 works included in the literary hypertext canon.

34 North 118 West by Jeff Knowlton, Naomi Spellman, and Jeremy Hight is one of the first locative hypertexts. Published in 2003, the work connected Global Positioning System (GPS) data with a fictional narrative on an early tablet PC connected to Global Positioning devices to deliver a real-time story to a user.

<i>King of Space</i> Hypertext fiction work by Sarah Smith

King of Space is a work of electronic literature by author Sarah Smith. This interactive narrative is set in a collapsing solar system aboard an abandoned starship, where an escaped terrorist encounters the last star-captain and his ship's Priestess. The story weaves elements of gaming into a dark science-fictional ritual of fertility and regeneration.

<i>Uncle Buddys Phantom Funhouse</i>

Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse is an early multimedia hypermedia text written by John McDaid and released by Eastgate Systems in 1993. The main portion of Funhouse was written for Macintosh's HyperCard app, but portions of the hypermedia novel are also contained in the original box. The use of transmedia storytelling, meta-fiction, and epistolary format makes this a potential early example of an alternate reality game.

References

  1. ↑ Bolter, Jay David; Joyce, Michael (1987). "Hypertext and creative writing". Proceeding of the ACM conference on Hypertext - HYPERTEXT '87. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States: ACM Press. pp. 41–50. doi:10.1145/317426.317431. ISBN   978-0-89791-340-9. S2CID   207627394.
  2. ↑ Eastgate: afternoon, a story Eastgate, Retrieved August 29, 2016.
  3. ↑ Coover, Robert (1993-08-29). "HYPERFICTION; And Now, Boot Up the Reviews". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-11-25.
  4. ↑ Aarseth, Espen J. (1997). Cybertext: perspectives on ergodic literature. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 90–95. ISBN   0-8018-5578-0. OCLC   36246052.
  5. ↑ Geyh, Paula; Leebron, Fred; Levy, Andrew, eds. (1998). Postmodern American fiction: a Norton anthology (1st ed.). New York. ISBN   0-393-31698-X. OCLC   37141195.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  6. ↑ Liestøl, Gunnar (1994). "Wittgenstein, Genette, and the Reader's Narrative in Hypertext". In Landow, George (ed.). Hyper/text/theory. George P. Landow. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN   0-8018-4837-7. OCLC   30319895.
  7. ↑ Walker, Jill (1999). "Piecing together and tearing apart". Proceedings of the tenth ACM Conference on Hypertext and hypermedia : Returning to our diverse roots: Returning to our diverse roots. Darmstadt Germany: ACM. pp. 111–117. doi:10.1145/294469.294496. hdl: 1956/1073 . ISBN   978-1-58113-064-5. S2CID   17335695.
  8. ↑ Blok, Rasmus (2004-01-01). I Try to Recall …: A Sense of Narrative in the Digital Novel – afternoon, a story. Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004483576_023. ISBN   978-90-04-48357-6. S2CID   240430425.
  9. ↑ Ensslin, Astrid (2022). Pre-web Digital Publishing and the Lore of Electronic Literature. Cambridge University Press.
  10. 1 2 Grigar, Dene (2018). "afternoon, a story - Editions At-A-Glance" (PDF).
  11. ↑ Pisarski, Mariusz (2015). "From Storyspace to Browsers. Translating afternoon, a story into Polish". Translating E-Literature/Traduire la littérature numérique.
  12. ↑ Joyce, Michael (2011). Popołudnie, pewna historia. Radosław Nowakowski, Mariusz Pisarski, Korporacja Ha!art. Kraków: Korporacja Ha!art. ISBN   978-83-62574-33-9. OCLC   1126635018.
  13. ↑ Tremblay-Gaudette, Gabriel (2021), Desjardins, Renée; Larsonneur, Claire; Lacour, Philippe (eds.), "You Can't Go Home Again: Moving afternoon Forward Through Translation", When Translation Goes Digital, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 69–87, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-51761-8_4, ISBN   978-3-030-51760-1, S2CID   230585046 , retrieved 2022-10-25
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