Afternoon, a story

"Afternoon, a story" 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 the first hypertext fiction.

"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 [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=317431&jmp=cit&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=53406279&CFTOKEN=47030513#CIT] . 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", "Patchwork Girl" and Deena Larsen's "Marble Springs".

Plot and structure

The hypertext fiction tells the story of Peter, a recently divorced man who witnessed a car crash that may or may not have involved his ex-wife and their son.

Criticism

This is one of the most-discussed works of electronic literature, and many articles have been written about it. Espen J. Aarseth devotes a chapter of his book "Cybertext" to "Afternoon", calling it a classic example of modernist literature. It is more often thought of as a work of Postmodern literature, as evidenced by its inclusion in the" Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction" [http://www.wwnorton.com/college/titles/english/pmaf2/contents.htm] . Chapters of Jay David Bolter's "Writing Space" and J. Yellowlees Douglas's "The End of Books or Books Without End" also discuss Afternoon. Gunnar Liestøl's article "The Reader's Narrative in Hypertext" in George Landow's "Hyper/Text/Theory" (1994) uses the theory of narratology to understand "Afternoon", as does Jill Walker's "Piecing Together and Tearing Apart: Finding the Story in Afternoon" [http://jilltxt.net/txt/afternoon.html] and Anna Gunders's dissertation work [http://publications.uu.se/theses/spikblad.xsql?dbid=4517]

ee also

*Electronic Literature Organization
*hypertext fiction
*ergodic literature
*Eastgate Systems

External links

* [http://eastgate.com Eastgate]
*" [http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/Afternoon.html Afternoon] "

ources

*cite book
last = Aarseth
first = Espen
authorlink = Espen Aarseth
coauthors =
title = Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature
publisher = Johns Hopkins UP
date = 1997
location = Baltimore, Maryland
pages =
url =
doi =
id =
*cite book
last = Bolter
first = J. David
authorlink = Jay David Bolter
coauthors =
title = Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print
publisher = Lawrence Erlbaum
date = 2001
location =
pages =
url =
doi =
id =
*cite book
last = Douglas
first = J. Yellowlees
authorlink = J. Yellowlees Douglas
coauthors =
title = The End of Books or Books Without End?
publisher = University of Michigan Press
date = 1999
location = Ann Arbor, Michigan
pages =
url =
doi =
id =
*cite book
last = Landow
first = George
authorlink = George Landow
title = Hyper/Text/Theory
year = 1994
publisher = Johns Hopkins UP
date = 1997
location = Baltimore, Maryland
pages =
url =
doi =
id =
*cite conference
first = Jill
last = Walker
authorlink = Jill Walker
coauthors =
title = "Piecing Together and Pulling Apart: Finding the Story in afternoon"
booktitle = Proceedings of the tenth ACM Conference on Hypertext and hypermedia : returning to our diverse roots: returning to our diverse roots
pages = 111-117
publisher =
date = 1999
location = Darmstadt, Germany
url = http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/txt/afternoon.html
doi = http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/294469.294496
id =
accessdate =