What the ebook revolution is not

In May, 1994, I attended the first national hypertext conference at Yale University. I went there primarily because of my work in hyperdrama and my interest in hypertext fiction being published by Eastgate Systems, a Cambridge company that Robert Coover called "the primary source for serious hypertext." At the conference I met Eastgate's Mark Bernstein and other scholar/writer/thinkers in the emerging field.

This was heady and exciting stuff. I was the only one there applying hypertext narrative to live drama but there was a general feeling that narrative theory was exploding into dynamic new possibilities for storytelling.

As it turned out, computer games took advantage of this narrative revolution more than any other form, creating dramatic interactive games. Hypertext fiction, the early mainstay of Eastgate (which now seems to be more focused on productivity tools), has not gained much in popularity as near as I can tell. Ebooks, of course, are the natural environment for hypertext narrative -- non-linear narrative that branches into two or more parallel paths -- but the current ebook explosion thus far has little to do with narrative theory.

Eastgate's Storyspace

The ebook revolution is a revolution in packaging, a consumer revolution. It's the scroll becoming the book. The ebook story is still linear, is still traditional. Although Apple and others have released creation software encouraging an expansion of narrative approach (and, of course, Eastgate's Storyspace was there from the beginning), there is a long way to go before an audience grows to welcome these efforts.

In this regard, the ebook revolution is disappointing to me. Hypertext fiction remains a very small specialized genre. No theater company has built (and easily built) the hyperdrama theater space I proposed several years ago. We still tell our stories essentially in the same form in which Homer told them.

Maybe there's a reason for this. But I still think there's a narrative revolution waiting to find its larger audience.

(Also see Changing Key, a video hyperdrama and lecture demonstration, presented at Hypertext 08.)