The American Hypertext Novel, and Whatever Became of It?

This chapter provides examples of how hypertext has provided a basis for other emergent narrative forms within an increasingly diverse range of experimentation in narrative for digital media. The publication of more hypertext fictions such as Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden, and Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl resulted in a small, dedicated interest community. The independent publication of hypertext novels such as Robert Arellano's Sunshine '69, Mark Amerika's Grammatron, and William Gillespie, Frank Marquardt, Scott Rettberg and Dirk Stratton's The Unknown briefly revitalised the networked fictional form before it was eclipsed in the first decade of the 21st century by a range of other digital narrative forms. As the 1990s ended, many of the authors who first produced hypertext narratives in Storyspace or in HTML began to develop works in other platforms, such as Flash, which allowed for more extensive use of animation and other multimedia.