ABSTRACT
Digital fiction is uniquely positioned in its ability to use new and still relatively unfamiliar tools to mobilize formal and material innovation in expressly literary fashion while using the same tools to reflect on a cultural moment of great technological change. Though digital fiction is still very much in a formative stage, and likely to change more quickly than other forms to mirror changes in software tools and hardware capabilities, this chapter will present a survey of the kinds of texts one can expect to find in its domain. I will suggest that digital fiction extends the tradition of experimental literature in significant ways, including innovations in narrative perspective and representation of consciousness, spatio-temporal dynamics of the text, and a form of creativity best described as “algorithmic” or “processual.” I will further suggest that digital fiction marks the emergence of a distinctly new narrative poetics – namely a poetics of the link and node – that can offer new insights into the composition and reception of literary art in light of participatory digital media, and I will close with a consideration of specific examples that animate these innovations in compelling ways.
