Michael Joyce's book has sold thousands of copies, but has never been in print. It doesn't appear on paper. You can't check it out at the library and you'd have a hard time finding it at the local bookstore.
Titled "Afternoon," his book exists in hypertext -- a computer-based form of interactive storytelling that lets readers become part of the story. They move through the book in any order -- forward, backward or in circles. The story will never be the same twice. It has no end -- you stop reading when you feel like it.
Recent "Afternoon" readers thought Mr. Joyce's book was about a man who fears his son has died in a traffic accident, or a man who believes his wife had an affair with his best friend. Others thought the story was about a computer company called Dataquest. They're all correct. The plot depends on what path you take in the story. Sometimes the main characters themselves change.
Mr. Joyce will lecture tomorrow on the role of hyperfiction in literature at the University of Baltimore.
The mechanics of reading a hypertext novel are simple. At the beginning of the story, readers are presented with a text box on a computer screen. Picture this box as the center of a spider's web. When readers highlight a section of the text, using a mouse or other pointing device, they move to a new place in the story -- a new place in the web. Whatever word they choose changes that place in the web, and where the story will go.
Unlike other books on computer disks, which are usually adapted from the printed version, hypertext novels are created for the computer. Unlike interactive computer games filled with fun sounds, graphics and video, hypertext is just that -- text.
This is serious literature, says Mr. Joyce, 49. And he takes his writing seriously.
"I am a novelist first of all, before all else," says the writer and professor of English at the Library at Vassar. "The War Outside Ireland," the first of his three books, appeared in 1982 and was published on old-fashioned paper.
"We are making an evolutionary shift that we are not seeing," says Mr. Joyce. "We are changing our way of reading, our way of writing and of speaking. The history of 2050 will say that the people of 1990 didn't realize what was going on."
Only a few dozen hypertext novels are on the market. Even a popular book like "Afternoon" will sell only in the low thousands, according to Mark Bernstein, chief scientist at Eastgate Systems, the industry leader and the publisher of Mr. Joyce's work.
"That's the equivalent of a small publishing house," Mr. Bernstein says. The Massachusetts-based firm has 16 titles in its "book" catalog, and plans to add another 14 within the year.
Hypertext books first became available in the late 1980s with the development of such programs as "Hypercard" and "Storyspace" for the Apple system.
The books, which cost $15 to $50 each, are most readily available through mail-order, although some computer stores and a few bookstores carry them. Because the books are on computers, many authors publish the stories themselves and advertise on the Internet.
"Hypertext is a way of writing that hasn't been given the chance that print literature has," Mr. Joyce says. "When 'Afternoon' came out, it brought strong opinions from people. Literary people were very troubled by it. Here I came with the tools of the enemy -- the computer.
"What used to happen to me a lot is that I would go and talk at a university and computer people would say, 'It's too literary.' And literary people would say, 'This is propeller-head stuff.' "
Preliminary copies of "Afternoon" began circulating in 1987. Using the "Storyspace" program, Mr. Joyce wrote the book in a matter of days.
"It's like composing music. You get the initial melodic lines and harmonics, and then play the piece," he says. The final and commercial version of the work appeared in 1992.
He believes hypertext books reflect the often jumbled times we live in.
"This probably marks me as a hopeless idealist, but I think everyone can read in a non-linear fashion," he says. "People are capable of taking on multiple narratives. Does everything you do end neatly?
"We are always taking on more than one thing," he says. "Once people realize this, they find that these texts are comforting. You don't have to make sense of your kids and your life and your job, and you don't have to make it beautiful and shapely.
"As a professor, I would hear other professors complain that students don't read like they used to. And my unpopular response would be, 'Well, maybe they're not supposed to read like they used to.' It may not be right in an age of multiplicity."
It was the process of writing his first book on paper that led him to work in hypertext.
"In 1982, I got a word processor for the reason that novelists do," he says. "Before word processors, you would write something on page 200 that belongs on page 21. At that point you either re-did it or let it stay. . . . But with the computer, you could cut and paste and move text around. It was then that I discovered -- and I reluctantly say that this makes me a visionary in a sense -- that you could write a novel that changed every time you read it."
But contrary to what one might believe, Mr. Joyce is still fond of paper books.
"We are moving toward having more books in hypertext. The publishing establishment likes that it has no inventory and it can deliver on demand. But regular books are beautiful, sustaining objects that have their own sensuality that I hope will never disappear."
TALK ON HYPERTEXT
When: 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. tomorrow
Where: University of Baltimore Faculty Lounge, Room 252 in the Academic Center
Tickets: $10, $5 for UB students, Tickets available at the door
Call: (410) 837-6022. To buy a copy of "Afternoon," call (800) 562-1638