E-Book'em, Dano
Sun Review June 16, 2001

When most of us hear the phrase "e-books", we think of books bought online at Amazon.com, or the electronic distribution models for electronic books a la Stephen King. What you might not realize is that there is a brave new world of e-literature emerging on the Web.

The Electronic Literature Organization (www.eliterature.org) aims to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of literature designed specifically for interactive electronic media. Electronic literature is defined as new forms of literature that utilize the capabilities of technology to do things that cannot be done in print. E-literature can include hyperlinks, digitized audio or video, animated text, or even reader collaboration where readers can add their own writing to the text.

For over a decade, budding and well-established authors have been experimenting with this new interactive literary medium. Used as more than just a wordprocessing tool, the computer has enabled authors to establish networks and develop a new distribution model for works of any size.

Early experiments included "Invisible Seattle," a collaborative novel authored by anonymous contributors on a BBS in Seattle in 1983, and Michael Joyce's "Afternoon," a hypertext story published by Eastgate Systems (www.eastgate.com). These efforts show that this new electronic means of publishing can alter the way writers construct narrative, and also radically changes the way readers experience it through hypertext links.

In addition to taking advantage of the narrative possibilities offered by hyperlinks, authors are also incorporating multimedia elements such as Flash, audio and video as well as interactive techniques. You can find works involving poetry complete with animation and sound, widespread collaboration, serial novels via e-mail, and works that completely rethink the reading interface, all viewable on the Web.

The exponential growth of the Internet into a global network over the past six years has allowed the field of electronic literature to blossom. Authors can now try so many different techniques that it is sometimes impossible to categorize e-literature into specific genres.

Visit the following websites for more information and examples of e-literature:

The Electronic Literature Organization (www.eliterature.org)

Poems that Go (www.poemsthatgo.com)

San Francisco-based Beehive. (beehive.temporalimage.com)

2001 Electronic Literature Awards for Fiction and Poetry (www.eliterature.org/Awards2001)

Questions or comments? E-mail inge@ingenius.bc.ca

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