Wanting to know more, you click on the word and dart to contextual information describing that person or place in text, sound bites, pictures, or video. You can return to the original poem if you like or go exploring in different directions for more information. In the digital novel, hypertext has created a world filled with alternative possibilities. In the simplest sense, imagine you are reading a printed novel in which the pages are cut in half horizontally. You can choose to read only the top half of each page and reach a sad ending, or the bottom half and reach a happy ending.
Hypertext fiction is like that only more so.
How the novel ends depends on the links readers follow. Using a hypertext writing program called Storyspace , Joyce constructed 539 computer nodes and 915 links before his piece was completed. The need for so much computer coding and programming troubles some literature teachers, who see it as diluting the power of words in favor of emphasis on technology and glitz. In Nellen's Cyber English class, for instance, students have to learn Unix to write the coding for their projects, and they have to understand a DOS-based program to do the editing. They also must become adept users of ClarisWorks.