afternoon, a story

afternoon, a story constitutes an early example of pre-Web hypertext fiction. Written by Michael Joyce, the work was published on the Storyspace hypertext authoring system developed by Joyce, Jay David Bolter, and John B. Smith and made its debut at the 1987 ACM Hypertext conference held at the University of Chapel Hill. In 1990 the software and Joyce's novel were licensed by Eastgate System's, Inc. and commercially released on a 3.5-inch floppy disk for Macintosh computers. The story centers on the main character, Peter, whose emotional detachment frames his responses to those around him, particularly the potential deaths of his ex-wife and son in a car crash. -- by Dene Grigar