Notes For a HyperCard Novel

via www.loper-os.org

This article made me miss HyperCard. It also reminded me of a major lost opportunity in my career. In 1992 while fooling around with HyperCard, I conceived of the idea of building a hypertext version of my novel in progress (Notes For a Future Novel, of course, which is now part of Collected Works.)

I can no longer play the hypercard stack that I built that fall, but fortunately I did print some screenshots. This is a sample screen:

A later screenshot shows the navigation links for the different paths you could take through the novel. 

Each path was represented by a symbol–diamond for Tim's point of view, square for Mick, and the Russian character for a narrative path which included all of the character's view-points, plus an intrusive narrator who would comment on the action and make humorous digressions. 

This is a map showing the different paths through the novel.