Schedule

• Submission deadline: 31 May 2002
• Second round: comments and revisions deadline: 1 August 2002
• Publication date: September 2002

Format

This issue will be a hypertext edited and linked by Jill Walker and Susana Tosca. Instead of requesting full length papers, we are soliciting short texts that, on acceptance after peer review, will become the nodes of the hypertext. Each author may submit one or several nodes, and each node should be between 250 and 1500 words.

Theme

In the decade or so since the publication of the first hypertext fiction (Michael Joyce's afternoon), hypertext fiction and electronic literature has developed immensely. Electronic literature today is hypertextual and more, finding inspiration in visual arts, animation, games and cinema. There is a solid and growing literature of hypertext theory and of new media theory, and there are many different literary and artistic developments. Discussion and criticism of specific works of art is vital to the health of any art form. Criticism of hypertext literature and electronic literature is in many ways less well developed than both the works themselves and the more general theoretical discussions around hypertext in general. Mainstream media largely ignores electronic literature, or is dismissive of it. People who are familiar with hypertext rarely discuss specific works, and when they do, it is often cursorily and without any evalutation or discussion of specific points in the work. There haven't been many reviews of hypertext fiction or other electronic literature.

Recently a few very critical reviews of hypertext fictions were published in the online journal Dichtung Digital. This raised some discussion as to the role of criticism in this field. This issue of JoDI aims to bring these topics of discussion out to a wider audience. We wish to encourage a broad and inclusive discussion of hypertext criticism, and encourage contributors with experience as authors of electronic literature (criticised or not), as critics and as observers of the field. We welcome general comments and opinions as well as discussions of particular reviews or events. A non-exhaustive list of questions we are interested in would include:

• Are we too afraid of honest criticism?
• Is the lack of serious criticism a problem for the growth of electronic literature?
• What should hypertext criticism discuss?
• Should a critic read and evaluate a work like a technical beta-tester or as a conventional literary critic, discussing style and thematics but rarely the binding and publication of a text?
• Is a new form of criticism necessary?
• Are there political implications?
• What role should criticism have?

Submission

After the submissions have been reviewed and accepted, and an initial version of the hypertext has been prepared by the editors, contributors will be asked to read the full issue, and to add commentary on the other contributions and suggest new connections, links, etc. Publication will take place after this process has been integrated in the hypertext by the editors. Please follow the submission guidelines, including the style for bibliographic notes and author details. For this issue we prefer plain text to HTML, so please ignore the instructions on HTML style. We also wish to encourage external links to online content, and would like you to link in the

<a href="http://whatever"></a>

Any enquiries should be directed to the special issue editors.

The Journal of Digital Information is an electronic journal published only via the Web. The journal is currently available free to users.