Hypertext fiction in the context of "Ulysses (novel)"

Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature are usually intended to be read on digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. They cannot be easily printed, or cannot be printed at all, because elements crucial to the work cannot be carried over onto a printed version.

The first literary works for computers, created in the 1950s, were computer programs that generated poems or stories, now called generative literature. In the 1960s experimental poets began to explore the new digital medium, and the first early text-based games were created. Interactive fiction became a popular genre in the late 1970s and 1980s, with a thriving online community in the 2000s. In the 1980s and 1990s hypertext fiction begun to be published, first on floppy disks and later on the web. Hypertext fictions are stories where the reader moves from page to page by selecting links. In the 2000s digital poetry became popular, often including animated text, images and interactivity. In the 2010s and 2020s, electronic literature uses social media platforms, with new genres like Instapoetry or Twitterature as well as literary practices like netprov. Although web-based genres like creepypasta and fan fiction are not always thought of as electronic literature (because they usually manifest as linear texts that could be printed out and read on paper), other scholars argue that these are born digital genres that depend on online communities and thus should be included in the field.

Nonlinear narrative, disjointed narrative, or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique where events are portrayed, for example, out of chronological order or in other ways where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern of the events featured, such as parallel distinctive plot lines, dream immersions or narrating another story inside the main plot-line. The technique is common in electronic literature, and particularly in hypertext fiction, and is also well-established in print and other sequential media.

Pale Fire is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary, and index written by Shade's neighbor and academic colleague, Charles Kinbote. Together these elements form a narrative in which both fictional authors are central characters. Nabokov wrote Pale Fire in 1960–61, after the success of Lolita had made him financially independent, allowing him to retire from teaching and return to Europe. Nabokov began writing the novel in Nice and completed it in Montreux, Switzerland.

Pale Fire's unusual structure has attracted much attention, and it is often cited as an important example of metafiction, as well as an analog precursor to hypertext fiction, and a poioumenon. It has spawned a wide variety of interpretations and a large body of written criticism, which literary scholar Pekka Tammi [fi] estimated in 1995 as more than 80 studies. The Nabokov authority Brian Boyd has called it "Nabokov's most perfect novel", and the critic Harold Bloom called it "the surest demonstration of his own genius ... that remarkable tour de force".

A gamebook is a work of printed fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices. The narrative branches along various paths, typically through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages. Each narrative typically does not follow paragraphs in a linear or ordered fashion. Gamebooks are sometimes called choose your own adventure books or CYOA (after the influential Choose Your Own Adventure series originally published by US company Bantam Books) or pick-a-paths. Gamebooks influenced hypertext fiction.

Production of new gamebooks in the West decreased dramatically during the 1990s as choice-based stories have moved away from print-based media, although the format may be experiencing a resurgence on mobile and ebook platforms. Such digital gamebooks are considered interactive fiction or visual novels.