Hypertext "Zeit für die Bombe"

"Time for the bomb" is a multi-linear narrative that I wrote for the World Wide Web 1997. Even then, I dreamed of it once read in a digital book. As the story in Internet Literature Prize "Pegasus" the weekly "Die Zeit" the first Award-winning, many people advised me to quickly abandon the nonsense idea with the digital book again and instead write a rational, ie a printed book. Reason: The hypertext was dead, and that for some time. Had I not noticed? Wrote perhaps out of sheer stubbornness and I programmed still further hypertext ("Help" and "The swimming champion"), to the news magazine "Der Spiegel" in 2002 I the dubious title of "veteran of the consumptive scene" gave. After all, I realized that the magazine was thus not so wrong. For multi-linear narratives to publish on the Internet, had immense disadvantages. The largest of these was that the reader does not read this, but mainly it clicked around, and indeed so fast that they could read nothing. (Yes, this is scientifically proven.) Readers who do not read are of course a problem. Imagine: Books readers would consume novels by the method flipbook. Given the readers who do not read, the conclusion urged, a branched history is simply not suitable for reading. But as Stephen King put to the turn of the millennium a completely novel linear for download on the Internet, readers also did not read this. You do not even clicked on the download button. Was the lack of desire to read words rather than the unwieldy device to the content offered?

In the meantime, we have just the devices, of which I once dreamed: Tablets, E-Books, huge smartphones. And: People reading (literature) it. They even pay for it. I also. But: Would you read on their tablets and smartphones Hyper literature? High time for a test balloon for an app version of "Time for the bomb"!

Since I have gained over the past 16 years some wisdom (or stupidity), I felt the need to incorporate this into the app version. The app is therefore more intelligent than the internet version - or just too stupid. The reader must decide. The significant differences are:

1) The narrator knows when the reader comes to a page for a second time and responds with a slightly different text on it. I wrote these pieces of text back in 1997 for a public reading hypertext. That being said they have not yet been published.

2) I added an escape hatch for stray reader that enables everyone can find back to the sides, on which he has left are branches left.
 
3) A percentage figure shows the reader how much he has already read from the history.

These changes mean that every reader after a good half hour to be sure: I have seen all sides, I've finished reading this hypertext - or clicked.

The web version is available at: http://www.berkenheger.de/hilfe.htm

Applause, abuse and reports on ecstatic, ambivalent or even disastrous reading experiences are very welcome!

Susanne Berkenheger
http://www.berkenheger.de