The Book of Endings (1994-96)
A network fiction for the early Web
About The Book of Endings
My first public work was about fiction and the then-new World Wide Web. About how the Web as a system represents reading. It seemed to me that we were entering a kind of reading in which any page could be the "last" one, a sense of story which is only retrospectively linear, and a way of discovering that is constantly moving between elements on different parts of the network.
I thought of The Book of Endings as a "network fiction" in several senses. First, it was organized as a network, with every node an "ending." Second, it was distributed via the WWW network. Third, it was connected to other nodes of the network. This meant the fiction linked out to other sites on the Web. But it also meant that the larger Web linked in. These were the days when most pages on the Web were found via directories (like Yahoo!'s). I worked to get pages of the fiction listed in directory categories for related topics. Finally, I also thought of it as a network fiction in that it was revised and expanded based on comments from its network audience.
I stayed interested in the Web as a reading and thinking system, and the stories appropriate to it. And I also realized, over time, that the hands at the beginning of The Book of Endings also pointed to another interest — connecting new kinds of fiction to the spaces and systems of our bodies. For example, in that initial image of hands. The storylines ran down the lines of the skin.
The project was supported by a 1996 fellowship from the Edward Albee Foundation and noted in many early influential web contexts (e.g., the iconic What's New With NCSA Mosaic).
