32 Fictions July 2003

THE HABITAT OF HYPERFICTION
Hipertopy(ies)

José Augusto Mourão and José Casquilho
Communication Sciences Department, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
and Universidade Técnica de LIsboa

Portuguese

In this paper we follow a succession of references that illustrate how the conjunction of literary fiction and hypertext — referred to as hyperfiction — emerges as an object whose experimentation subverts the perception of real space-time through the multiplicity of possible paths, traced on the space of the labyrinthical web of the narrative; this subversion intervenes substantially in the order of time changing its sequential perception. Thus we have a habitat of hyperfiction text where the real dimension of time persists but, simultaneously, another dimension of time becomes dominant — the imaginary dimension of time —, using the terminology of the complex numbers system. The habitat of the hypertext fiction is thus inserted into a space-time complex in which we designate as hipertopies the niches occupied by hyperfictional texts. The Aristotelian ordination becomes a minor element, a strictly local element, of the intelligibility of this world.