Six sex scenes: a novella in hypertext
Cover page of Six Sex Scenes.
AuthorAdrienne Eisen
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreHypertext fiction, Electronic literature
Publication date
1996
Websitehttps://web.archive.org/web/20010603003944/http://www.altx.com/hyperx/sss/

Six Sex Scenes is a hypertext novella created by Adrienne Eisen and published on the web in 1996.

Content and form

Six Sex Scenes is a first-person narrative told from the perspective of a young woman. It has been described as "the story of a young Jewish woman's dysfunctional love-life, with frequent flashbacks into her equally dysfunctional childhood".[1]

Six Sex Scenes consists of many lexia: individual webpages with a few paragraphs of the story. While some contemporaneous web hypertext fictions used in-text links, Six Sex Scenes presented the links at the bottom of each screen. Each lexia has 3-4 links to other lexia, allowing the reader to read the story in many different orders. "a menu of options at the end of each story-section. This menu is actually a contents-list for the story's next stage. If we clicked on a link that says ‘Bored’, we will find ourselves reading a section entitled ‘Bored’: so in a sense, although we may be unclear about the shape of the story as a whole, we are shown at the end of each section, in a relatively straightforward way, where we can go next".[1] This means that Eisen "allows us to read a section all the way through before reminding us that there are multiple choices to be made".[1]

Mark Bernstein writes that Six Sex Scenes uses counterpoint structure and avoids the cyclical structure common in many other hypertexts.[2] Adrian Miles described the episodes as "largely unmotivated in terms of realist or literal narrative conventions",[3] although Bernstein noted that the counterpoint structure emphasised contrasts or links between childhood and adult experiences: "Greenheart’s hypertext habitually alternates time frames: a writing space describing a childhood scene tends to be linked to scenes of adult life, and adult scenes tend to be linked to stories of childhood."[2]

Reception

A sequel titled Making Scenes was published as a print novel in 2001.[4][5][6]

Awards

Six Sex Scenes was one of the winners of the New Media Invision Awards in 1997.[7]

  • Archived version of Six Sex Scenes.[8]
  • Entry in ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base[9]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Picot, Edward (2002). "Some versions of hyperfiction". PN Review. 22 (2). ProQuest 2418404835 – via ProQuest.
  2. 1 2 Bernstein, Mark (1998-05-01). "Patterns of hypertext". Proceedings of the ninth ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermedia : Links, objects, time and space---structure in hypermedia systems links, objects, time and space---structure in hypermedia systems - HYPERTEXT '98. HYPERTEXT '98. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 21–29. doi:10.1145/276627.276630. ISBN 978-0-89791-972-2. S2CID 317442. Six Sex Scenes, on the other hand, offers three or four outbound links from almost every node. Greenheart's hypertext habitually alternates time frames: a writing space describing achildhood scenetendstobelinked toscenesof adult life, and adult scenes tend to be linked to stories of childhood. Because Greenheart, in Six Sex Scenes, works hard to avoid Cycles, the Counterpoint of childhood and adult experience is its most prominent structural element.
  3. ↑ Miles, Adrian (2001-09-10). "Hypertext structure as the event of connection". Proceedings of the twelfth ACM conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia - HYPERTEXT '01 (PDF). HYPERTEXT '01. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 61–68. doi:10.1145/504216.504236. ISBN 978-1-58113-420-9. S2CID 8681075. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-10-11.
  4. ↑ Eisen, Adrienne (2001). Making scenes. Boulder, Colo.: Alt-X Press. ISBN 0-9703517-0-4. OCLC 48262455.
  5. ↑ ""All of the Money, None of the Vomit:" A Conversation about Making Scenes – Emily Books". emilybooks.com. Retrieved 2023-04-10.
  6. ↑ Mackrous, Paule (2010). "With Penelope Trunk: What happened to hypertext writer Adrienne Eisen?". Magazine électronique du CIAC - CIAC's Electronic Magazine. Retrieved 2023-04-10.
  7. ↑ Nile, Southern (2000-07-01). "Interview with Adrienne Eisen". Rhizome. Retrieved 2023-04-10.
  8. ↑ Eisen, Adrienne (1996). "Six Sex Scenes". Archived from the original on 2001-04-14.
  9. ↑ "Six Sex Scenes | ELMCIP". elmcip.net. Retrieved 2023-04-10.
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