1 The Shaping of Hypertextual Narrative SERGIO CICCONI 0. Introduction I have already discussed the concept of hypertext in the past 1 when I tried to analyze what hypertexts are, how they work, and how they can be used. I then also described the changes hypertexts are going to introduce in our perception of texts. Placed within the new electronic paradigm, hypertext will introduce substantial changes in our way of dealing with information, of perceiving, creating, preserving, and representing knowledge; in short: our way of thinking. I thus would like to focus here on a special kind of hypertexts: the narrative ones. Moreover, I would also like to talk about my uneasiness as reader of hypertexts; tell about the irritation I cannot avoid when I am faced with the task of reading – or rather of pretending to read – narrative hypertexts, those hypertexts people call interactive novels or short-stories. In order to more specifically contextualize the problem I will start by presenting voices and opinions captured on the Web. “In the electronic context” – writes Heim, firm detractor of cyberculture 2 – “the logic of manipulative power reigns at the highest degree. It becomes possible to treat the entire verbal life of human race as a continuous and anonymous code without any important reference to the human presence that is behind it; it does not feel obliged to answer anybody, nor does it feel the need for answers from anybody.” And Heim continues by saying that this electronic state of things well represents the nihilistic condition described by Nietzsche, where everything is allowed, so that nothing is ever chosen, is ever authentic or existential. “The problem with pure (non multimedial) hypertextuality” – writes an anonymous engineer in a e-mail sent to the readers of a mailing list – “is that the inevitable contraction of the text, due to the computerized medium, not only creates a fragmentation of the narrative development, but also drives us towards a lack of analysis, a lack that is not counterbalanced by other advantages given to the readers. Not even the multi-linked structure of such a narrative can really give the reader a convincing and captivating plot.” The opinion of Miguel Angel Garcia, writer of narrative texts and hypertexts, and at ease with the Web, sounds more positive. “The aesthetics of hypertext is still under construction,” he says in an interview available on the Web. 3 “Right now, I think that the ugliness prevail on beauty. That is, most of the times, hypertexts try to take the same routes of the previous narratives, but they cannot and should not. On the other hand, we can find on the Internet some well-made hypertexts; even though they are written with a sort of crude, somehow primitive style, they are