Sections in this document

How to read this work

There is no single way to read this work. No one marked path will take you through all the fragments of it. There is no one right order to string the fragments together. However, there are places to start and orders to try. Each fragment of the story has these navigation tools at it's head:
the number of the fragment in the numbers of the place
click the glyph of the foot to go to the next fragment in the suggested sequence click the glyph of the mouth to go to the next fragment with this speaker click the glyph of the eye to go to an overview of all the fragments click the glyph of the ear to consult background information about the environment and its people click the glyph of the feather to look at the copyright notices and conditions for copying
next sequential on with this character Overview Background Copyright
The Rite of Spring: Fragment (time sequence number)

The Narrator of this Fragment
a very short and usually oblique description of the action of this fragment

You can read the story by:

Following the suggested sequence

At the end of each fragment, as a navigation aid, the glyph of the foot is repeated, again leading you on to the 'next' fragment in the suggested sequence. Following this sequence will give you a fair understanding of the story, and it is fairly linear in time. But if you're going to do this, why not get a paper book?

Following interesting narrators

No single narrator knows the whole story, so following a single narrator can only give you a partial picture. Nevertheless, another way to explore the story is to pick a narrator from the cast and following their story. At the end of it, you'll have a fair idea of whom you want to hear next. You can always find the cast list again from any fragment by clicking on the gylph of the ear in the header.

Following interesting topics

Another way into the story is to explore the background reading until you come to an interesting eyewitness account, and then following the story from there.

Selecting fragments from the Overview

The Overview is an almost-complete list of fragments in the story, arranged by location. You can choose a place to enter the story from it.

How to contribute to this story

This work is a hypertext. As such, it is necessarily open and unfinished. It's open for you to add to. There's nothing, of course, to stop you writing fragments which link into it from your own server. However, if you do this, people starting from here won't be signposted to your fragments. If you would like to write fragments (or produce illustrations) for this work, please follow the rules below and mail you work to me.

Rules for contributors

  1. Don't write fragments from the point of view of a narrator whom someone else is already writing.
  2. Different people have different perceptions of what happens, so some slight conflict between what your character observes and what has already been described may be acceptable; however you should seek to minimise such conflicts - they upset the reader. In particular, what you write should not conflict with anything in the background documentation.
  3. Do not write from the point of view of a character whom you plan to kill off. Do not kill off any character from whose point of view anyone else has written. If planning to make a major plot development such as killing off an existing character of destroying an already described building, mail me first.
  4. If you plan to write about something which happens later than the parts of the story I have so far made public, mail me first - in case your plans are incompatible with mine.
  5. Don't make fragments unduly long - 3000 words is a good maximum. If what you are writing is longer than this, split it into 3000 word chunks. This helps readers find more interesting non-linear paths through the story.
  6. You should retain the copyright in your own fragments, but if you wish me to integrate them you must make them available under the same terms and conditions which I use.

These rules are not intended to make it difficult for people to contribute. Quite the contrary - they are aimed at allowing you the greatest possible freedom to lead strands of the story in your own way, while retaining a reasonably consistent corpus.

I do, however, reserve the right not to incorporate your work into mine, at my own arbitrary discretion. I may or may not give reasons for refusing fragments. If you don't like this, then as I say you can link from your own server.

Copyright (c) Simon Brooke 1992-1995

Comments, criticism and feedback welcomed.

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