The Rise and Fall of “Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext” (EQRH)

 

This blog post delves into a landmark moment in the history of digital publishing, focusing on the Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext (EQRH) from 1994–1995, a pre-web hypertext periodical that Astrid Ensslin discusses in his book. Eastgate pioneered hypertextual publishing, utilizing tools like Storyspace and HyperCard to create its works. Its mission was groundbreaking yet risky: to innovate short-form literary and non-literary publishing using emerging digital technologies without a proven commercial business model in North America.

Electronic literature, distinct from digitized print literature, is inherently "digital-born." It represents first-generation digital content specifically designed for computer creation and consumption. The field of electronic literature is remarkably varied, encompassing all genres found in print literature and introducing new genres unique to networked and programmable media. Even those with minimal exposure to this field might recognize it most for its hypertext fiction. This style is noted for its complex linking structures found in works like Michael Joyce’s afternoon: a story, Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden, and Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl. These pieces were developed using Storyspace, a hypertext authoring tool originally created by Michael Joyce, Jay David Bolter, and John B. Smith, and later licensed to Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems, who significantly enhanced and supported the program.

The late 1980s and early 1990s marked a pivotal era in the cultural history of computing, transitioning from the first generation of personal computers to a new wave that brought seminal innovations. This period introduced the computer mouse as the first clickable pointing device, graphical user interfaces, and bitmapped screens. These developments laid the groundwork for the widespread adoption of the Internet and the World Wide Web. With this shift came an emphasis on color graphics, intricate visual designs, and a more limited version of hypertext. For writers and artists, this era of networked textuality became a fertile ground for creative experimentation and aesthetic exploration.

Web-based hypertext was largely unidirectional, designed to provide users straightforward access to the information linked behind hyperlinks. Original hypertext works, including poetry, short fiction, and scholarly nonfiction, were primarily created on standalone, mainframe computers, particularly early Macintosh models equipped with HyperCard—a vital tool for early hypertext authors. Producing pre-web hypertext necessitated specialized, nonlinear, and often expensive authoring software like Hypergate, Storyspace, and HyperCard. Hypertext was not conceived as a mainstream form of entertainment, distinguishing it from video games and commercial print, and complicating the financial viability of Eastgate Systems.

With the advent of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s as a new platform for mass distribution and publishing, it became clear that the EQRH's stand-alone media approach was at risk of becoming obsolete despite its ambitious and dedicated efforts to innovate literary periodical publishing. Nevertheless, the series remains a valuable historical archive of platform-specific, nonlinear writing. It offers unique insights into medium-specific, creative authoring practices that foreshadowed the transformation of traditional literature into literary media.

The EQRH was part of a broader wave of experimentation in literary periodical publishing during its time. Yet, it stood out for its lasting and field-defining impact on the digital literary landscape. While digital media zines like Adam Engst’s TidBITS experimented with distribution on floppy disks, and between 1985 and 1997, the Voyager Company was pioneering the integration of film, fiction, and nonfiction on LaserDisc and CD-ROM, these endeavors did not have the enduring influence of Eastgate's hypertexts.

Despite the innovative nature of these projects, Eastgate's stand-alone, book-inspired publishing model was eventually eclipsed by web-based publications such as Tekka and Hypertext Reading Room, along with numerous other online literary magazines. These platforms experimented with both "paper-under-glass" digital reproductions of print works and more inherently digital-born forms of writing. Nevertheless, the legacy of the EQRH as a hallmark of Eastgate’s critical role in shaping the e-literature community remains significant.

The EQRH hypertexts were initially distributed on 3.5-inch floppy disks, later transitioning to CDs, and even wooden flash drives, reflecting the evolving storage technologies of the time. These works were available in versions tailored for both Macintosh and Windows operating systems, stored on separate data carriers to accommodate the differing system architectures.

Examples from this historic publication showcase the range and depth of hypertext works produced.

I. Poetry

Jim Rosenberg's three poetry cycles, aptly termed "stacks," titled Intergrams (1:1) were featured in two issues of the EQRH, specifically the inaugural and the penultimate editions. These works encapsulate and programmatically frame the two volumes, giving them a cyclical narrative structure. To experience these works in their original format, one needs MacOS 7–9 equipped with HyperCard 2.x or HyperCard Player.

One of the poems, The Barrier Frames, features nine densely layered 'nested' simultaneities. Rosenberg (2015) pushes the boundaries of hypertext multilinearity even further by introducing an "almost pure spatial hypertext" that vividly embodies his tonal clustering effect. He describes this simultaneity, or 'equivalenced time,' as an abstraction that readers must infer because it challenges the conventional temporal sequencing of language perception. Each cluster appears as a densely layered cloud of words on the screen. Random frames from the layers pop up upon mouse-over, displaying either a single layer of text or further nested clusters. The visibility of each frame changes as the reader moves the mouse along its edges, activated by the mouse-over interaction. Technically, Rosenberg leveraged HyperCard’s mouse-over functionality, which significantly reduced the need for extensive programming.

II. Short Fiction

American hypertext pioneer Deena Larsen is one of the most recognized e-literature artists featured in the EQRH. Her work "Century Cross" (CC) includes 37 writing spaces and 359 links, making it considerably shorter than other works in EQRH 2:2 like Kerman’s “Mothering” and Van Mantgem’s “Completing the Circle.” "Century Cross" is notable for being the only work in the EQRH that explicitly explores Indigenous themes. It offers two default paths that lead to a bifurcating and later converging narrative, providing a highly coherent story structure.

Larsen’s technique involves embedding messages within her line-by-line link labels, visible in the Links overview from the title page, which provides a secondary, shadow narrative for each work. The narrative in "Century Cross" humorously recounts some programming challenges encountered during its creation.

Michael van Mantgem’s Storyspace hyperfiction "Completing the Circle" explores themes common to both print and digital literature, such as problematic masculinity, car crashes, and multiple personality phenomena. It features a range of narrative voices, including female perspectives that critically analyze the character Haller. Diverging from many Eastgate contemporaries, Van Mantgem leveraged his experimental hypertext ideas into a commercial digital narrative career, focusing on creating "hypertexts for a mass market" and opting for a financially more sustainable approach over artistic iconoclasm.

III. Non-fiction

Bernstein's inclination to explore new, medium-specific, nonlinear publishing methods included a meta-scientific, meta-scholarly work, "Quam Artem Exerceas? The Life and Times of Bernardino Ramazzini" (QAE), by Italian ergonomic physician Giuliano Franco. In an unprecedented move, Franco used Storyspace to remediate and annotate an early eighteenth-century treatise on occupational medicine (translated into English by Wilmer Cave Wright in 1940). He created a hypertextual, biographical, and societal ecology around the original author’s seminal work. Published in issue 1:4, QAE boasts 244 lexias and 562 links, marking it as a pre-web triumph in informational linking and structural clarity.

Over the years, the World Wide Web has emerged as the foremost platform for publishing scholarly hypertext and bibliographic editions. Developments such as TEI, XML, and Cambridge Core have revolutionized the digitization of print materials, making them broadly accessible and searchable. However, in the early 1990s, these standards were not yet commonly practiced. Therefore, Franco’s work stands as a pivotal precursor to contemporary text editing, encoding, and archiving practices.

IV. The Downfall

The Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext (EQRH) was launched at a pivotal moment, bridging print and digital cultures. It reflected the uncertainties of the emerging digital age and the declining era of print. This periodical represented an editorial effort to foster medium-conscious innovation during a time when the publishing industry faced instability and traditional models were becoming obsolete. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the industry was constrained by outdated business practices, while evolving screen technologies and computer graphics were still too rudimentary to support comfortable reading experiences on screens.

Eastgate's experimental business model sought to cultivate new audiences for a new form of publishing, but it struggled to endure, hampered by a limited supply of hypertext material and minimal royalties from sales. As nonlinear experimentalism shifted towards open online platforms and with the introduction of Flash in the mid-1990s, many writers who might have contributed to Eastgate began exploring more dynamic, multimedia-rich forms of online expression.

The late 1990s were marked by considerable uncertainty within the publishing industry, prompting publishers and authors to reevaluate the future of print as both a technology and cultural practice. This period just before the digital publishing revolution saw the emergence of new business models such as freemium, open access, print-on-demand, and downloadable content. It also witnessed the rise of the copyleft movement, with Creative Commons setting new standards for digital publishing and sharing. The increasingly public nature of the web and its burgeoning gift culture compelled digital writers to offer their works for free if they sought broader readership, a stark contrast to Eastgate's more traditional, copyright-focused model.

Other factors contributed to the fate of the Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext (EQRH), including Eastgate’s commercial pricing strategy, which was at odds with serving a niche market when the rise of the Internet enabled widespread access to self-publishing platforms.

For publications embedded in the economics of late print culture, adopting a legally conservative approach seemed prudent, despite the experimental nature of its writers. This cautious stance was also evident in the royalties section, where some authors reported negotiating royalty checks for 10 percent of sales or a $100 advance. Unfortunately, payments were reportedly inconsistent, leading to dissatisfaction and even legal disputes among some.

The challenges encountered by the EQRH resulted in Eastgate writers acknowledging that their participation in hypertext was unlikely to result in significant financial gains. Meanwhile, entities like Voyager explored alternative approaches to text-centric hypertext. This company, which pioneered the integration of multimedia and text-commented video on LaserDisc and CD-ROM in the 1980s and early 1990s, achieved some short-term financial success but ultimately ceased operations in 1997, less than a decade after its inception. Despite its closure, Voyager's contributions to the development of hypermedia continue to be recognized within the industry.

V. Conclusion

Through the lenses of publishing history and hypertext theory, the Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext (EQRH) is reminiscent of the modernist "little magazine," an experimental, niche concept that spurred numerous ephemeral periodicals from the early twentieth century onwards. The EQRH was not the only venture into literary periodical publishing during its time. However, these competitors did not have the enduring, field-defining impact of the Eastgate hypertexts. Despite accessibility challenges, any student of e-literature or digital-born fiction will eventually encounter the canonical works published by Eastgate, now preserved online through initiatives like Rebooting Electronic Literature and web translations such as Richard Holeton’s Figurski at Findhorn on Acid.

While Eastgate’s model of standalone, book-inspired publishing was eventually superseded by web-based publications like Tekka and the Hypertext Reading Room, the legacy persists. The EQRH continues to be recognized as a symbol of Eastgate’s seminal influence within the evolving e-literature community, underscoring its profound legacy.