This essay is a study of six of the 13 editions of Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story that shows a significant number of structural changes relating to work’s hyperlinking strategy and choices over paths to follow that affect the reader’s experience.
My study highlights the need to pay attention to variations in editions. As Kirschenbaum points out in Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination, the novel “is typically cited without any acknowledgement or awareness of the differences between its versions, or even the fact that multiple versions exist” (195). afternoon, a story exists in 13 manifestations and, so it, is important to clarify which is used when publishing research about it.