what is real after death? after love? after life?
a real-time hyperfiction experiment
Fragmented and disorienting, that’s a description being bandied about for hyperfiction. It’s not the point, but it does make a point. Here’s how my hyperfiction journey began over 30 years ago. And how it continues today.
Fuck that. Sounded like an book or retrospective intro. Let me try again.
Hyperfiction is meant to attract and engage you across all media channels. There are playlists and music videos. Sound tracks the author was listening to while crafting the chapter you are reading. There’s some mention of plant magic, but it’s vague and of minor interest.
In my early experience of HTML, I got into the idea of the hyperconnected, hyperlinked, snovel that would challenge Kurt Vonnegut. *novel
A snovel is better, right. social-novel.
If only 10% of humans ever read a book after high school, we’ve got to find a new approach, if we or the genre is to survive. Here’s how I see it.
Break the story into small digestible chunks. The short-short story became my intial approach, when I rebooted my creative writing experiments about six years ago. Two books later, I’m still going. But the fracturing that happened, changed my brain. AI also, played a part.
AI is not the enemy. AI is also not the assistant or editor you want to work on your emotional health or your prose. Poetry? Forget about it. AI knows nothing about the meaning of a word., only the weight. The math calculates values and equations, predicts and provides the next right word, over and over again. Burning fossil fuel and evaporating entire rivers, the AI data center growth is not going well. We don’t need more AI power, hotter, faster. We need AI to get back in the box. This pandora of technology, black box of our own demise. A writer training an AI (See: Grammarly) to write more like a human. No. Stop.
Do not correct Grammarly. Don’t give the “human” feedback on the use of a serial comma. Or is it an Oxford comma. No commas. No AI for your creative motions. Some AI when it fills a purpose. Rewriting a resume for a job. AI is great. Redoing your LinkedIn profile to align more with the jobs you are applying too, also, perfect use of AI.
Writing your story? No. Correcting the syntax or grammar of your prose or poetry? Hell No!
No AI was used in the creation of this book. (Grammarly, shut the fk up, the free version with grammar turned off, is working fine, thx.) Er, okay, AI was often used to generate an image for these chapters. An incidental and surreal vision of my words. I am surprised. AI image and video generation is like playing a video game. The gaming subscriptions are falling, while the Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini subscriptions are climbing.
Using the AI generative interface as the viewport for a Alice-like MMU game. What would that look like? If you know how to play with the prompts, AI is fun. If you just put in stupid meme stuff, you’re wasting time, wasting power, wasting water. Oh, boycott ChatGPT, they are going all-in with the US government in weaponizing AI. Fk no. We need a new administration quiet. Before the nuclear reactors meltdown as the planet overheats. (Read: Ministry of the Future)
In this snovel, you’ll notice alternative media types. There’s a podcast that tracks each chapter, or cluster of chapters. Gives expert analysis and somewhat limited insights into the prose. One thing fun about AI in literary review, it never misses a single literary reference. It dives in and brings the sources and references into the review. Amazing. Having a reader, albeit a robot one, who really really gets my writing.
An entity. What in the world do we call Claude.ai? Grok.ai the poster child of evil for profit. What do we call a bad AI entity? Is there such thing as an entity? Like Poe in Netflix’s Altered Carbon? Will AGI give platforms like Genesis self-awareness?
That’s not actually the goal of AI. The race to put nuclear power plants all over the planet again, is about profit. Profit over people. Profit over planet.
No empathy means the inability of the tiny prince to see the value of human life. His only value is related to the size of his ego compensating for the unusual smallness of his penis. He drives a penis car, is trying to build a penis rocket. Small penis syndrome.* It’s a thing.
The bunkers they are building for hundreds of people will not include me or you on the guest list. We are not going to Mars with them either. Mars is a longway off, my friend. Don’t worry about that. The tiny prince is also not very smart. Ego-rich. Mental-poverty. Think white empire in South Africa and sapphire mining. (Why the dual ‘p’ rather than an ‘f’?) What else do you need to know?
A minute ago, right at this minute, April 15, 2026, 11:11 a man who looked like Rodger Waters approached me to say I looked like George Lucas. Hilarity ensued. We exchanged contact info. The short story When the Gummy Hit, captures a tiny slice of my real-time hyperfiction process.
Now, it’s Jennifer Anniston sitting a few booths away, distracting me. I can’t tell if she’s on a first date or eating lunch with her husband. She looks happy. She’s laughing a lot. Probably a realtor or yoga instructor. Ring spotted. All clear. The lumberjack she’s with is youthful and entertaining, obviously.
I could be good for her. I redirect my mind to the river of life, the austerity of life as a writer. Alone, I get excited about returning home to my cats and little else. The hot tub and massage chair when the power is back on. Camping out, making a point in my life about urgency. It is urgent. It is important. It would feel like a crisis if I let it. I can tell there’s a low-level anxiety routine, cron job, running below my conscious thinking. Seeking the danger. Asking for hints about the future. I’m pretty good at not worrying. It doesn’t provide any energy or clarity about next right action.
I guess, AI could do the math and try and provide the next right word-by-word solution to all my problems. Delivered in a cheerful and optimistic algo. “You’re doing great. Yes, your plans for the scripted tv-series sound fantastic, would you like me to draft an investor prospectus?”
Jen A probably doesn’t care about AI. I’m thinking realtor now. And first date or prospective client. Can’t tell. She’s given me a few glances. She’s doing overly dramatic faces in response to their conversation. Like the star of Friends. A bit over the top. The cowlick on the back of the lumberjacks crude haircuts drops him out of the running, for sure. Wait, what’s the race again?
Oh, women. Right. Pause please. Leave a message an someone from our team will get back to you. [BEEP]
*small penis syndrome
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Look >> There’s a new Facebook Group on *hyperfiction*
© 2026 john oakley mcelhenney, all rights reserved
