HYPERFICTION IN RUSSIAN CYBERSPACE (Hypertextova literatura v ruskom kulturnom prostredi)

Internet literature (Russian seteratura = set + literatura), following the rapid progress of the internet, has been present in Russia since the 1990s. The term seteratura defines all the written literature (fiction) - the works of the classical, contemporary, or foreign authors - published on the internet. Simultaneously emerging hyperfiction (mostly in the genre of poetry or novel) have become a specific type of the internet literature with an experimental character. These works are typical for their open, nonlinear textual structure, as well as for their anonymous collective authorship. Hypertext genre reached the ambition of an alternative artistic text of postmodern type, implementing the possibility of creative virtual authorship. To the first Russian hypertexts belong the novels by R. Leibov 'Novel' (1995), D. Manin 'The Garden of Divergent Hokkus' (1997), M. Kononenko (alias Mr. Parker) 'Mr. Parker's Loony Bin' (1996) etc. Hypertext is closely related with the phenomenon of virtual persona (Russian 'virtualnoi lichnosti', English also 'virtual identity', 'virtual character'), which has become during the last decade in Russia an official term of the internet culture, and individual literary-scientific category concerning the author and the way of creation (genre). The cultural-historical, aesthetical, but also social and psychological aspects of this phenomenon are analyzed by a contemporary Russian theoretician of cyberspace Eugene Gorny in his works 'Virtualnaya lichnost kak zhanr tvorchestva' (The Virtual Persona as a Creative Genre on the Russian Internet, 2007) and 'Ontologia virtualnoi lichnosti' (Ontology of Virtual Persona, 2007). Gorny centres mostly on the problematics of origin and functioning of the virtual authorship (of character, genre) in cyberspace, as well as on the questions of the relationship of virtual author (character) and his creator also regarding the connections with the traditional forms of art and literature.