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Hypertext and its Implications for Literature
Computer technology is beginning to have a noticeable
effect on the study and production of literature, but even now
the influence is mostly in the form of reference tools. It is
in this context that hypertext can most easily be explained.
Although many scholars are still unfamiliar with the concept,
most have used hypertext at some point in their research; the
MLA bibliography on CDRom, an electronic encyclopedia, or help
files for Windows are all forms of hypertext. Hypertext is
electronic text which allows non-linear access to information
through an index or links between words and topics. When the
user selects a link or a hot word, she jumps to the selected
article or section.
Although most academics may be familiar with hypertext,
whether they know the term or not, this does not hold true for
hyperfiction. Hyperfiction, electronic fiction which uses the
technology of hypertext for creative purposes, is still quite
exotic, and works of serious hyperfiction such as Anastasia
Smith's Tavern (1990) or Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden
(1991) remain rare. The genre is so new that no one really
knows how to deal with it, what standards to set, what to
measure it against. Should hyperfiction be judged by the
amount of links it incorporates; by the way in which it
subverts its own story; or perhaps even by the possibilities
of the story itself? How important should verbal artistry be
in a medium that requires more than that?
Ideally, hypertext could serve as a tool to "realize"
fictional experiments that authors have been attempting since
James Joyce, such as subverting the chronological imperative
or the authority of the author. In fact, critics predicted
this kind of hypertextual experimentation at least five years
ago.(1) Although hyperfiction has recently received extremely
celebrated attention,(2) fictional experimentation in the medium
of hypertext is still far from widespread. This may well be
the result of the limits of the early hypertext programs
available and the knowledge of programming necessary to go
beyond these tools and create such a project from scratch.
Among the prominent early experimental works were the
hypertext poem "Everglade" written by Rod Willmot, who went on
to develop the authoring tool "Orpheus," one of the more
versatile hypertext authoring programs presently available for
IBM compatible computers;(3) and the hyperfiction Afternoon, A
Story by Michael Joyce, who has since developed a program with
Jay David Bolter and John B. Smith, Storyspace, probably the
most popular hyperfiction vehicle for Mac-users.(4) It seems
appropriate that these pioneers are both poets and
programmers.
Thus, when examining the development of hyperfiction, it
is important to keep in mind that affordable hypertext
programs for non-programmers have only been available for
perhaps half a dozen years. A number of early fictions were
written with "Hypercard," a program that came bundled with the
Mac starting in 1987. Early electronic fiction for IBM was
generally more conventional in structure, for example the
science fiction novel Baby April by John Peter, which came out
in 1987:(5) more experimental works for IBM were usually in the
form of interactive fiction, written with the help of text
adventure authoring tools, for example the dreamlike story "A
Fable" by Stan Heller.(6) Ted Husted's "Iris" for IBM first
appeared in 1989, and has been used for several electronic
magazines and works of fiction such as Sharedebate
International, Ruby's Pearls, and the novel Tavern. But as
these dates indicate, the medium has been available to authors
for only a little over the space of time usually necessary for
the creation of a long work of fiction. Of course, true
hypertext programs were created long before these dates, but
the prices of the packages made experimentation out of the
question for most writers.
In the criticism dealing with hypertext and hyperfiction
(generally published in standard print form) it has been noted
frequently that the theory is far ahead of the reality.
Robert Coover for example notes the "conventional nature of
most of the fictions so far written."(7) The critical output on
hyperfiction far exceeds the works available. Cyberspace and
virtual reality have become thematic staples of science
fiction literature, but for the most part these authors
apparently prefer to think about the possibilities of the new
medium than contribute to its development. An ambitious
exception is the self-consuming literary artifact Agrippa (A
Book of the Dead) by William Gibson, who is generally credited
with coining the term "cyberspace." (Agrippa is a story on
disk which erases itself as you read.) Several works of
science fiction have appeared electronically, and there are a
few authors who have experimented with digital media in their
own works, among them Marc Steigler, Vernor Vinge and Rob
Swigart, but the number of hyperfiction authors who apparently
write for a predominantly academic audience is much higher.(8)
Disregarding other difficulties, hyperfiction is very simply
not a profitable market--yet.
Promoting the possibilities of digital media rather than
actually producing hyperfiction is a common phenomenon among
"academic" authors as well, however. Even Robert Coover, who
leads a respected hyperfiction workshop at Brown University,
which is fast attaining a corner on the market for serious
hyperfiction authors, has not yet produced a work of
hyperfiction. Not only the market is to be blamed for the
lack of experimentation in the medium; not every author is
willing to give up control to the extent that is necessary for
hyperfiction. The well-known science fiction author Vonda
McIntyre, for example, has participated as instructor in a
hyperfiction workshop with Rob Swigart, but for her own works
she rejects the medium of hypertext: "...with regular
fiction, I want to have complete control of your horizontal
and vertical."(9)
The lack of hyperfiction works available for literary
analysis has been bemoaned but hardly looked into seriously;
the aspect of production is not generally considered a subject
for critical discourse.(10) But in order to better understand
the phenomenon of contemporary hyperfiction, we cannot avoid
the aspect of production. Typing words into a computer is
only a first step in creating hyperfiction. Structure is of
course always a question the author must consider when
creating a work of fiction, but it is an even more important
consideration when creating a work of hyperfiction, because
the structure is potentially so much more complex. It is not
a single structure, it is many. The author must decide on
branches and alternatives and parallel plot lines; how many
links to use and where to put them; whether to use graphics
and sound, and if so, how to integrate multimedia into the
hyperfiction itself.(11)
Once this complex structure has been mapped out, it has
to be implemented--easier said than done. In order to create
the links and jumps and color effects that change
straightforward electronic text into hypertext, it is usually
necessary for the author to go beyond the level of the text
itself to the level of "command language": the future
hypertext file must contain both text and so-called "scripts,"
the control characters that create the hypertextual elements
once the file has been compiled. It has become a commonplace
of contemporary criticism to acknowledge the overdetermined
nature of the medium, language, and to point out that the
message of the text is necessarily distorted by the medium.
In hypertext, the filter of language is supplemented by the
filter of computer language, making the author doubly
distanced from the act of telling.
Some hypertext programs make the process of changing
straight text to hypertext easier on the author by adding the
control characters automatically once a link has been
selected, but these types of programs often make editing on
the level of the text difficult or even impossible. The
program HyperRead, for example, is one of the simplest
authoring tools allowing hypertext links that I have examined,
but once the hypertext has been compiled, the original file
can no longer be changed. If the author wants to make changes
to the text, the hypertext must be recompiled.
Even before the potential author of hyperfiction plans
the links and compiles the text, she must choose which of the
many hypertext programs on the market is most suited to her
purposes, assuming she is not a programmer as well as a
writer, that is. The options can be overwhelming.(12) Does she
want to stay close to the text and work in ASCII, manually
putting in the codes for the links and pages as in "Iris" or
"Dart," or does she want to import text page by page and
comfortably create links on screen, at the risk of losing
sight of the text as a whole, as in "Orpheus"? Does she want
to work in a DOS or Windows based environment? How long a
hypertext can the program handle, how many links? Does she
want mouse support, colors, sound, graphics? Examining
authoring systems alone takes a great deal of time--and
learning how to use them even more. Here the Mac user may be
at a certain advantage over the IBM user: the hypertext
programs "Hypercard" and "Storyspace" have already become the
standard choices for this platform.
Obviously, the hyperfiction author is faced with numerous
decisions which have nothing to do with plot or
characterization. To test these decisions, I decided to set
up a hyperfiction application using two different hypertext
programs, the older "Iris" and a new program with graphics
display, "Neobook." I found working with Iris relatively
simple, but it has no mouse support, and it is absolutely
necessary to read the manual; the hypertext codes must be
added with a word processing program or text editor and saved
in ASCII format. It has sound, but does not support graphics.
On the other hand, this means that a hypertext document
written in Iris can be read by nearly any IBM compatible
computer. Neobook, by contrast, requires an EGA, preferably
VGA monitor, as well as a mouse. Graphically, it is much more
appealing, but hypertext links can only be created with
buttons that are assigned a certain function, rather than
actually associating a word of the text with that function; if
the author imports text which is longer than a single screen,
the button created on a hot word will not scroll with the
text. This means that links have to be created outside of the
text window, giving the text more of the look of a program
than hypertext, since there are no true hypertextual links, no
highlighted hot words promising a new trail to follow.
Thus, in order to work in the medium of hyperfiction, at
least at the stage we are now in computer and software
technology, it takes an above-average knowledge of computers
and a willingness to dedicate an above-average amount of time
to the "prewriting" phase, in addition to the linguistic
sensibility that we expect as a matter of course from the
verbal artist. Is it any wonder that we have so few works of
literary hyperfiction on which to vent our critical energies?
The emphasis here must be placed on "literary." The
number of electronic works already available, often easily
downloaded from the libraries of Internet and Compuserve and
GEnie, is astonishing. Small distributors like Serendipity
Systems and UserWare have dozens of available titles. But
most of these titles are not "literary," nor are they "new" in
any dramatic way; they are thrillers or science fiction
novels, westerns or how-to books. The text is chronological,
one chapter following the next in the same way it does in a
traditional book, the only difference being that the book is
distributed electronically. Even some of the works which use
hypertextual elements, such as Peter Seulund's comic novel
Uprisings in Libertyville, USA (1993), try to retain the
resemblance to a printed book through the use of a table of
contents and page numbers.(13)
Although much has been made of the non-linear nature of
hypertext, even the more experimental works still largely rely
on the chronological unfolding of events. Despite all that
has been said about hyperfiction and the computer medium
revolutionizing the way we read, there may be something more
imperative about traditional chronology than just convention.
Especially in such an unfamiliar medium as electronic text, in
which the orientation offered by the physical book is missing,
a plot thread with a recognizable chronology is the only prop
on which the reader can rely. How should an apparently random
sequence of screens which have no obvious connection to each
other maintain a reader's interest? Stuart Moulthrop's highly
praised Victory Garden is perhaps a case in point: as Robert
Coover points out, it is little different than a standard
academic novel,(14) but it may well be the traditional plots to
be found that make it one of the more successful hyperfictions
now available. Victory Garden is essentially a collection of
parallel, alternate stories sharing the same protagonists, but
depending on which link the reader follows, these same
protagonists lead completely different lives. All of the
stories are complicated by asides, by links which lead to
quotes and scraps of information, perhaps even back to where
the reader was before, but a definite chronology of events is
nonetheless recognizable. Anastasia Smith's Tavern, less
sophisticated in a hypertextual sense, lacking as it does the
multitude of links that will lead the reader in different
directions, conforms in a narrative sense less to the
conventions of chronology. Impressionistic and fantastic, it
follows no coherent plot, except perhaps that of authorial
ego. (The main character is the "world famous author
Anastasia Smith.") By contrast, Victory Garden has several
recognizable plots, including a story with a sort of happy
end. I even found a screen after this ending which offered no
more links to follow; every click of the mouse gave me only an
irritated beep--the hypertextual equivalent of "the end."
As opposed to what some critics claim, even in hypertext
many authors still work with endings, and a beginning is
unavoidable:(15) there has to be a first screen, a command to
start the hyperfiction, at the very least, a "readme" file to
instruct the reader which choices she has when loading the
hypertext. Every hyperfiction I am aware of has at least a
title screen, and most of them a first page as well. The
continuing structure, on the other hand, can easily undergo
radical transformation in the computer medium, and the author
must decide how she wants to branch off from the unavoidable
first screen, the inevitable beginning. These works are not
linear in ways we are familiar with. Playful and open, they
trick the reader into dead ends and backtracks. In Carolyn
Guyer's Quibbling, for example, if the reader chooses the link
"museum" from the node "Blue Ball in Space," she gets a
bibliography of sources in the middle of the fiction.(16) From
this "bibliography," the only option is to go back to the blue
ball.
Will such non-linear works revolutionize the way we read?
Or is the notion of beginning, middle and end too ingrained in
our way of thinking to be broken? The linearity of the actual
reading experience can hardly be changed by the options of the
hypertext link--given the same hyperfiction, two individual
readers will rarely read the same book in the same order, but
both those readers will read one screen at a time, moving
forward through the text in a very linear fashion.
What the branching options of the hypertext novel are
more likely to revolutionize are the aesthetics of unity: the
idea that every element of the fiction, right down to the last
word, is there for a reason and could not be changed without
dire effects on the aesthetic experience. The idea of a
"definitive text" testifies to this ideology: the repeated
attempts to define "authoritative" versions of Shakespeare's
plays, for example, exactly as the author would have
intended.(17) If, however, a hypertext novel is set up in such a
way to allow different readings that still form a complete
whole--options to follow the actions and point of view of a
favorite character, for example, as opposed to one we like
less--if the reader can arrive at the "end" aware that she has
not followed all the paths possible but is still convinced
that she has experienced a successful work of literature; if
this fragmentary experience is possible, then the aesthetics
of unity and intention can impossibly be applied to the work
of hyperfiction. A definitive text would be a hard thing to
find in the maze of a hypertext novel.(18)
Richard Lanham points out that an important element of
the aesthetics of the printed literary work is that of
"unselfconscious transparency" of style, and that this
stylistic ideal can be directly related to print culture:
... after Gutenberg, "transparent" print faces had to be
modeled. But once all this was done, unintermediated
thought, or at least what seemed like unintermediated
thought, was both possible and democratizable. And this
unselfconscious transparency has become a stylistic, one
might almost say a cultural, ideal for Western
civilization. The best style is the style not noticed
... (19)
The convention of printed text as a natural expression of
thought is a convention so engrained that it hardly occurs to
us to question it.(20) In this context, Lanham distinguishes
between looking at and looking through a text, and argues that
the stylistic ideal "unselfconscious transparency" will change
radically with the advent of the computer age, away from the
notion of decorum to a theory of style which acknowledges
"radical artifice," a style that was anticipated by postmodern
writers.(21) On the level of language, Lanham's arguments are
quite convincing, but as I have already suggested, there is
yet another level to be considered when dealing with computer
fiction. "Unselfconscious transparency" is necessary for
successful hyperfiction as well as for traditional printed
texts--but it is a transparency of technology rather than
style. If the hypertext is difficult to get around in, if the
commands are far from intuitive or the symbols on the screen
misleading, it will affect the reading experience. The author
still has the job of making it look easy, be the medium the
page or the screen.
But although the technology may be transparent, the maze
of the text usually is not. The ideal of ease of navigation
seems to frequently be sacrificed to the ideal of
interactivity. The branching options of hypertext are meant
to promote reader participation beyond that of mere perception
and interpretation: by the choices the reader makes, she helps
shape the fiction, or at least the fictional experience. Does
the possibility of choice on the part of the reader subvert
the traditional dominance of the author over her text, as
numerous critics and writers have claimed? In the
introduction to Victory Garden, "Are We Reading Yet?" J.
Yellowlees Douglas claims that the hyperfiction requires the
reader to "intervene in the development of the narrative."(22)
The reader can hardly be said to be forcing the narrative to
do anything that isn't there in the first place, however; the
choices the reader can make are all offered by the author.
What if, as in Victory Garden for example, the reader finds
herself caught up in the story of Emily Runbird and Boris
Urquhart, but none of the links offered take her in the
direction she would like to go? There is no option in
hypertext for leafing through pages until you reach the
passage you're looking for. Hyperfiction does require the
reader to take a more active role in the reading experience,
but the question remains to be answered whether this is true
readerly freedom.
In its experimentalism, hyperfiction participates in the
basic paradox of avant-garde writing since James Joyce--the
illusion of openness, the indeterminate nature of the text,
actually necessitates more control on the part of the author,
or at least more planning and a more thorough organization, as
well as more commitment on the part of the reader, more
dedication to the artistic vision of the author rather than
less. In his discussion of the "open" work of art, Umberto
Eco suggests that it is precisely the attempt to achieve
multiple levels of meaning which easily leads to
misunderstanding or no meaning at all, because the recipient
does not bring the necessary commitment to the aesthetic
experience.(23) In the same vein, Hilmar Schmundt points out
that the works of hyperfiction now available frequently leave
the reader adrift upon a sea of text.(24)
For my own part, I
found Victory Garden relatively easy to navigate, and soon
picked up a thread which I followed right up to Emily
Runbird's return to Tara. (In my first reading, she never
died, which she apparently does in most of the other options.)
When I showed the text to a friend, however, he found little
of interest in the fragmentary scenes which his choice of
links revealed; certainly not enough to make him want to keep
reading. A willingness to play the game of participation is
an absolute requirement of the reader of hypertext; whether
the reader finds this liberating or just plain exhausting, the
text as a whole remains the same, and it is a text provided by
an author who has determined the choices available to the
reader. In the bible of the age of computer literacy, Jay
David Bolter's Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the
History of Writing, Bolter claims, "Electronic writing
emphasizes the impermanence and changeability of text, and it
tends to reduce the distance between author and reader by
turning the reader into an author."(25) That Bolter may be
speaking metaphorically and that the author still retains a
certain authority, however, is eminently obvious from license
agreements, such as the one in the insert of the novels
distributed by Eastgate:
You may not: I) Modify, translate, reverse engineer,
decompile, disassemble, create derivative works based
upon, or copy ... the program or the accompanying
documentation; ...(26)
Although this message may seem to contradict the
purported goals of readerly participation of many hyperfiction
authors, it is completely understandable when we consider one
very practical complication presented by the phenomenon of
electronic text: that of copyright. Even with the technology
of photocopying or scanning, the physical book cannot be
reproduced exactly by the average consumer. That cannot be
said of electronic text. If I were to give someone a copy of
Afternoon or Quibbling, and he or she were to install it on
their own computer, they would have exactly the same book that
I do. They might be viewing it on a different monitor,
monochrome, or with a larger screen, but the book itself would
be no different. This ease of illegal distribution is a
nightmare to many electronic publishers, as heated discussions
on electronic networks show.(27) The implications of the
technology of hypertext and electronic publishing go beyond
aesthetics or the role of the reader. Our whole publishing
industry, its rules and regulations and system of rewards, is
based on the printed book. The ease of distribution of books
on disk raises unavoidable questions of copyright and how the
author should be paid, problems which electronic publishers
have yet to work out. Many works of hyperfiction have entered
the market on the "shareware" honor system, but if this proves
unreliable for providing writer royalties, some other system
will have to be devised.
There is a positive side to this ease of reproduction and
distribution, however: electronic text has the potential for
breaking up the near monopoly on the publishing industry of
the New York publishing houses. The costs of standard book
publication make the big companies for the most part unwilling
to take chances on experimental or marginal works.
Hyperfiction and other forms of electronic text, on the other
hand, can be given a large potential distribution through the
simple medium of uploading to networks; the reader can access
the works in the electronic library through online services
without even going to a bookstore or a real, physical library.
Even on disk, the costs of production and distribution are
small, and as electronic text becomes more common, we are
likely to see more small publishers catering to the tastes of
marginal groups, publishers who will be more willing to take a
chance on new writers or writers whose work is not bestseller
potential.
On the other hand, perhaps computer games of the
adventure and role-playing sort will turn out to be the true
inheritors of the book, and we are not only leaving the "late
age of print"(28) but also the late age of reading. Perhaps
electronic text and hyperfiction will turn out to be nothing
more than a transitional phenomenon. After all, if it is
interactivity we are searching for, computer adventures are
interactive in a way few hyperfictions are. But games are
also inflexible in a way most hyperfictions are not - in an
adventure game, there is usually only one acceptable
"reading," and it is the duty of the player to find it. If
the linearity of the tale and the authority of the author are
to be revolutionized, it seems unlikely that it will be the
computer game that will do it.
Hypertext is not only another mode of distribution of the
literary artifact; it is a new medium whose potential is only
beginning to be understood. Hyperfiction is so new, no one
knows what it will become - like silent movies, it may seem to
later generations like a genre in which something is missing,
computer fiction without the animation, perhaps, or the
predecessor of hologram entertainment. But whatever effect it
eventually has on literature as we know it, hypertext and the
medium of the computer will not leave it unchanged.
NOTES
The question of how computerized literature might
revolutionize the publishing industry was treated by Ben Bova
in his science fiction novel Cyberbooks, published through
traditional book medium but also as an excerpt in a hypertext
magazine.(29) Although his vision of electronic fiction has
little resemblance to mine, I have taken the liberty of
borrowing from his title for my own.
I am indebted to various authors and editors on the GEnie
Information Network for information and ideas, especially John
Galuszka, Ted Husted and Del Freeman.
1. See for example Richard Ziegfield's list of
"Individualization Applications": "Interactive Fiction: A New
Literary Genre?" New Literary History 2 (Winter 1989): 356-7.
2. The most prominent of which is of course the front page
article by Robert Coover in the New York Times Book Review:
"Hyperfiction: Novels for the Computer," New York Times Book
Review, August 29, 1993: 1, 8-12.
3. Rod Willmot, Everglade, Version 2.3 (Sherbrooke, Quebec:
Hyperion Softword, 1990). (Original version 1989.)
4. Michael Joyce, Afternoon, a story (Cambridge, MA: Eastgate
Systems, 1987).
5. John Peter, Baby April (San Simeon, CA: Serendipity
Systems, 1984, 1987).
6. Stan Heller, "A Fable." (1985) Distributed with the
Adventure Game Toolkit (Mission San Jose, CA: Softworks,
1987).
7. Coover: 10.
8. The small electronic publisher B-Plan Virtuals offers a
number of science fiction and fantasy novels, but I am not
aware if any of them actually make use of hypertext elements.
9. GEnie Information Services, Science Fiction and Fantasy
Roundtable, Category 11, Topic 7, Sept. 20, 1994.
10. This is discussed at more length by John Slatin in his
essay, "Reading Hypertext: Order and Coherence in a New
Medium." College English 52,8 (Dec. 1990): 873.
11. For a short introduction to types of possible hypertextual
structures see Veith Risak, "Hypertext und nichtkonventionelle
Textstrukturen," in: H.D. Frei and P. Schäuble, eds.
Hypermedia. Proceedings der Internationalen Hypermedia '93
Konferenz (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 1993): 232-34.
12. For a sample review of just a fraction of the available
programs with authoring capabilities see the review article by
"robin": "Hypertext Authoring Environments: A Critical
Review," EJournal 3,3 (November 1993): n.p.. The author
evaluates a total of 21 programs for DOS, Windows and Mac, but
admits that this is in no way comprehensive.
13. Peter Seulund, Uprisings in Libertyville, USA
(Neillsville, Wisconsin: Spittin' Image Publications, 1993).
14. Coover: 9.
15. See for example Richard A. Lanham, "The Electronic Word:
Literary Study and the Digital Revolution," New Literary
History 2 (Winter 1989): 269.
16. Carolyn Guyer, Quibbling (Cambridge, MA: Eastgate Systems,
1993).
17. See also Jay David Bolter's discussion of "Technology and
the Literary Canon," Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext,
and the History of Writing (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum,
1991): 150-153.
18. Wellek and Warren, for example, assert in their
influential Theory of Literature: "the poem is not only a
cause, or a potential cause, of the reader's 'poetic
experience' but a specific, highly organized control of the
reader's experience..." René Wellek and Austin Warren,
Theory of Literature (1942. Reprint, Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1976): 249. In this post-modern age, we like to think that we
are beyond formalism, but ideas such as those of Wellek and
Warren continue to have an influence on the way we read.
19. Lanham: 266.
20. On the aesthetics of print as opposed to the electronic
word see also Lanham's "Digital Rhetoric and the Digital
Arts," The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology and the Arts
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993): 33.
21. Lanham, The Electronic Word: 9.
22. J. Yellowlees Douglas, "Are We Reading Yet? A few pointers
on reading hypertext narratives." Insert, Stuart Moulthrop,
Victory Garden (Cambridge, MA: Eastgate Systems, 1991): n.p.
23. See Umberto Eco, Das offene Kunstwerk. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1977: 89.
24. Hilmar Schmundt, "Author ex Machina: Electronic
Hyperfictions: Utopian Poststructuralism and the Romanticism
of the Computer Age." Unpublished essay.
25. Bolter: 3.
26. Insert, Afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce: 7.
27. See for example the messages between March 17 and 28 on
the Digital Publishing Roundtable, Categroy 21, Topic 6, of
the GEnie Information Network.
28. Bolter: 1.
29. See Sharedebate International 1,3 (Fall 1990).
This paper was originally given at the annual conference of the German Association
of American Studies in Tübingen, May 1994, and published in Electronic
Publishing Forum 17 (Oct. 1994). A review appeared in Analog in July 1995.
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