SPACE

In this work I am going to comment the spatial aspect of the work of Geoff Ryman, A Story for the Internet.

The whole story passes inside a train, exactly the tube of London. Ryman tells the life of its 252 passengers and its driver. Some of those lives are linked since there are passengers that live in the same part of London or stop in the same station on the way to work.

It can be said that there are two places in the story; On the one hand it is the train in which all the characters are and on the other hand in is the place in what the train is, it is London. Besides, there is another important place that links nearly all the passengers, it is Waterloo.

The author helps us to be situated giving a map of the situation of the passengers in the train. He gives two ways of reading his story, whether you can follow the links on the foot of each passenger page or you can use the map of the seven cars.

Then Ryman has used the hypertext not just to link the passengers in a same place with hyperlinks but their lives as well. Everybody doesn’t know everybody but we have common things. The author means with this story that it can be that we don’t know each person from the world and we think that we don’t have anything to do wit others but the truth is that all of us are alike. We begin at a different place but maybe one day we finish our lives in a same place and at same time with stranger people.

[About Geoff] [Conclusion]

Second Paper

Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
©Davinia Moreno Arroyo
Universitat de València Press
damoa2@alumni.uv.es