axel-and-alice
(also known as Axel and Alice)
This site has been removed by the author.
axel-and-alice was a hypertext fiction written by Peter Jerrim between April 1994 and April 2001. It was last edited in October 2003. Originally developed in HyperCard, axel-and-alice comprised 7000 pages of content.
The work could be read at two levels - as a story for young people, or at another level in which the relationship between personal identity and cosmology was explored.
axel-and-alice included themes such as Alice wakes, Explore, Quirky history, Axel's letters, Home pages, Stories, Dear Dr Claire, Kim's diary, The school, Descriptive videos, Novels, Yackety yack, Dreams, Poems, Every minute, Projects and Your stuff (contributions from readers).
The hypertext structure was associational, not branching path. It was not interactive. The content presented to users was not generated by the choices they made. The text was explored by clicking tens of thousands of links scattered throughout the work.
The central narrative wove around Alice Liddell's 'waking up' in the late 20th century.
(Alice Liddell was the Victorian girl who inspired Lewis Caroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. These books were included in the hypertext, along with Peter's commentary on them: a web version of his previously print published Spaceworld Rolling and its sequel.)
In early 2000 Peter converted 5000 pages of axel-and-alice into html and put them on the web as axel-and-alice.com
Some of the pages were illustrated with edited photographs. The site size was 24MB, comprising 6MB of jpg and gif images and 18MB of html files.
Peter's vision for axel-and-alice was 120 thousand pages of interlinked content created by a team. As this could have only been achieved if the site was financially successful, Peter had to stop working on it.
Peter removed the axel-and-alice website in March 2008.
In its first few years, more than a million people visited the website and about half of them read substantial parts of the story. Many responded with comments and questions. Responses came from young and old, students and academics, from many different countries.
From the original 'about'...
axel-and-alice is about a bunch of kids who go to a weird school at the bottom of Australia. You can read the kids' stories or you can dive right inside their minds to find out stuff even their best friends don't know.
There are heaps of other things to explore. It's all part of the mega story that makes up axel-and-alice.
axel-and-alice is changing and growing all the time. So don't worry if you find that it doesn't all make sense yet. Eventually it will.
Peter Jerrim will always be grateful to the many people who helped and encouraged him write axel-and-alice. And he thanks all those who contributed content.
axel-and-alice is archived in plain text, HyperCard and html.
If you want to know more about axel-and-alice please contact the author.
28 March 2008