The concept behind interactive storytelling isn’t new. Arguably, it goes all the way back to the I Ching or Book of Changes, the ancient Chinese manual of divination and prophecy that employs cleromancy (the tossing of lots) to read its predictive text. Before the computer age, contemporary scholars Anthony J. Niesz and Norman N. Holland make the case for expanding the definition of the rudimentary interactive form to include “alternate endings to any narrative, either from authorial revision (as in Great Expectations [1861]) or deliberately (as in The Threepenny Opera [1928])”.
But it’s American authors Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins who get credit for pioneering the concept as we know it today with the 1930 publication of Consider the Consequences! The romance novel, which included 43 alternative endings, empowers the reader to decide the fates of Helen Rogers and her suitors Jed Harringdale and Saunders Mead.
It started up again with something innocuous: An extra pair of fuzzy slippers under my side of the bed in case the world ended at midnight. Each summer the California skies turn the color of a rusted cast iron from wildfire smoke. The frequent, rising king tides threaten to deposit flopping pink salmon on the doorstep like a Postal Service baby, surreal and unlikely but historically congruent. A new reality. The pandemic rages on. There’s war, immense and urgent suffering. But I’m not thinking of any of that. Instead, I am transfixed with the probability of earthquakes.
When we first encounter Sandy Gray in “Companion Piece” she is in a sorry state, beyond caring, even about a bit of wordplay, though all her life she’s “loved language, it was my main character, me its eternal loyal sidekick.” So it’s a measure of her recaptured mojo, or more likely of Ali Smith’s unfailing wizardry, that by the end of this brief novel the mere word “hello” had me near tears.
The slow, magnetic mystery of Hernan Diaz’s Trust, out today, makes the most of the multilayered resonances of trust as a concept, scaffolding generational fortune, market forces, and human relationships into a fascinating whole. Conveyed in four parts, each of which comprises a manuscript telling a different version of the same tale, the novel tracks the lives of Andrew and Mildred Bevel while also telling a story of capital, power, and destruction in early twentieth century America.
In the end, as Sheehy tells us, physics is not just about the search for how the Universe works: “Physics is all about people.” Her journey through the history of particle physics reveals the extraordinary ingenuity of experimental scientists and their selfless dedication to answering big questions about matter and the universe. It is a field that has brought huge benefits to humankind, from new medical imaging technologies to cancer treatments. But in the end, it may well be the physicists’ example of working together to solve problems that will prove the most valuable to us all, at a time when the world faces unparalleled challenges. As Sheehy says: “There is nothing more powerful than humans who come together in collaborative endeavour.”
Lewis-Stempel is an amusingly eccentric guide to the ancient, and sometimes gruesome, business of sheep-farming. A Country Life columnist who’s authored more than a dozen books on nature and wildlife, he now sets out to challenge perceptions of “our most misunderstood farmyard animal” through a combination of history, folklore and personal experience.