Multiple Fiction and Multiple Worlds

by Justin McHale
(jmchale@gmuvax.gmu.edu)



We can think of interactive fiction as a new literary genre, written in the medium
of hypertext. It allows authors to produce a unique kind of fiction with multiple
story-lines and branching story pathways. I would like to examine the way in
which this kind of "multiple fiction" is related to the notion of  "multiple worlds" or
"possible worlds."
The idea of a "possible worlds" is embedded in our language itself. Anyone who
uses a language imagines a possible world when making statements like: "If it had
not snowed this weekend, we would have gone to the country." When making
statements like this, you entertain ideas about how the world could have been, if
things had happened differently. Most people can also easily imagine more
complex possible worlds. You might, for example, speculate how your life could
have turned out, if you had made different choices along the way. You might
imagine a different world where you met different people, and married a different
man or woman. When you do this, you imagine a possible world.

The idea of "possible worlds" is an important concept in formal logical. Leibniz
introduced the idea of possible worlds in his "Discourse on Metaphysics"
published in 1686. Leibniz held that our world was the best of all possible worlds.
Today, logicians use a "modal" logic to represent propositions in possible worlds,
and relationships between possible worlds.
In fiction we also talk about how the world could be, rather than how it is in
reality. Thus, fictional worlds can easily be considered possible worlds. However,
authors of print fiction have seldom chosen to imagine different variations of a
single fiction world. For example, Charlotte Bronte didn't write any alternative
endings for Jane Eyre, although she may have considered different endings as she
wrote her novel.
Print authors have not tended to write multiple fiction to any great extent, probably
because the print medium cannot facilitate this kind of fictional form in its linear
format. I called print "linear" because it is usually read from one page to the next in
a sequential way. This is true of other media as well, such as theater, film and
television. In their present form, all of these media are not constructed to present
non-linear texts.

Computers, on the other hand, can be thought of as a new, non-linear type of
media, where hypertext or multimedia facilities can be used to create non-linear
texts. Authors of interactive fiction can imagine multiple possible worlds in their
fiction, instead of a single possible world. Using hypertext, they have the facility to
present the non-linear stories. Separate "pathways" of story can be used to tell
different versions of events. Thus, while conventional fiction deals with single
possible worlds, interactive fiction is more closely aligned with the idea of multiple
worlds.
There are a few examples of multiple fictions were written before the advent of
computer technology.<1> One example is a short story "Roads of Destiny" by O.
Henry, written in 1903. The story is about David, a young Frenchman, who sneaks
out of his village one night, to find his "fate and future" on the road leading to
Paris. Along the road, David comes to a fork in the road with three branches. At
this point, the story also "branches" in three sections, each section describes what
befalls David if he takes the left, middle and right branch of the road.

A multiple fiction as simple as "Roads of Destiny" demonstrates the idea of
multiple worlds in a fictional form. Embedded within the story is the idea that a
number of possible worlds could exist, branching off from each other, and existing
independently of each other.<2> In multiple fiction, these variant worlds are
brought under the single roof of the "hyperstory." The fictional worlds created in
multiple fiction are not contained in a single possible world, rather they are
contained in the multiple worlds of the hyperstory. When an author of multiple
fiction writes branching episodes in a hyperstory, distinct events may happen along
the two branches. If we think of all the story branches as being part of the same
fiction world, we run into contradictions. David Bolter notes that these sort of
contradictions arise in Micheal Joyce's hypertext fiction "Afternoon":

["Afternoon"] offers a narrative that encompasses
contradictory possibilities. In "Afternoon" an automobile
accident both does and does not occur; the narrator does and
does not lose his son; he does and does not have a love affair.
<3>

Readers of multiple fiction need not become aware of contradictions contained in a
hyperstory, because they may read only one "story version" of the overall
hyperstory. But we when we talk about the hyperstory, or the sum of all the
branching stories, the apparent contradictions can be better understood in light of
the multiple world concept.
The concept of multiple worlds is closely related to the many-worlds interpretation
of quantum theory.<4> This theory was first proposed in 1957 by Hugh Everett III
in an attempt to explain the "wave function" and "superposition of states" of
quantum mechanics. Everett's theory postulates that the wave function of quantum
mechanics does not collapse but instead, all possible worlds are actually realized in
a superposition of states. According to the theory, an enormous number of
alternative parallel worlds are being continually generated. Thus Everett's theory
points to the possibility that multiple worlds may exist as a physical reality, in
parallel universes. Douglas Hofstadter points out how this can be seen as a
metaphor for writing fiction:

[W]hen a novelist simultaneously entertains a number of
possible ways of extending a story, are the characters not, to
speak metaphorically, in a mental superposition of states? If
the novel never gets set to paper, perhaps the split characters
can continue to evolve their multiple stories in their author's
brain. Furthermore, it would even seem strange to ask which
story is the genuine version. All the worlds are equally
genuine.<5>

The various concepts of multiple worlds I have noted give a theoretical rationale to
what authors of multiple fiction are doing. Authors of hypertext can be seen as
writing fiction that takes into account the multiplicity of the parallel worlds which
never become "actual" to us. Given the close conceptual parallels between these
unrelated disciplines we should ask:
If interactive fiction becomes more popular, will it lead to a greater interest in the
concept of multiple worlds? Or conversely, if the idea of multiple worlds becomes
more accepted, will it lead to a greater demand for interactive fiction?