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From: goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
Subject: Re: Borges (was IF history -- origin of "interactive fiction")
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Date: Sun, 17 Apr 1994 17:45:44 GMT
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In article <CoA8I4.J7F@megatest.com>,
Lorne Covington <lorne@megatest.com> wrote:
>
>I remember reading a short story by Jorge Borges, I think in the Book
>of Sand, which was actually about this author and a book he had
>written.  The book had several sections or chapters, and each section
>had multiple versions, of which the reader was to read only one from
>each chapter so that the book could be read in a large number of
>different ways.  I don't know when this story first appeared, but
>I think it was probably in 50's.  I don't think he used the word
>'interactive' in the piece, however.  Anyone out there have some
>Borges on the shelf?

This was described in my December piece on interactive fiction,
which is soon to be (already?) published in Vol. 1 of Inter-Action
(edited some):

...

Jorge Luis Borges described such a book
(though he did not write one)
in ``El jardin de senderos que se bifurca" (``The garden of forking paths")
in 1941: \cite{fishburn}

\begin{quote}
In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the
expense of the others.  In the almost unfathomable Ts'ui Pen, he chooses
-- simultaneously -- all of them...

Fang, let us say, has a secret.  A stranger knocks at his door.  Fang makes
up his mind to kill him.  Naturally there are various possible outcomes.
Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, both can be saved,
both can die and so on and so on.  In Ts'ui Pen's work, all the possible
solutions occur, each one being the point of departure for other bifurcations.
Sometimes the pathways of this labyrinth converge.  For example, you come
to this house; but in some possible pasts you are my enemy; in others
my friend.
\cite{borges}
\end{quote}

In the same year, Borges described a backwards hypertext fiction, the likes of
which has never been written, in ``An examination of the work of Herbert
Quain." \cite{borges}  Herbert Quain's supposed book {\it April March} was
a backwards branching hypertext:  The first chapter described the events of an
evening.  The next three chapters describe three alternate preceding evenings.
The next nine chapters describe nine alternate evenings before those in
the second through fourth chapters, with three possible preludes to each
of those three chapters.  (There never was any such book; Borges often
pretended to review an imaginary book in order to explain the principles
he had in mind for a book without actually writing it.)

...

Phil goetz@cs.buffalo.edu
