Life's Lottery

Demien Katz’s Gamebooks is one of those plain, no-nonsense Web sites that projects an air of instant authority for its treasure trove of resources, including a complete catalog of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure series.

Most interesting to me was his description of a recent book by one Kim Newman called Life’s Lottery (Pocket Books, 1999):

This is an amazing book. It contains more possibilities than you could possibly expect, and the paths through it run from funny and touching to grim and disturbing. The more you read it, the more the paths rebound off of one another, increasing the meaningfulness of all that happens. . . . Even the mechanics of the book are somewhat innovative. The book uses the “go to x, then y” instruction, which requires the reader to read two sections in a row — this means that events that happen in the middle of several different paths don’t have to be pasted repeatedly into different parts of the book. A nice space-saver. Even more interesting is the fact that the book works if you ignore the instructions and simply read it from cover to cover — there are intermediate sections which can only be found if you read it this way and which give meaning to the proceedings. In my opinion, this is a book that everyone (gamebook fan or not) should read. It shows the remarkable power of the interactive format, and it’s more than just a little bit thought-provoking.

A gamebook with real literary merit? That sounds enormously promising (and long overdue). The only drawback, according to Katz, is that right now it’s only available in the UK; so not practical for classroom use.