This is Not a Book is Possibly the Best Book

What comes to mind when thinking about examples of Interactive Fiction. Some may think of text based adventures, Japanese visual novels, or many other things. "This is not a book" is basically the definition of Interactive Fiction. Every page of this book is a new interaction.

The book begins by preparing the user for a unique journey that he/she will have never experienced before by trying to prepare you mentally to venture forward. This book like most Interactive Fiction requires a bit of imagination. Unlike other works, "This is not a book" takes it to the next level. It requires the reader to do minor requests from writing down your current thoughts to some more extreme requests like tearing pages out of the book, losing it for a week, or even messing up multiple parts of the book. To some people violating the book feels dirty or even taboo. Many of the pages ask you to tear out pages of the book and physically do things to them. Some of the pages require you to maybe step out of your comfort zone. One example is to take a book you enjoy and read it out loud in public. Drawing in this book is also a very regular occurrence. For instance, on pages eight and nine, there is a background of the ocean and the book says to add imagery to the scene.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to experience something fresh and different from the norm. This is not a book that you can just curl up next to the fire and read for hours. It requires you to go out and experience to world and your own mind.  The story is also different from any other book. "This is not a book" does have a story but everyone will have the one. That is the beauty of this piece, everyone starts with the same book but ends up with a book that nobody else can. 

The Guide to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an older text base piece of interactive fiction that dates back to 1984. If you science fiction with a slice of comedy peaks your interest this is the game for you. This game seems to have a fairly liberal language reader, also know as a parser, so it is not nearly as strict as some of the other works of interactive fiction at the time. The descriptions within the game are also more thorough compared to other works. I found the small graphical touch in the 30th anniversary version was enough to help the experience while keeping the game feeling like a text based interactive fiction.

The game starts with your character waking up in bed. From what I can gather he seems to be hungover or possibly still drunk from the night before. This conclusion is derived from the fact that when you get out of bed everything you try to touch or react to act as if they are moving strangely. The learning curve was a little higher than I expected being that I was killed by a yellow bulldozer that flattens your character's house before I was finished examining the contents of the room.

During my second attempt I managed to put on the gown that is on the chair beside the bed. Once I accomplished that I opened the pockets and took what I assumed to be some sort of instant hangover cure. Finally I was able to exit the room and the house without the door dodging my movements. I attempted to stop the bulldozer but inevitably got hit by a brick in the back of the head and died.

Eventually, after dying many times, I managed to get to the Pub with a guy named Ford, drank some beers, and eventually ended up on a spaceship after using Ford's small black device.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy overall was extremely fun and entertaining. I would not recommend this to a person that is brand new to the world of interactive fiction. The main reason being that many times throughout the game you only have so many turns to accomplish your goal unlike games such as Zork where trial and error have no penalty for the most part. If your not familiar with the Hitchhiker series or are new to interactive fiction, you will die alot.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Opening

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Continued Play

Zork Experience

zork capture 1

zork capture 2

What Is Interactive Fiction?

Interactive Fiction is a different way of experiencing writing than the traditional linear writing or books. Traditional books have a "set in stone" way of experiencing it meaning that every person will have basically the same experience. A large amount of Interactive Fiction experience is the opposite. Some reasons for this is that Interactive Fiction can have many features. For example, many pieces of Interactive Fiction require you to make choices throughout the experience resulting in different events that affect the story slightly or as much as changing the ending of the story. By having these choices implemented into the story it can cause several to even hundreds of different experiences depending on the piece. Bee requires the user to choose from a list of options what to do next. Depending on your choices you can end up with 4 different endings but even if you get the same ending as another user, your experience will be different.

Adventure and Zork are a strictly text based type of Interactive Fiction. They play like an adventure or some people even think they should be categorized as games. The user has to type in what they want to do next in order to progress in the story. Usually this type of Interactive Fiction is nonlinear and allows you to do what you want in the order that you want to do it.

Some other pieces, such as Yung Hae-Chang Heavy Industries' DAKOTA, are not choice based as many pieces of Interactive Fiction but the experience differs from traditional text by implementing music and flashes this words in an interesting pattern that goes with the music. Some others use music to help immerse the user into the experience and set the tone. Umineko no naku koro ni is a japanese visual novel that does exactly this plus pictures of scenery and each of the characters.

Basically Interactive Fiction is not categorized as one genre or type, it is a large variety of things that change the way that you experience text. Some people may disagree but I feel as if Interactive Fiction should be categorized as any type of writing that changes the normal experience for the user. This could be anything from using one of your senses that you usually do not use while reading or something that gives you options by allowing the user to participate.