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?