Series - Miscellaneous Works by Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins

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Language:	English
Publishers:	Century Co. -- United States Pushkin Press
Categories:	Complexity Level : Basic (No Game System) Format : Hardback Genre : Contemporary Fiction Genre : Historical Fiction Genre : Romance Target Age Group : Adults Writing Style : Past Tense Writing Style : Third Person

These two authors were pioneers in interactive books in the 1920's and 1930's. They wrote several books where readers answer a series of questions in order to come up with a key number that leads to a paragraph containing a fortune or bit of personal analysis. Subsequent to these early experiments, they wrote Consider the Consequences, a collection of three related, gamebook-style, branching-plot stories. All of the books were marketed as "party books," fun to read and play aloud with a group of friends.

Gamebooks

Consider the Consequences (1930)
Help Yourself! (1928)
I've Got Your Number (1927)
I've Got Your Number, Second Series (1932)
Marriage Made Easy
Self Portraits (1934)
Tell Your Own Fortune (1929)

User Comments

I often wonder if the Grandfather of Interactive Fiction, EDWARD PACKARD, as a kid, came across these early-experimental interactive novels by Doris Webster/Mary Alden Hopkins (after all, he was born not long after Consider The Consequences was published), and if they influenced his future endeavor decades later with the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure series, which itself inspired countless interactive series of gamebooks...I'm inclined to believe this is the case. Which means, of course, that one can consider Ms. Webster/Ms. Hopkins technically the "Great-Grandmothers" of Interactive Fiction!! :-)

--le maudit