The last installment of the original “Choose Your Own Adventure” series came out in 1998, but since 2004, Chooseco, founded by one of the series’ original authors, R. A. Montgomery, has been republishing classic volumes, as well as new riffs on the form of interactive fiction that seemed ubiquitous in the 1980s and ’90s. The new editions also carry an additional feature—maps of the hidden structure of each book.
For years, fans have been creating visualizations of the forking structures of “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. Often, they’re interested in the types of outcomes at the end of each path. One map labels each ending as “new life, return home, or death”, and another separates them into “cliffhanger, solution, or death.” Christian Swinehart’s extensive graphical analysis of the books labels the endings as “great, favorable, mediocre, disappointing, or catastrophic.”
…Mapping the bones of the books can have other purposes, too. Nick Montfort, a poet and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies interactive fiction, has a habit of asking people what they know about “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. “They often say, ‘You have two choices after every page’”, he says. “That’s not true. Sometimes you have one choice. Sometimes you have more than two. When you show the maps, you can see that these books don’t look exactly the same.” The older volumes, for instance, tend to have more endings than the later ones, and three of the oldest—Journey Under the Sea, Space and Beyond, and By Balloon to the Sahara—have 42 endings each, more than any other books in the series…In just about every case, it can be surprising how a simple choice leads you down a complex path. In By Balloon to the Sahara, you’re in a balloon and are presented with a choice on the very first page. Storm clouds are on the horizon. Choice 1: “If you act now, you can release gas from the balloon and land before the storm overtakes you.” Choice 2: “Perhaps the storm will pass quickly. Maybe you can ride it out.” That’s just the beginning, since this book has the most decision points—48—of the series.
…There is yet another possibility in these nonlinear books: hidden endings. Inside UFO 54-40 has a hidden ending that’s only available to a reader who ignores the decisions and flips to it without prompting. But it’s there. “It’s a two-page, big illustration of this city”, says Montfort, the MIT professor. “The land of Ultima. As you flip through the book, even if you’re being very obedient, you can’t help but wonder what this text is.”
…Maps like the ones Chooseco created can reveal the structure of a book that gives readers choices, but though the multiple story lines are part of what makes the series so fun, they’re not the only thing that defines it. The meat of “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories are gender-neutral romps in worlds where there are no obviously right or wrong moral choices. There’s danger around bend, usually in the form of something like space monkeys, malicious ghosts, or conniving grown-ups. Even with a map, there’s no way to find out what really comes next without making a choice and flipping to another page.