Meanwhile — 3,856 stories

If like me you have ever wished that you could have 3,856 stor­ies in a single book, you are likely to be wait­ing for Jason Shiga’s ‘Mean­while’ with baited breath.

“Mean­while” begins as our young hero in dire need of a bath­room, knocks on the door of a mys­ter­i­ous recluse. His man­sion is in fact a won­der­ous labor­at­ory filled with amaz­ing inven­tions: A mind read­ing hel­met, a dooms­day device and a time travel machine (although it can only go back ten minutes).

Which inven­tion will young Jimmy play with? YOU, the reader get to decide in my branchi­est and most com­plex inter­act­ive comic to date. “Mean­while” works via a net­work of tubes con­nect­ing each panel to the next. Some­times these tubes split in two giv­ing the read­ers a choice of which path they would like to fol­low. Some­times these tubes even lead off the page and onto tabs stick­ing out from other parts of the book.

Head over to Ori­gami Yoda to read an inter­view with Jason;

Q: Can you explain how Mean­while works? Nearly 4,000 pos­sible story com­bin­a­tions? I can’t wait!
A: Mean­while works via a series of tubes that con­nect each panel to the next one in sequence. Some­times the tubes lead right off the page and onto a tab on another page. Some­times the tubes branch off and the reader can choose which dir­ec­tion they want the story to unfold. It sounds com­plic­ated but once you hold the book in your hands, it makes more sense.

The fig­ure of 3,856 pos­sible story com­bin­a­tions is a bit of an under­es­tim­a­tion. The fig­ure didn’t include storylines where you enter the incor­rect code, or storylines that end in an infin­ite loop. There’s lit­er­ally an infin­ite num­ber of story com­bin­a­tions if you include storylines that have repeat­ing panels.

Then imme­di­ately head over to Com­ic­BookRe­sources to read up fur­ther on the book;

Branch­ing stor­ies can be more dif­fi­cult to write than their lin­ear coun­ter­parts, and the phys­ical design of “Mean­while” also plays a role in how the story is per­ceived. “One of the most chal­len­ging parts of cre­at­ing a branch­ing story is man­aging the tradeoff between giv­ing the reader lots of choices and restrict­ing the expo­nen­tial growth that fol­lows from all those choices,” Shiga said. “One prob­lem I had with Choose Your Own Adven­ture was that the stor­ies were typ­ic­ally very short. Fight­ing Fantasy had longer nar­rat­ives, but the tradeoff was that they ten­ded to be more lin­ear. Two books that really com­bined the best of both strategies was ‘House of Hades’ by Steve Jack­son and ‘Escape from Ten­opia’ by Edward Pack­ard. Both of them presen­ted a geo­graphic area that the reader could explore in their own way. I almost see those books as being closer to the parks of Fre­drick Law Olmstead than to any other authors.”

And if that wasn’t enough for you, an endorse­ment from Scott McCloud should tip the scales a touch.