Ergodic literature is a mode of textual organization in which nontrivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text, beyond ordinary eye movement or turning pages.[1]: 1–2 Espen J. Aarseth appropriated the term from physics, deriving it from the Greekergon (“work”) andhodos (“path”).[1]: 1–2 He introduced the term within his broader concept ofcybertext, which he presents not as a literary genre but as a perspective on textual machines that compute or permute outputs.[1]: 5, 75 In Aarseth’s framing, the cybertextual process includes a semiotic sequence produced through the user’s material actions, which conventional notions of “reading” do not fully capture.[1]: 1–2 Although frequently compared to “nonlinearity” in physics, Aarseth treats such nonlinearity in hypertext as a topological, graph-theoretic property of nodes and links rather than a concept imported from physics.[1]: 43–44
Aarseth's book contains the most commonly cited definition of ergodic literature:
In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text. If ergodic literature is to make sense as a concept, there must also be nonergodic literature, where the effort to traverse the text is trivial, with noextranoematic responsibilities placed on the reader except (for example) eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages.[1]: 1
He further defines an ‘ergodic text’ as one where at least one user function beyond interpretation is required.[1]: 65 Aarseth models text as a machine composed of a triad: verbal signs, a material medium, and a human operator.[1]: 21 One of the major innovations of the concept of ergodic literature is that it is not medium-specific so long as the medium has the ability to produce an iteration of the text.New media researchers have tended to focus on the medium of the text, stressing that it is for instance paper-based or electronic. Aarseth broke with this basic assumption that the medium was the most important distinction, and argued that the mechanics of texts need not be medium-specific.
Ergodic literature is not defined by medium, but by the way in which the text functions. Thus, both paper-based and electronic texts can be ergodic: "The ergodic work ofart is one that in a material sense includes the rules for its own use, a work that has certain requirements built in that automatically distinguishes between successful and unsuccessful users."[1]: 179
Cybertext is Aarseth’s perspective on dynamic textual machines; he proposes reserving ‘cybertext’ for texts where ‘calculation’ produces scriptons.[1]: 4–5, 82 The process of reading printed matter, in contrast, involves "trivial" extranoematic effort, that is, merely moving one's eyes along lines of text and turning pages. Thus,hypertext fiction of the simple node and link variety is ergodic literature but not cybertext. Simple node‑link hypertexts can be ergodic without being cybertexts; conditional links and computation shift them toward cybertext.[1]: 64–65, 82 A non-trivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text, as the reader must constantly select which link to follow, but a link, when clicked, will always lead to the same node. A chat bot such asELIZA is a cybertext because when the reader types in a sentence, the text-machine actually performs calculations on the fly that generate a textual response. TheI Ching is likewise cited as an example of cybertext because it contains the rules for its own reading. The reader carries out the calculation but the rules are clearly embedded in the text itself. Without free text search, many hypertexts are more, not less, linear than a codex.[1]: 64
It has been argued that these distinctions are not entirely clear and scholars still debate the fine points of the definitions.[2]
The concepts of cybertext and ergodic literature were of seminal importance to new media studies, in particular literary approaches to digital texts and to game studies.
It has been suggested as a tool to enhance learner engagement and motivation in language education.[3]
Aarseth gives two major lists of examples of ergodic literature throughout the work - first in the opening chapter, then in the third, where a possible typology is discussed. The major examples listed throughout the work include:
| Title | Creator | Format or Description |
|---|---|---|
| (No specific example or location identified) | Ancient Egyptians | Stone wall inscriptions of the temples in ancientEgypt that are connected two-dimensionally (on one wall) or three dimensionally (from wall to wall or room to room). |
| afternoon: a story | Michael Joyce | Published byEastgate Systems, it is one of the earliest examples ofhypertext literature, alongside withVictory Garden, |
| Agrippa | William Gibson | A 300-line semi-autobiographical novel. It exists in two forms, either on a 3.5"floppy disk, where the text scrolls by automatically, and encrypts itself once it has passed, or as anartist's book, of which the pages have been treated with photosensitive chemicals, such that the first exposure to light would effect gradual fading. |
| Book Unbound | John Cayley | A "holographic sentence generator that merges and mutates other texts, inviting readers to feed their favorite results back into the system."[1]: 67 |
| Calligrammes | Guillaume Apollinaire | A collection of poems, which "fork out on the page" - the "words and sentences on [the] page page are spread out in many directions," and invite "linking/jumping.",[1]: 91 with no clear right sequence. It can be considered alternatively an example ofconcrete orvisual poetry. |
| Cent mille milliards de poèmes | Raymond Queneau | A set of ten poems, printed on card with each line on a separate strip. As all ten sonnets have not just the same rhyme scheme but the same rhyme sounds, any lines from a sonnet can be combined with any from the nine others, allowing for 1014 (= 100,000,000,000,000) different poems. |
| Colossal Cave Adventure | William Crowther &Don Woods | Atext-based adventure game, where the player interacts with locations and objects via simple word prompts, interpreted by the game'snatural language input system. |
| Composition No. 1, Roman | Marc Saporta | The historically first "book in a box," consisting of a bundle of pages that can be shuffled and read in any order. Conceptually similar toB. S. Johnson's (1969)The Unfortunates, which consists of 27 unbound "sections" of varying lengths, with only the first and last specified as such. |
| ELIZA | Joseph Weizenbaum | An earlynatural language processingcomputer program created from 1964 to 1966 atMIT. |
| Falcon 5: The Dying Sun | Mark Smith &Jamie Thomson | A game book, similar toThe Money Spider. Differs from it in that it adds dice-rolling as a mechanic, and thus a degree of indeterminacy. |
| Hopscotch | Julio Cortázar | Astream-of-consciousness novel which can be read either linearly, or according to an alternative chapter order listed at the start. |
| I Am Awake at the Place Where Women Die | Jenny Holzer | A temporary LED installation, wherein a "linear electronic text [...] endlessly repeats its sort, painful messages."[1]: 67 |
| TheI Ching | China, as old as 900 BCE | A divination text in which bundles ofyarrow stalks are arranged to form numbers. |
| The Money Spider | Robin Waterfield & Wilfred Davies | A "typical gamebook in which the reader must solve a puzzle by choosing the right path through the many fragments of the text."[1]: 66 |
| MUD1 | Richard Bartle & Roy Trubshaw | The firstmulti-user dungeon, a text-based multiplayer real-time virtual world. |
| Night of January 16th | Ayn Rand | A play about a trial, where "members of the audience are picked to be the jury," with two possible endings depending on their verdict. |
| Norisbo | Randi Strand | Anartist's book, which "folds from all four sides, so the reader reads a unique sequence folded by the last reader and then folds the pages to leave a unique combination for the next reader."[1]: 66 |
| Pale Fire | Vladimir Nabokov | A novel consisting of a 999-line unfinished poem in four cantos, written by John Shade, and a pseudo-academic analysis by his neighbour and university colleagueCharles Kinbote, where the majority of the book's "plot" is situated, and an index. Aarseth notes that it "can be read either unicursally, straight through, or multicursally, jumping between the comments and the poem."[1]: 8 |
| Racter | William Chamberlain andThomas Etter | Anartificial intelligence program that generates English language prose at random. |
| Tale-spin | James Meehan | A program which generates "simple animal fables of theÆsop type,"[1]: 12 with varying success. |
| TinyMUD | James Aspnes | A further example of amulti-user dungeon. Builds upon MUD1's model in that it allows for user-generated dungeons. |
| Twin Kingdom Valley | Trevor Hall | An example of a "more flexible adventure game," building uponColossal Cave Adventure's model. |
| Unending Addventure | Allen S. Firstenberg | An example of hypertextcollaborative fiction, wherein users can add notes at the ends of the branches. |
| Victory Garden | Stuart Moulthrop | One of the earliest examples ofhypertext literature, along with Michael Joyce'sAfternoon. |
There are still further examples worth considering, however, especially ones that came out afterCybertext's release, or were simply too obscure or glanced over at the time of release. Such include:
| Title | Creator | Format or description |
|---|---|---|
| 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors | Kotaru Uchikoshi | A Japanese adventure game on theNintendo DS which is told through two simultaneous perspectives, each displayed on a separate screen |
| A Pattern Language | Christopher Alexander,Sara Ishikawa,Murray Silverstein | "Since the language is in truth a network, there is no one sequence which perfectly captures it. But the sequence which follows, captures the broad sweep of the full network; in doing so, it follows a line, dips down, dips up again, and follows an irregular course, a little like a needle following a tapestry."[4] |
| A Thousand Plateaus | Gilles Deleuze &Felix Guattari | "A Thousand Plateaus is written as a 'rhizome,' that is, as allowing immediate connections between any of its points. Because of this rhizomatic structure, a traditional summary of the 'theses' and arguments ofA Thousand Plateaus is either downright impossible, or at best, would be much too complex to attempt in an encyclopedia article."[5] |
| Avalovara | Osman Lins | Astream-of-consciousness novel containing riddles, puzzles, anagrams, palindromes, and a considerable amount of word play. |
| Bottom's Dream | Arno Schmidt | A novel, published in folio format with 1,334 pages, told mostly in three shifting columns, presenting the text in the form of notes, collages, and typewritten pages. |
| Building Stories | Chris Ware | Agraphic novel presented as fourteen separate works packaged within a box. Each component work has a distinct presentation—including a mockLittle Golden Book, newspaper,broadsheet andflip book—and can be read in any order. |
| Choose Your Own Adventure | Edward Packard | A set of children's novels written in the second person in which the reader makes choices throughout, leading to a number of different possible endings |
| Dictionary of the Khazars | Milorad Pavić | Three cross-referenced mini-encyclopedias, sometimes contradicting each other, each compiled from the sources of one of the major Abrahamic religions. Additionally, a ballet adaption was staged atMadlenianum Opera and Theatre. |
| Landscape Painted with Tea | Milorad Pavić | Described as "A novel for crossword fans." |
| House of Leaves | Mark Z. Danielewski | A novel with a very unusual layout, containing an abundance of footnotes, faux quotes, rotated, flipped, and mirrored text, read in either direction, along with an extensive section of only loosely related Addenda. Presented as a story about a manuscript about a movie about a house that is larger on the inside than the outside. |
| Life: A User's Manual | Georges Perec | A “series of novels” that can be read both linearly and non-linearly by navigating through an index of characters and stories, which Perec thought of as hypertext links. |
| Six Sex Scenes | Adrienne Eisen | Hypertext fiction that allows the reader to choose storylines throughout. |
| S.[6] | J. J. Abrams andDoug Dorst | Composed of the novelShip of Theseus (by the fictional V. M. Straka), hand-written notes filling the book's margins, and supplementary material loosely inserted between the pages. |
| The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy | Nick Bantock | Three stories, told through a series of letters and postcards between the two main characters. Every page features a postcard or a letter enclosed in an envelope. |
| XX | Rian Hughes | Ascience fiction novel told in part through ephemera such as declassified documents, artworks, graphics, and a novel within the novel |