“Life is not a continuous line from the cradle to the grave.” So begins the explanatory paragraph for a story told in a new and clever manner. Published in 1930 by the Century Company in New York, Consider the Consequences! was the first choice-based novel ever printed and the precursor to the Choose Your Own Adventure book series that would become popular later in the 20th century.
In creating Consider the Consequences!, authors Doris Webster (1885-1967) and Mary Alden Hopkins (1876-1960) were toying with a new idea: write a book that provided readers with narrative options. However, as a new way of “reading” a book, the idea of reader participation required some authorial instructions:
“This game may be played as solitaire, a courting-game, or a party stunt. When the players disagree, follow the choice of the majority, but make a note of the dissenting opinion, so that you can return later and find out what happens to Helen—or Jed or Saunders—when other advice is followed.”
Proposed as playable for single players as well as parties and groups, Webster and Hopkins’s book allowed readers to inhabit each of the three main characters, Helen, Jed, and Saunders, by making decisions at critical points in the story along the way. Consider the Consequences! provided a choice-tree or map at the beginning of each character’s chapter as a way of keeping track of available player options. Once popularized, this gamebook format became known as the “branching-plot.”
Helen’s choice tree in the Library’s copy, pictured above, shows evidence of reader engagement. A previous reader (or player) has taken the authors’ advice and penciled light graphite check marks alongside the choices made throughout Helen’s chapter to keep track of her narrative. Whether the reader continued to play the rest of the book remains a mystery—there are no pencil markings in the decision tree for either “Jed” or “Saunders.”
The Webster and Hopkins writing team published several interactive novels together, each playable in some way or other. An earlier example, originally published in 1927 is, I’ve Got Your Number!, a sort of personality test based on questions and answers resulting in a “key number” that provides insight into the player’s personality. The work was so popular that a second series was published in 1932. In 1928, Webster and Hopkins published another book of “parlor psychoanalysis” with the work Marriage Made Easy, which according to the publisher, “tells you when, why and what to marry and how to go about it.”
Webster and Hopkins did not restrict themselves to writing lighthearted and “playable” fiction; they also penned articles and essays in journals and newspapers. Hopkins in particular was an activist whose work reflected her political interests, including issues of labor and dress reform, birth control, pacifism, and suffrage. Her articles appeared in several major publications including The Woman’s Journal, The Designer and the Woman’s Magazine, and Collier’s The National Weekly.
Lighthearted as their gamebooks were overall, Hopkins’ activist edge does find its way into Consider the Consequences!. Dr. Guillermo Paredes, journalist and researcher specializing in video games and social networks, writes the following about the gamebook’s content:
Contrary to what you might expect from a book from this era, the story deals with topics such as alcoholism, unmarried cohabitation, unusual family arrangements, political corruption, and even suicide without trying to obscure or sugarcoat their implications. It also details both player and nonplayer characters with a level of psychological depth I’ve very seldom seen in interactive fiction – the reader will find him or herself clashing with the social mores of the era, and how he or she responds to them will in turn shape his or her character’s happiness in later life. Along some paths, the reader will find him or herself to be contributing to social change as his or her decisions successfully defy prevailing norms and taboos.
Though Webster and Hopkins’ gamified novels were popular in the 1920s-1940s, the books eventually drifted from public consciousness. In recent years, however, these early gamebooks have received renewed interest. A Wikipedia entry for Consider the Consequences! appeared online in 2021, and, in 2023, a copy of the work was uploaded to Internet Archive, where it can now be read (or played) for free! In fact, by using the text from Internet Archive, a fan has created a playable online version. In early 2024, a podcast called Choose Your Own Book Club performed a read-aloud run-through of Consider the Consequences!. Finally, as of January 2025, Consider the Consequences! has entered the public domain. These recent efforts have begun to bring this gamebook back into popular awareness by providing new ways to interact with the work and encouraging readers to choose our own adventures in 2025.
Sources & Further Reading
Read a copy of Consider the Consequences! for free on Internet Archive.
Geetheriot. Consider the Consequences! online game.
Katz, Damian (1998-1024). Consider the Consequences. Demian’s Gamebook Web Page.
Webster, Doris and Mary Adlen Hopkins (1930). Consider the Consequences!. New York, London: The Century Company.
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