A Story as You Like It

This early (1967!) appearance of hypertext presents an interactive narrative primarily concerned with the experiences of a small group of sapient vegetables. Through the binary selection of multiple-choice answers the reader-player has the option of not only directing the plot but countering it, going back and overriding earlier narrative streams or switching, according to their preferences as the title suggests, to entirely unrelated storylines... although only in an abbreviated, proof-of-concept form through 21 sections.

The initial presentation of the work at the 83rd meeting of the Ouvoir de Littérature Potentielle (Oulipo) was said to be inspired by contemporary computer programs, at the time largely consisting of unstructured so-called "spaghetti code" with its proliferation of GOTO statements. Modern presentations of the work in an online medium generally fortify the text with hyperlinks, allowing typed or mouse-clicked navigation between the sections.