Warp Your Own Way, by Ryan North and Chris Fenoglio, became the first interactive fiction to ever win a Hugo Award*! It won the Hugo for Best Graphic Story or Comic. As a fan of IF, I am excited that this work not only creatively used the format but was recognized for its excellence by the wider science-fiction community.

Lower Decks itself won a Hugo with its season finale, “The New Next Generation” (pulling off the difficult trick of beating another of its own episodes, which—as TrekMovie points out—might have split the vote [update: actually, the 2025 Hugo ballot used ranked choice]). This is the first Star Trek episode to win a Hugo since the series finale for TNG over 31 years ago. Again, Lower Decks deserves this wider recognition. (Don’t want to binge all 50 episodes? Here are the 14 best.)

Warp Your Own Way is a great read, and I don’t want to give any spoilers beyond its spoilery back-cover blurb:

Mariner just wants to have a normal day, but no matter what side of the bed she wakes up on, the world is ending. Literally. If she has coffee, Borg attack! If she has raktajino, cue the Romulan boarding party! And in each scenario, Mariner and her friends end up dead, sometimes the ship is destroyed—and the day starts all over again.

But by exploring the different paths, you, the reader, can discover things that Mariner can’t. There are inconsistencies that don’t make sense—putting aside the fact that Mariner’s choice of drink each morning shouldn’t affect which alien races attack the ship, other facts of her world seem to change too. Something is definitely off. It’s up to you to discover!

The book definitely follows the old-school death-funnel approach. (I harkened back to dying repeatedly in Tunnels & Trolls solo adventures.) As I wrote in my analysis of design patterns in CYOA:

Sudden Deaths: These are the sudden, often unexpected end to the story. These were a common means of pruning the tree of choices and simplifying the overall structure back in the heyday of Choose Your Own Adventure books. In the computer and adventure games of the 1970s and 1980s, sudden death was a much more frequent end to a game than it is today.

Source: These Heterogenous Tasks

I prefer to telegraph the risk as much as possible, so you’re not surprised when you suddenly die or end the story.

There’s a lot of death. It actually gets very dark for Lower Decks. There’s a lot of death.

About when I was getting frustrated with dying, I stumbled upon a clue that opened up a new path. And then there were some other clues, artfully designed and placed.

The book itself is a metatextual commentary on interactive fiction. Spoilers, sweetie. Check the alt-text for the spoilers. I’d wait until you’ve read the book though.

Spoilers: “Unlike traditional choice books, Warp Your Own Way canonizes all the false paths you took. Those actually happen and are referred to from other branches. And the narrative breaks the fourth wall to address you the reader.” [actual image is of River Song saying "Spoilers"]

Except for that darkness, the writing definitely evokes the characters and the language of not only Lower Decks itself but the other shows and movies it pays homage to. This is not a surprise given that the author is Ryan North, author of Dinosaur Comics:

Credit: “Man, comics are meant for sharing! TOTALLY GO FOR IT. You don’t need permission to post the comics on your site or anything like that.”

Ryan North has also written three Shakespearean IF stories—To Be or Not To Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure, Romeo and/or Juliet: A Chooseable-Path Adventure, and William Shakespeare Punches a Friggin’ Shark and/or Other Stories.

After I successfully finished Warp Your Own Way, as a completionist I went back and skimmed the book looking for paths I hadn’t followed. There’s a great bit set after the first two choices: “What are you doing?! This isn’t an ordinary book, and you don’t get to turn to the next page whenever you want! When Mariner encounters a choice, you must turn to the page indicated to decide which option she takes!”

On this blog, I regularly blog about Star Trek and interactive fiction, and I’d recently blogged about the Hugo Awards, so the news of this award couldn’t have pertained more to me if it had wanted to.

Venn diagram: Star Trek Hugo Award Interactive Fiction center: Warp Your Own Way Star Trek+IF segment: Captain to the Bridge Star Trek+Hugo segment: The New Next Generation

But the best news is that Warp Your Own Way is an important work in its genre, pushing the boundaries of the medium in fun ways.

Illustration credit: Penguin Random House.

Venn diagram tool.

*Note that the Nebula Awards, in contrast, have a Game Writing award, which has often seen Choice of Games (an IF powerhouse) nominated.