What is ergodic fiction?
The genre of ergodic fiction was proposed by Espen J. Aarseth, a professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He wrote a book in 1997 called Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, that breaks down what makes a piece of writing ergodic, a term that comes from the Greek words ergon, meaning “work,” and hodos, meaning “path.” So what makes a book ergodic? It’s not necessarily the content. Although there may be considerable overlap in the new weird genre, which Rioter Mya Nunnally wrote a great beginner’s guide about, it’s less about the book’s narrative and more about how the author presents that narrative on the page. Aarseth’s definition is something of a mouthful: “…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 no extranoematic responsibilities placed on the reader except (for example) eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages.” What that really amounts to is whether or not the text follows the conventional format of paragraphs, dialogue tags, standard margins, and all the things that make reading it easy or, as Aarseth calls it, “trivial.” It’s an odd choice of word, since reading a conventional book has significant value on its own, but in the case of this genre, the term means that you’re having to do very little work to read the book: your eye movements are normal as you take in each line of text, the story progresses rather linearly, and all is well.
More Books Like House of Leaves
We’ll use House of Leaves—the most popular book in the genre—as the first example for what “nontrivial” means in this context. That book is a challenge to read, albeit a fun one. It demands more from its reader, since the story is also present in the margins, in tiny footnotes, and sometimes in just a few scattered words tossed across the page like confetti. Your eyes are jumping all over the place as you piece together the story. This is what ergodic fiction is: books or digital text that use unusual methods to tell their stories. Dive into this list to get familiar with ergodic fiction and see if you like it! Want more experimental literature in the ergodic or weird fashion? We can help with that! Head on over to TBR and let our professional Book Riot nerds match you with the perfect strange book to scratch that avant garde itch.
