The campaign was successful! You can still purchase copies of Subcutanean from the official website.
Not every story can be told a single way.
Subcutanean is a book that regenerates itself for each new reader. Created by award-winning interactive fiction author Aaron A. Reed, the book tells a story of two friends with a complex relationship drawn into a labyrinth of parallel realities. The text has been authored with hundreds of variations ranging from tiny details to whole sequences that appear in some versions but not others. Each copy contains a unique telling of the story: no two are ever quite the same.
The campaign was funded and books are now shipping! You can still order here on Indiegogo by choosing a perk on the right, or order via Paypal or Amazon on the official website.
"...not a gimmick... everything in this novel is deeper than it first appears." --Carl on Goodreads
The Story
Insecure college senior Orion loves music, books, and his best friend Niko. When the two of them find a secret basement in their rambling old off-campus house, at first Orion’s thrilled. It’s another secret to share, another adventure to maybe, at last, bring them closer together.
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But something's wrong: the basement doesn't end. Blandly decorated halls stretch on for miles past peeling wallpaper, empty bedrooms, and countless stairwells always leading down. Soon they realize Downstairs is a snarled tangle of possibilities, more and more opening up the deeper they go. Something down there multiplies everything: architecture, emotions, even people.
Together they must navigate an increasingly dangerous labyrinth that peels back their friendship to raw and angry roots, filled with two-faced doppelgängers, treacherous architecture, and long-buried secrets. Most dangerous of all is Orion's consuming obsession: somewhere down there, is there a Niko who loves him back?
"Lurking inside this generative horror novel is a deeply felt and strangely moving coming-of-age story." --Isaac Schankler
The Variants
Like the mingling possibilities in the story itself, Subcutanean's master text contains many coexisting variations. Each time the book is rendered, these quantum possibilities are "collapsed" down to a single text—a novel between 209 and 232 pages—with a unique pathway through these many alternatives.
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Some of these alternates are as subtle as a changed word or phrase. Others are more extreme, including entire sequences that appear in some versions but not others, or pivotal moments that play out very different from one version to the next. Inclusion of some sequences creates ripple effects throughout the book, setting up foreshadowing earlier and different payoffs later. While the overall story stays largely the same, the unique combination of pieces gives each version a distinct set of clues, interpretations, revelations, and meanings.
No two copies are quite the same, and once printed, a given version will never appear again.
Read two versions of a spooky excerpt from the book now:
You can also check out my design blog for Subcutanean, where I've been posting lots more details about how the project works.
The Campaign
The project was crowdfunded in fall 2019, but it's not too late to get your own copy! Pledge at one of the perk levels on the right to back the project and snag your own unique Subcutanean from a seed that will never be reused. You can also purchase a copy via Paypal or Amazon on the project's main website.
Want to read with a friend? You can also get two unique copies that are generated with special code to increase the likelihood that they'll contain different text.
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[SOLD OUT!] Until supplies ran out, you could also get a special master USB key containing the full master text of the novel from which all copies were generated, the complete source code used to build this project, and 10,000 unique copies of the novel in plain text format—no kidding! This came on a special chrome-and-glass USB key. [SOLD OUT]
[SOLD OUT!] During the initial campaign, a limited number of "Singular Subcutaneans" were available with a unique piece of content guaranteed to only exist in that one single copy of the book, based on a prompt or keyword provided.
About Me
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Hi, I'm Aaron! I'm an award-winning storyteller and game designer who's been releasing projects for over fifteen years. My text adventure Blue Lacuna has been named one of the top ten interactive fictions ever written, and my game The Ice-Bound Concordance (co-created with Jacob Garbe) won IndieCade's "Best Story" award. I've worked as a hobbyist, an academic, an indie dev, and in industry on projects about making stories more playable and games more collaborative.
As you can see, dynamic text is in my blood. I've successfully delivered on two previous crowdfunding projects, both of which involved printed books and one of which involved dynamic text. While I've previously written novel-length games, this will be my first standalone novel that will "read" just like any other book—despite the behind-the-scenes magic to make each book unique.
Frequently Asked Questions
These have been moved to a dedicated FAQ page on the official site.
Keep up with the campaign on social media: ![]()
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But something's wrong: the basement doesn't end. Blandly decorated halls stretch on for miles past peeling wallpaper, empty bedrooms, and countless stairwells always leading down. Soon they realize Downstairs is a snarled tangle of possibilities, more and more opening up the deeper they go. Something down there multiplies everything: architecture, emotions, even people.
[SOLD OUT!] Until supplies ran out, you could also get a special master USB key containing the full master text of the novel from which all copies were generated, the complete source code used to build this project, and 10,000 unique copies of the novel in plain text format—no kidding! This came on a special chrome-and-glass USB key. [SOLD OUT]
Hi, I'm Aaron! I'm an award-winning storyteller and game designer who's been releasing projects for over fifteen years. My text adventure Blue Lacuna has been named one of the top ten interactive fictions ever written, and my game The Ice-Bound Concordance (co-created with Jacob Garbe) won IndieCade's "Best Story" award. I've worked as a hobbyist, an academic, an indie dev, and in industry on projects about making stories more playable and games more collaborative.
