Slate has a nice write-up on the history of choose your own adventure books.
As usual, the article has a reference to Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths, but there is more detail to the history than I have seen before. I did not know (or had forgotten) that B.F. Skinner was part of the story.
A more prosaic early attempt at interactive texts were psychologist B.F. Skinner’s “programmed learning” books that culminated with Doubleday’s interactive TutorText series, which debuted in 1958 with the thrilling The Arithmetic of Computers. Basically an extended multiple-choice quiz, a correct answer sent you forward in the text while an incorrect answer sent you to a page explaining just how wrong you were. But all of these efforts were eclipsed by the bedtime story Edward Packard told his two daughters in 1969.
Julio Cortázar’s 1963 Hopscotch novel goes unmentioned though. And you could have discussed OuLiPo. I can’t help but wonder if there are more non-English branching narratives that we have neglected.
(Via Nick Montfort.)
“Dictionary of the Khazars” from Milorad Pavić could be a example, I think (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_the_Khazars). Written in dicionary form, the mere translation of the book in another language (I read it in Portuguese) inserts gaps and alterations in the story.