Abstract

This chapter focuses on the intertextual play that marks out Westworld as a distinctive example of Quality TV. The chapter argues that Westworld can be placed in a wider literary-theoretical framework that includes interactive fiction and hypertext which, in turn offers a different perspective on the key questions of the series concerned with the impact of technology on the human. The chapter specifically considers the motif of the maze or labyrinth as synecdoche of the nexus of formal, theoretical and textual explications of nonlinear and interactive and digital narratives that shed light on Westworld’s depiction of its intradiegetic and extradiegetic players or wreaders. By thinking through the history of hypertext, the narratives of interactive textuality and the way both hypertext and Westworld negotiate ideas of human agency in relation to technology, this chapter unearths an alternate lineage for the themes and dynamics of Westworld.