TECHNOFILE

NTurning a book into a film is difficult enough, but imagine trying to turn a book like Sophie's World into a CD-Rom. Its guiding theme, that an inclination to dabble in metaphysics is proof of the inherent superiority of a certain kind of adolescent over the rest of the human race, is difficult to render in pixels. Nor do the book's moods - the preciousness, the conceit of dressing up Pass Notes as profundity - translate readily into the look and feel of a multimedia production.

The MultiMedia Corporation threw a million pounds at these problems. That might seem rash, but Jostein Gaarder's book has sold 12 million copies in more than 30 languages. And here's the surprise: it looks like money well spent. The digital Sophie's World (Macmillan Interactive, pounds 39.99) is not only more accessible, it's also a lot more fun than the book.

Underlying the difference is the fact that multimedia productions are not kind to narrators. Unlike television, a very good medium for showcasing presenters, computers are poor at rendering humans in detail. Celebrity presenters therefore get turned into little tokens of themselves, ushering in the immersive experiences which are the forte of multimedia.

The same has happened with the main characters of Sophie's World. Alberto Knox, Sophie's mentor, addresses the user through little dialogue boxes, assisted by an animated "gadfly" representing the spirit of Socrates. Sophie Amundsen herself sends missives via "e-mails" which float across the screen at intervals. Sophie's World is the star of the show, rather than Sophie herself. It'll be interesting to see whether girls identify with the CD-Rom as they were intended to do with the book. So far, the one runaway success in girls' software has been Barbie Fashion Designer.

The World in question is dark blue and cosmic, with question-marks swirling around it. As a representation of a naive mind in contemplative mode it's rather attractive, and the motif of random motion suggests that you may wander in and out of philosophical inquiry as the mood takes you. If on the other hand you have a specific query, a bluffers' guide to philosophy is accessible at all times. It includes a philosophy map, with land masses connected by arrows indicating who influenced whom, or who rejected whose thought.

At the heart of the reference section are "Big Questions" like "What is time?", "What am I?", and "How should we live together?". These are set in a handy table, with a column giving an explanation of the basic issues, and another summarising the responses of various thinkers. "Do we have free will?", for example, gets responses from Zeno, St Augustine, Spinoza, Hume, Kant and Sartre.

Or you can just do the puzzles. The main line of the program is a sequence of 28 features, in the familiar form of a game which requires problems to be solved before the player can advance from one scene to the next. There's plenty of variety, in both theme and graphic style, encouraging the player to linger within the World.

Some of the puzzles are didactic, intended to firm the player's grasp of philosophical ideas. Others are aimed unashamedly at the right side of the brain. Confronted with the world-tree Yggdrasil, depicted like an Indian mandala, your task is to click on the animal shapes concealed in its branches before the evil serpent Nidhogg eats through its roots. It's a treatment readily applicable to other great myths, but the world market probably isn't quite ready for the Old Testament version.

Marek.kohn@mcr1.poptel.org.uk