Force-directed graph of the library's lineage links. Focus it and use the arrow keys to move between works, Enter to choose the one you are on, O to open its details, and Escape to close its card or leave. The same relations are listed as text in each work's detail view.
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stories — novels, films, plays, poems, myth, folktale, scripture and narrative non-fiction — with their documented lines of influence drawn between them.
Created by Sam Reed.
Admission rests on settled critical standing, never taste or popularity. Every work is backed by a named authority — the standard anthologies, the Nobel and the major literary prizes, national canons, scholarly editions — and a citation is only trusted once it has been read at source, not remembered.
Authors with a small completed body of work are held complete. Prolific authors are held at their principal works. A handful of works enter instead by deliberate curatorial exception, and are recorded as exceptions rather than dressed up as canon.
A film enters on the Sight & Sound poll or a top prize — the Palme d'Or, Golden Lion, Golden Bear, Best Picture or Best International Feature. Without one of those, it needs two independent marks of standing together: the National Film Registry, a Criterion edition, a Cahiers du Cinéma placement, or a major national canon such as the BFI's, Kinema Junpo's or the Korean Film Archive's. The more recent the film, the stronger the evidence asked of it — anything from the last fifteen years needs the poll or a top prize.
Literature pauses after 2010 until the historical sweep is complete. Film, whose standing settles faster, is exempt.
A date is stated flat only where a production or publication is actually on record; where scholarship can only estimate, the year carries a c. marker — the test is documentary, not how old the work is.
Non-fiction is admitted only when it tells a story — memoir, reportage, travel writing — never treatises. Nothing written or created by AI is admitted. Some ceremonial narratives are excluded at the request of the traditions that hold them.
Solid links record documented influence, adaptation or response — curated fact, never resemblance. Dashed threads are computed thematic affinity, and the two are never mixed.
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Found a wrong date, a bad lineage link, a typo, or a work that should be here? Tell us. Naming the work helps, but general notes are welcome without one.
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