are Mad-Libs a subgenre of IF?

:question:

No, it’s the other way around.

According to Wikipedia (if it’s on Wikipedia, it must be true), Mad Libs were invented in 1953 by Leonard Stern and Roger Price, who published the first book of them in 1958.

In 1953 the first computer to use transistors had just been invented. The UNIVAC I had just been ordered by GE, for their payroll operations. FORTRAN, the first high-level computer language, would not be invented for another year. Magnetic core memory was just invented. The number of computers in the entire world did not number more than 100.

I don’t think there was much of a market for computer games in 1953. The first recorded interactive fiction was not released until 1975.

If you count riddles as IF, then the advent of the computer is no obstacle!

Curiously, Nick Montfort names How Come? by Agnes Rogers (or Rogers Agnes?) as the “classic collection of situational puzzles” dated… 1953!