Quick question:

What do you think of the idea, of a new type of novel, not a different genre, in which the main character does what he does, but also and more importantly causes all the characters around him to react in a variety of ways and resolve the conflicts of the story in a rather more non-deterministic way? I'm not thinking of an ensemble story, but rather a story which has one main conflict, and all the characters are held in a relation to that conflict. The story involves the introduction of one character, the Catalyst, to whose sudden presence all the other characters react, and the resolution comes from all these reactions occurring in the same limited space. The Catalyst himself need not even know what is happening around him, although he probably will. I've never read a book of this type before, although I think I wrote one, and I'm trying to come up with a useful category - a Catalyst story - to put it into, since none of the others that I know of seem to work. I can think of several examples in comedy, but I'm not talking here about comic stories.

I'm asking this question in several places, in hope of getting a variety of opinions.

It sounds a bit like David Mitchell's Ghostwritten. I loved it there, and I imagine it could be a powerful way to tell a tale if done well.

I haven't read that book, but it seems from the reviews I've found to be a set of intersecting stories. My book is a single story, with a single conflict. The MC is brought in to handle an event that is an offshoot of that central conflict and really rather small. The story gets resolved by a number of characters reacting to the main character's presence in their own ways, greatly enlarging the scope of the changes they themselves are making. The MC himself is changed only by those actions he undertakes or experiences himself.

Why does it need to be in a special category? It sounds like you are talking about a novel that isn't a straight narrative. There are lots of novels that play games with structure or expectations; telling a story in various kinds of non linear order, or through the eyes of several different characters, or backwards, or partly in reality and partly in dream, or in and out of third person, but none of these are a special type or category of novel, they are just novels.

Bun Wat makes a good point. If what you create requires some new category to explain it, then it is not likely to be the author who coins the new category's name. That is generally the role of the critic or the academic. But it does sound like you're doing something interesting.

As for the Mitchell...well...I guess it depends how one's world view shapes their reading. I felt there was one big story being told by the intersecting stories.

Here's what I put together this morning, by leaving at least half of the story in the teaser. Comments are welcome.

Joseph Marquand was the best werewolf hunter on Earth and he hated his job. He hated the Moon even more, but when two werewolf-shredded bodies are discovered on a lunar colony, he is recalled to space service to find the answers the colonists demand. They are all werewolves, hiding in plain sight, terrified of losing the one place in the system where they thought they'd be safe, from their curse and from werewolf killers like Marquand himself.
Then Marquand himself was there, and the nightmares began, both his and theirs. Murderous assaults on him. Betrayals and counter-betrayals among them. In despair, the colonists have turned upon each other, and the werewolf hunter became the werewolves' only hope for survival and salvation.
All he had to do was bring death to the Moon itself. Preferably not his own.