Multi-review: Dreampark, Barsoom Project, California Voodoo Game and Moon Maze Game
I read the first Dreampark book a long, long time ago, might not have been in 1981 when it was first published, but it was well before 1989 when the first sequel, th Barsoom Project, came out. If felt like these books were written for me. The basic setup is that they all take place at a futuristic theme park that is something like Disneyland crossed with a Star Trek holodeck. Animatronics and actors combined with holographic projections. But, the big draw is the “games”. The “games” are massive, complex, role-playing games played in closed holodecks the size of football stadiums. In this world the games are the height of entertainment.
This is a world where the highest form of entertainment is D&D played for real! The gamers are bigger than movie stars or rock stars. Needless to say, I ate these books up.
All of this was written in a pre-LARP (live action role playing) world. In fact, I have always assumed that LARPing was influenced by Dreampark, but can’t say for sure.
And not just at interesting points in the world of role-playing games, the first three books were published in a really interesting time for science fiction. The first book was written pre-cyberpunk (published in 1981 means it was started in 1980 at the earliest, even sooner more likely) and is something I would describe as closer to the Star Trek clean-white-wall-style science fiction. (Ever notice how in Star Trek the ships always looked like they had that new car smell, season after season?) Not a lot of cyberpunk dark, or post-internet ideas floating around. And by the third book, the internet had started to pop up on people’s radar and cyberpunk was now something in the rear view mirror. California Voodoo Game (the third book) manages stay true the characters and ideas of the first book, while still moving the setting into a time more true to the real world needs of such technology.
The sequel, The Barsoom Project, was a bit more down to earth, but sadly was not as good. It had it moments, but for whatever reason was just not as gripping at the first one.
And then we come to the third one, California Voodoo Game. This one was a great ride. It did something you don’t see done well very often. It took the idea from the series and re-tooled it so that the anachronisms of the first book, or at least things that would anachronistic for a post-cyberpunk, internet child would be less offensive. It did it without changing the rest of the formula. And the third one I would argue is at least as good as the first one.
Sadly, the latest one, The Moon Maze Game, is more like the second one, where it lacks the punch, gravitas maybe, of the first of the third one. But, it is fun to see where another twenty years of book time progresses the game.
Now, one thing I would like to say, is that the ‘games’ that are played are as important to the books as the actual plots are, since the ‘games’ are some of the best parts. Instead of being D&D fantasy worlds, the settings for the ‘games’ are the real world with some slight tweaks along the way, like magic and the such. Each game has different levels, e.g., how much magic each character can invoke. And part of the fun is figuring out the world within the world and what is happening on each level.
Did I mention that each of them are a crime or a murder mystery as well? That is where the books really go from good to great. You have a whole cast of people who are successful at role-playing games, read messed up, in a high stakes game (that cannot be interrupted, since there is so much money involved in televising it, etc.) and something happens that could interrupt the game. So, while completing the game, you also have some of the players trying to solve a murder and maybe trying to get away with a murder, of course the game master, the one running the whole show, could be behind the murder…
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