Customer Reviews

The Maze Game

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book answers the question, "What does it mean to move through a maze of language?" -- specifically, a visual language called Glide. (Like Tolkien, Slattery has invented language and story together.) Glide is "polymorphic, dynamic, inexorably ambiguous, proteanly metaphoric, illogically positive, and profligately generative of...questions." As a science fiction fan I admire the way Slattery tells this tale from its characters' (seemingly) alien viewpoints, and in their own words; it takes longer, but provides a stunning experience for readers willing to skim the glossary and then immerse themselves. _Maze Game_'s "idea-intensiveness" (and civilization-wide scope) also reminded me of Asimov's _Foundation Trilogy_, except that since Slattery stays with the same characters throughout, I grew to care about them more than I did Asimov's. And fans of fantasy will also recognize a story in which things are going from bad to worse: what can be done? and who will have the courage to do it? Finally, this book is about oracles; it is itself oracular; it refers readers to an online version of the language and oracle they can try themselves. As the Glides say, "A book cannot read itself, much less interpret its own story." This book needs you to read it, and interpret, if you dare! [Quotations from pages 10, 165, and 43 of the first pbk edition.]

To say that Diana Reed Slattery's novel is required reading seems so inadequate -- inadequate because this book is necessary in the same way that breathing is. The Maze Game is as essential as air. It will, along with its companion Glide Collabyrinth, revolutionize the play and practice of fiction."
Carolyn Guertin
Curator, Assemblage: The Women's New Media Gallery

Like the Maze around and through which the story of the Death Dancers revolves and evolves, there are many levels to this creation, and the reader can take the experience as far as he or she wants to go. It can be taken only as far as the first level of compelling science fiction, or it can be taken to the next level of transportation through an amazing exploration of language, creativity and consciousness. The reader can interact with and have a personal experience with the language of the Glides, or, if the reader isn't inclined to interrupt the flow of the story, a simple open mind will allow the novel to speak to the part of all of us that asks the continuing question: What is this experience of consciousness? And that is what has stayed with us most vividly since reading The Maze Game - that we are reminded of each time an event takes place that shakes up the global reality: Diana Reed Slattery has captured the feeling of a haunting possibility that has been posited in human consciousness throughout the ages: Is this reality we are all participating in some kind of game we are playing with ourselves to maintain an illusion?

Keith Harary, Ph.D., and Darlene Moore
Institute for Advanced Psychology

I've struggled for a while, wanting to review this book and trying to see where to begin. That is how astonishing Diana Slattery's vision of this place is, a place where something like AIDS has been cured through the creation of something more horrible, the "disease" of immortality, spread through blood products and bodily fluids. For me, that is the "what if" that makes this novel/interactive experience so tantilizing. It makes me imagine imortality as something where you best be careful or you might "catch" it.

And this curse of immortality creates the phenomena of the Death Dancers and the Maze Game. (allegory coming, duck! Do you think Earth could be an afternoon soap opera for a race of gods or little gray aliens?)

You need to read this book for the hilarious surprise of figuring out who 'Oh-T'bee is. Folks from New York will love the ironic twist.

Oracles and AI, but this is not cyberpunk in the strict sense of the genre. The Maze Game pushes past that and imagines a cosmology, like Ursula LeGuin in the Hain series, a cosmology spun out by a concept. This ties in to some of Diana Slattery's other work looking at alphabets and the cultures that come out of them, considering a culture based on uncertainty and doubt, interpretation, layers of meaning. We learn to think about lilies and this thing called "Glide Mind."

It's like haiku crossed with I Ching crossed with Tarot, and delivered through an omnipresent artificial intelligence agent in glyphs. Diana invented a language of glyphs just so she could craft poems in it and imagine a culture that lives inside those poems.

And as a student of the Tarot, I found my own layers in this book, layers relating indirectly to the 4 types of Death Dancers and the 4 suits in the Tarot, corresponding also to Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. These things become highly differentiated styles of the dance.

And those old, old Immortals, shades hiding their impossibly old eyes, they watch, enviously.

This book is not popular enough, it seems. I've had it for over a year, yet only now decided it deserves more propaganda:

The Maze Game, the first book of the Glide trilogy, deposits an interesting view of human evolution in our minds: how mortality became a ritual privilege and comes forward to entertain the immortal Specs, thus housekeeping society's balance.

The prose Diana Reed Slattery manages to keep up throughout the book is very playful and refreshing; it never deteriorates into prolonged filler. I was amused by the dedication to the McKennas, linking the story to both hallucinogens and language. The technological esoterica does not make it read like science-fiction, instead it managed to keep me interested with all it had to offer: originality, interesting characters, language and philosophy. Everything about the book was refreshing and I eagerly await the sequels. Until then, the Glide agenda remains to us one great paradox.

I would recommend it to anyone, really. There's not much that holds it back.

I love this book. Stimulating science fiction, probing issues that are very contemporary. Extropians will like it. Harsh, but so is this millenium.
[...]

The Maze Game is complex, intricate, and intensely satisfying. Its sci-fi setting is radically different from our world - human immortality has been achieved, and instant teleportation is available to almost everywhere.

To many readers, though, what is intriguing in sci-fi is how it describes what is unchanging in human nature through all time, not the focus on technology. Diana Slattery knows her technology well enough to be entirely credible to a computer scientist like me, but what I remember from the book is that is touching and deeply human, enough to bring tears to my eyes on several occasions.

In a future where resource and time scarcity is not a problem, the main enemy of immortal humanity is boredom and lack of meaning. The only thing sustaining civilization is the Game pitting immortal players against mortal Dancers from four schools representing four aspects of human experience: Bod (the gut and the body), Swash (emotions and romance), Chrome (rationality and logic) and Glide (ineffable mystery and non-duality/higher-level-of-consciousness experience).

I am reminded of Frank Herbert's Dune for several reasons. The first is that The Maze Game dares to construct a completely alternate universe with its own rich set of interactions and balance of power. The second is that it is a rich exploration of human nature. I am certain that, as I grow older and re-read the book, I will discover subtler meanings and appreciate the personalities of its protagonists and antagonists in different ways. Another is the poetic quality of the language - Dune has no characters who do not express themselves beautifully, and neither does the Maze Game. The poetic nature of the book is further reinforced by the ambiguous, inherently polysemic Glide language which it showcases.

If you care for complex science-fiction with rich character development, beautiful and unique love stories, and explorations into human consciousness and the nature of meaning that approach the metaphysical, then by all means, get this book. It is a masterpiece.