Customer Reviews

Space and Beyond (Choose Your Own Adventure #4)

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You were born on a spaceship traveling between two galaxies. You now can select which planet, and therefore which galaxy, you will now be a citizen of. Which planet will you go to? What adventures will you have in getting there? Will you find either of them?

No likely. Space is full of black holes, wars and hostile races. Will you give up your search and join the Universe Governing Body to try to bring peace to the galaxies? Or will you pick a side to fight on, joining in the wars? Will you travel in time, explore new worlds or go to school?

Most of the 44 possible endings seem to be your death or some vague ending without any real meaning. I'm surprised that, as a kid, I kept trying to find the endings I wanted.

This is the first (and so far only) Choose Your Own Adventure book I didn't finish. It reads like dull gibberish from an aging hippie. I stopped reading after coming across my fifth ending of nonsense. The initial plot is that you have just turned 18 (in apparently 3 days and 2 hours) and must now choose your home planet for citizenship. You were born in space and can choose either your father's planet, with its troubled past and dying sun, or your mother's mysterious planet, also with a troubled past but a bright future. On my reading I had the chance to go back to the space academy for lessons, to command a starship, to become a research scientist, and to fight in a shadow vs light war. It sounds terribly exciting. But nothing really happens. And you have a friend follow you around who does so little the writer has to keep reminding you he's there. Now I'm just going to quote the endings I reached so you can fully appreciate the level of writing.

After being taught during a private lesson about the 'infinity of knowledge to explore within ourselves' I was given the choice to either travel to the era of dinosaurs or do some unknown point in the past. I chose the latter and on the next page got: "A chance to go to the unknown is probably really risky, but there is that desire in most people to take risks. You race back in time toward the edge of eternity, the beginning of the entire universe. You achieve an elastic weightlessness, and a sense of complete peace and calm. There is no sound, no light. But no darkness either. You race back to the very beginning, to the pulsating, exciting start. You return to the big bang that started the whole thing. You are and you have been a part of everything, always. You are and you have been a part of everything, always. The beginning is the end. THE END" Wasn't that fun!?

My next path lead me to investigating the cause of war by time traveling to a Mars in the past. Sounds exciting, right? After traveling back this is literally all there is: "When you arrive on Mars, you are invisible and can travel through space, through solid matter, and even into the thoughts of people. What is the cause of revolt on Mars? Who knows. Greed? Famine? Envy? Jealousy? Maybe just an instinctive need to battle, a basic drive to test and fight for the sheer sense of fighting. It's too complex. Everyone has a different answer. They all point to the other guy. All you know is that creatures get killed, cities get destroyed. What a way to live. That's why there is a new way- if only it will work. You are part of the new way, a way of sharing. THE END" What!? This 'way of sharing' hadn't been mentioned even once.

And you join the side of the shadows, who are fighting against beings of light, and are given the choice to either be a ground soldier or a pilot. Both sound pretty exciting. And after choosing the latter this is all I got: "The rocket ship forces sound the most interesting, and besides, you are trained as a space pilot. Ground forces would be difficult for you. You are promoted to a command rank and put in charge of a large spacecraft with laser rocket weapons. From then on you are in space searching out and destroying alien ships. But you think to yourself, is this any kind of life, forever destroying things? Maybe you will quit. THE END" Why bother giving the reader lots of choices just to keep wrapping them up in one page philosophies. I'm not reading for half-baked philosophies, I want adventure!

In the same shadows vs light war after choosing to retreat in battle as a soldier the next page reads: "Retreat is not always a bad thing. After all, you should go with what feels right. To fight now would only create further destruction. Enough damage has been done. Level off, give way. Let the other side realize what has been happening, too. As you retreat, the enemy seems to let up in amazement. The smoke clears, the noise stops. They retreat also. There is no more fighting. THE END" ...

And if I didn't retreat right away this was my other choice and ending: "There is a chance to get away. During a quiet moment, your group escapes to some remote hills far away from the battle area. Then something happens. The energy source for the lasers, the spacecrafts, the communications systems, mysteriously vanishes. There is no more energy except your own human energy. Weapons are useless. Radios and transporters are just pieces of metal and plastic. They are not working either. To survive now, you will have to hunt for food and support each other. THE END" I have no idea what happened. And I don't care. This is when I stopped reading. By the way, this page is accompanied by a picture of a caveman fighting a sabertooth tiger with a spear. It's a fine picture but seems like it's from another book.

The ONLY positives to this book are that there are a lot of choices, though they end up leading to gibberish, and the art by Paul Granger is pretty good. Unfortunately the art choices are kinda dull and/or small and few take advantage of the artist's skill for detailed drawings.