Dream Park [Paperback]

The story is relatively simple. A group of pretend adventurers suit up for a campaign called "The South Seas Treasure Game". As in the early Role Playing Games, there are Dungeon Masters, warriors, magicians and thieves. But the difference here is that they play in an artificial enclosure that has been enhanced with special effects, holograms, actors and a clever storyline. The players get as close as possible to truly living their adventure.

The plot thickens when a security guard inside the park is murdered and the main suspects are those playing the game. The park's head of security, Alex Griffin, joins the game to find the killer, but finds new meaning in the games he helps keep alive.

In my youth, this was all fascinating, thrilling stuff. I wanted nothing more than for Dream Park to become reality. The game was deftly plotted and there was a good deal of humor throughout. The characters, except for Griffin, were not rendered well, but I didn't care. They did their jobs as fodder for the game master's trickery and that was all I needed. The authors' real genius lie in the descriptions of the workings of the park and of the game.

I recently reread Dream Park. At the age of 40, the adventure still stands strong. It's not exactly an adult's book, but neither is it strictly for young adults. The ideas and concepts that were once fresh and startling are now old hat to readers of Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, but the archaic ideas about what was possible add a sense of nostalgia, a glimpse of what the world was like when it stood on the rim of the present. For this reason, Dream Park might be enjoyable to new readers, adults and teens alike.

Sadly, much of what was predicted has not yet come to pass. Real-time gaming has not gone much further than seedy laser-tag parlors on the outskirts of town. But I know it's possible. It's going to happen. I just need to be patient.

In fact, I was eager to find this in paperback, because a lot of people seem to rate it highly both as adventure fiction and for its portrayal of role playing and roleplayers.

I was severely disappointed. The characters are pretty wooden, and the world itself is pretty unconvincing. The authors try to convince us that the "Game" is a big thing, carrying huge monetary gains for TV rights and novelization, but I really fail to see how public could really be interested in this.

The attempts to make us sympathize with the players and seeing how they are so engrossed in it to actually care more for the game itself than the rest of the world are pretty unconvincing, too, and the story seems flat and forced in more than a place.

Characters' psychology is probably not a forte for Niven, but unfortunately all the SFX razzle dazzle fail to carry the story... just like an Hollywood action film, in fact.