Gaming in many forms has been part of the fandom community for decades now, so it’s not surprising that one of the best-known authors in the science fiction field would decide to do a series built upon the idea of gaming taken to a new level. And in doing so, he has made use of myth motifs in interesting new ways. Larry Niven is known for thinking big – as was demonstrated in his Ringworld trilogy, which had a ring-shaped construct big enough that it circled clear around its sun! But unlike that trilogy, which, like the Dune books, got worse as it went along, the Dream Park trilogy actually works all the way from its start in Dream Park to its conclusion (for now) in The California Voodoo Game.
Dream Park, which makes the present-day Disney theme parks look positively primitive, runs the ultimate virtual reality role-playing games using the latest holographic technology, combined with a cast of make-up and sfx-enhanced actors that can’t be matched. The most successful Gamers who play in these games are on teams sponsored by Apple and the like; they are world-famous and rather wealthy, thanks to public broadcasts of the lavishly computer-enhanced Games. Not to mention the computer games, t-shirts, and so forth that Cowles Industries, parent company of Dream Park, sells after each Game is complete. And a good Game is one in which, like it or not, Gamers are placed at risk high enough to maim or kill if they are not careful.
Since the holographic technologies I mentioned above are good enough to create both monsters – such as real-looking zombies with rotting heads and intestines dragging behind them – and heroines – tall, strong, and wearing, ahem, not much at all – it’s not at all surprising that Dream Park can indeed create fantasy worlds where actors and customers can interact in classical adventures of science fiction or swords-and-sorcery. But when, in the first book Dream Park, a murder takes place in the park, the game becomes a lot more real for security chief Alex Griffin. Griffin is more or less the central character for the series, and apparently attracts bad luck without meaning to do so. People die, employees do really bad things, and even lovers can’t be trusted. Dream Park uses as its core myth for this Game the Cargo Cult myth that developed after World War II in the South Pacific. Certain tribes there began to believe that manna (literally) from cargo planes would be theirs. Though the Game always assumes that no players will die during the course of play, no one counts on murder happening. After all, death is but a dream here that one wakens from, isn’t it? Try telling that to Griffin, who enters the Game as an actor. Or try telling it to the corpse on the cold, cruel ground…
The Barsoom Project has a weak premise, that of the ultimate fat-ripping program, but the plot overcomes that weakness. The story centers on a once quite beautiful woman, now very fat and so out of condition that she’s really at risk playing this Game. Hence, she’s a good candidate for the weight-losing fantasy game known as Fat Rippers. But, haunted by the past and just off a lengthy stay in a mental hospital, she has returned to Dream Park to exorcise a nightmare that has become reality for her. However, Dream Park allows nothing to be what it seems, and her dreams will become frighteningly real as the past begins to repeat itself – this time with her as the target… And once again, Alex Griffin must figure out why someone’s bent on killing off a gamer. The game this time involves Inuit mythology – a lot more complex than the Papua New Guinean mythos of Dream Park! When the Park hosts a meeting of powerful nations to discuss the upcoming Mars reclamation project, life again becomes rather interesting for Alex Griffin, especially as a supposedly small-scale game gets almost completely out of control. When a killer and industrial spy who’s also a for sale to the highest bidder is intent at all costs on getting hold of something very valuable, Griffin once again enters the Game. Need I say he does it because someone close to him is murdered? I thought not.
The California Voodoo Game is the latest in the series to date, but Niven has said another one will be coming someday. In The California Voodoo Game, the largest and highest-stakes game ever for Dream Park is being played in an arcology damaged in the Great California Earthquake – yes, it finally happened! The game is jeopardized by an industrial saboteur, possibly the same one that got away from Griffin in the previous novel. (Oath of Fealty, another novel which Niven co-wrote with Jerry Pournelle, is set in an arcology. An “arcology” is simply a very large self-contained city inside a single structure.) Once again, Griffin must enter the game and stop the killer/thief without alerting the public or the other players. In many ways, this novel is the strongest of the three, as it makes use of a setting outside the Dream Park that neither Griffin as Security Chief nor the Game Master can begin to control. It certainly doesn’t help that the designers of this Game decided to use Voodoo as the basis for the game. Voodoo is perhaps the most complex mythos one could ever hope not to encounter, as it’s based on African tribal myths mixed with Catholicism and Caribbean folklore – and filtered over and over again into a very strange gumbo. Will Griffin find the killer/thief? Will the Game be completed without serious maiming or death? I’m not telling!
All three of these novels work as mysteries, as science fiction worlds, as clever users of various myths. You really should read them in order, as a number of characters do develop as the trilogy evolves. Even long-suffering Griffin evolves along the way.
(Ace Books, 1981)
(Ace Books, 1989)
(Ace Books, 1991)
