Top of Cool

While surfing the Wired RSS feeds, I noticed an article about the return of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series of books. Apparently, they are updating and releasing eight of the original titles. I am happy, yet saddened at the same time.

What saddens me is that these titles are getting “updated”. Maybe it’s just the nostalgic part of me, but this would be like someone rehashing William Gibson’s Neuromancer to make it more compatible with how the future really unfolds. I don’t like it. Leave the classics be. I don’t have a problem with releasing new CYOA books. A kind of TNG for the CYOA series is fine with me. But let’s leave TOS alone, please. I would prefer there not be a “Choose Your Own Adventure: Special Edition” where the guns are replaced with walkie-talkies or whatever.

On the other hand, I am overjoyed that these books, which apparently sold half a billion (as in billion, with a “B”) copies, will be re-launched and make it that much easier for my future children to enjoy these books, as I did when I was l’il squirt. This series and the Encyclopedia Brown series were the books that kept me busy until I started moving onto the “hard” stuff like Asimov and Brin. (I, like my father, plan to introduce the Foundation series at an early age.) The great thing about the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series is that they were also my first experience with a truly interactive media experience.

The great thing about these books was that I think they really built the foundation for my love of video games and PnP RPG’s. Interactive Fiction built the bridge from normal literature and mindless shoot ‘em ups to games like Wasteland and Adventure Construction Set.

The similarities between CYOA and CRPG’s should be pretty obvious. In fact, I’d be interested to know how many game designers have been influenced by these works. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if these were the first foray into interactive fiction for most gamers.

So, I for one welcome our new “Choose Your Own Adventure” overlords!

I recently picked up State of Fear by Michael Crichton, that one guy who wrote Jurassic Park. I’m not very far into it yet, but it’s a pretty informative book. A small introduction reminds us that characters and organizations are used fictitiously, but anything marked with a footnote is real, and the book contains an appendix citing sources for all of the footnotes. I wish all authors would do this.

As a sidenote, I was browsing around on MichaelCrichton.com and noticed an interesting speech he gave establishing that extraterrestrial aliens are responsible for global warming.

Also, in light of today’s articles about “a new study comparing 7 million real world datapoints with several computer models of global warming,” I agree with Crichton’s take on this. I’ll take a computer climate model seriously when it accurately predicts future trends for the next ten years. Twenty would be preferable.