If my previous few entries seemed a bit lackluster, there's a reason for that. There's no getting around it: this is not a good gamebook. Everything about it, from the writing to the art to the design, comes across as half-baked, like a project that was never fully completed. It was hard for me to summon up much enthusiasm for writing about it, let alone playing it, and I feel like that came through in my posts. It's going to happen sometimes, I'm afraid. I'm playing through the entire Fighting Fantasy series, and I can't like them all.
The thing is, it should have been good. Steve Jackson is one of my very favourite gamebook designers, and I expect any work from him to be innovative, if nothing else. I suppose it succeeds on that point, being the first sci-fi book in the series, but I would rate that as the book's only success.
Jackson is often quite terse when writing gamebooks. I've always preferred Ian Livingstone's prose, while rating Jackson as the superior designer. Jackson's gamebook writing (at least early on) is direct and to the point, without much time spent on extraneous details, but in his other works there's an excitable quality to it. I always go back to The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and the enthusiasm with which the hero reacts when finding a bottle of rum. ("By golly, it is rum!") There's nothing like that here. The writing is detached and clinical throughout, lacking verve or excitement. This could be a good fit for a sci-fi book of a certain type, but Starship Traveller is trying to do Star Trek, and if there's one thing that original Star Trek has it's heart. It's not so big on clinical detachment.
The setting feels very disjointed, which is to be expected in a book that involves warping from planet to planet. It would have been nice to get some more connections between the various worlds, though. As it is there's a few encounters with the Ganzig Confederation, a race of star-faring lizard men, but otherwise the planets keep to themselves, and the book has little sense of cohesion.
That wouldn't be a problem if the individual planets were interesting in their own right, but too many of them have nothing to offer. The ones that do feature intriguing scenarios are all too brief and simplistic. The highlight for me was the jungle planet where you must hunt for game; it's deadly, and makes for some tense gameplay. I didn't reach it in this play-through, and I'm not even sure that you can visit it and still win.
Speaking of winning, the book takes a long time to make it clear just what the reader needs to do. The goal is laid out at the beginning: find a way home. No guidance on how to do so is given, however, until the very end, when you are pressured by your mutinous crew into flying into a black hole. An exceedingly lucky reader might have found the right coordinates on the first try, but it's all too possible for this to be the first time the reader learns that they need coordinates. Jackson can often be frustratingly obtuse in his gamebooks, and that trait is on display here.
There are other frustrating moments, but the most egregious is the maze that the player must navigate when testing the dimensional portal. As I mentioned a few posts ago, this is essential to completing the game. The end of the maze has two dead ends, and you must choose which one to step off. There's a fifty-fifty chance of instant death, with no clue at all which is the correct path. This is exactly the sort of arbitrary nonsense that epitomises the worst that gamebooks have to offer. Luckily the nature of this book makes it simple to skip planets and breeze through the book quickly to get back to this point, but it's still a terrible bit of design.
That's enough disparaging of Steve Jackson, though. It's time to turn my attention to Peter Andrew Jones, who illustrated this book. This is the guy who painted the cover to The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, so we know that he's a talented artist. The quality here varies wildly, from stark and imaginative to amateurish and overly abstract. I don't know the circumstances under which it was created, but I would be very surprised if this book wasn't illustrated under significant time constraints.
All in all, Starship Traveller never quite achieves what it sets out to do. The setting is dry and disjointed, the scenarios are flat and lacking in meaningful choices, and it never gets even close to capturing the feel of its source material. I doubt that Steve Jackson is ever going to write more gamebooks, so I feel safe in saying that this is the worst one he ever made.
Plus, it only has 340 entries. What a rip-off!
Addendum - S.T.A.M.I.N.A. Rating
Story & Setting: There are a lot of interesting ideas here, and snapshots of settings, but none of them ever feel fully fleshed out, and the planets aren't really connected at all. The story of trying to find your way home is a solid one, but it the forced decision to fly down a black hole regardless of whether you've found the right coordinates is daft. Rating: 2 out of 7.
Toughness: Kudos to Steve Jackson for writing another gamebook where high stats aren't required to win. Even more kudos for including a path to victory that doesn't require a single die roll. I have to ding it for the "void maze" section as well, where one of two indistinguishable choices results in death. Rating: 3 out of 7.
Aesthetics: The writing is sparse and unenthused, and the art is abstract and frequently difficult to make out. Rating: 2 out of 7.
Mechanics: Being able to control multiple crew members is a cool idea, as is the addition of ship-to-ship combat. None of it's all that well done though, and there are so many stats to roll that starting over feels like a bit of a chore. Rating 3 out of 7.
Innovation & Influence: It's the first sci-fi in the FF series, and maybe the first one overall. It also does a lot of new things with the system, such as phaser battles, ship-to-ship combat, and multiple crew members. Even when he's writing a bad gamebook, Jackson has some interesting ideas going on. Rating: 6 out of 7.
NPCs & Monsters: Are there any to speak of? There are various aliens and robots, but none of them leave an impression, and your crew members are complete ciphers. Rating: 1 out of 7.
Amusement: I've tried to go through the entire FF series a few times, and I never look forward to Starship Traveller. The only section I really enjoy is the deadly hunting expedition, but I rarely get to see it because it's outside of the best path through the book. Rating: 2 out of 7.
No bonus point. The totals above add up to 19, which doubled gives a S.T.A.M.I.N.A. Rating of 38. That feels a little high to me, but it's hard to tell without more books to measure it against.
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