Choose Your Own Adventure #18: Underground Kingdom

After playing through a Which Way book that made the Blaster Master origin story look fairly logical in comparison and was probably less than 500 total words worth of "Pick a door!" before a deadly head injury it's time to return to the relatively verbose world of Choose Your Own Adventure. I have to admit, I'm pretty hyped for today's offering. Hollow Earth is one of the those science fiction ideas that really needs to make a comeback. Sure, it's a scientific impossibility, but so are vampires, benevolent factory owners who have bizarre sexual proclivities and vampire benevolent factory et. cetras, and that impossibility doesn't seem to dissuade what passes for the modern writer. I mean, come on, let's have more stories about the new race just discovered beneath Denver and so forth.

 It's time we get off our high horse and have a national conversation on the coming race.

Unfortunately this one gets off to a poor start with the always unwelcome Edward Packard "Special Warning!!!!" a gimmick that has reared its ugly head in the past. Sadly, this one promises to be a veritable family reunion of Edward Packard tropes that I've become so thoroughly familiar with since I started jousting this particular windmill in 2013. In this case, we're offered to the chance to read theories from some "Is such a thing even possible?" academic regarding Hollow Earth. To sweeten the deal, we're told this excerpt will be "rather boring." My Hype Level is dropping fast and we're not even to the first page.

Wait 'til Queen Victoria hears about this!

I slog it out and the main takeaways of this not exactly thrilling dissertation on ideas that have been proven wrong about as completely as possible is that the Earth is in some ways like a pumpkin, there's a "Black Sun" inside that absorbs heat instead of generating it and some reverse gravity concept is at play. It's very important to describe this because otherwise ten-year-old Timmy would be crying about scientific inaccuracies in a lazily written homage to 1880s pulp novels.

The story finally gets going and at least the set-up is mercifully economical. I'm in Greenland with a dynamic duo of a geologist and a different kind of geologist named Larsen and Sneed. These guys have "get devoured by giant lizards living in Earth's mantle" written all over them, so I'm fighting not to get too attached. We've reached the "bottomless crevasse," a sight we regard with mixed feelings of joy and sorrow. Yes, this is a massive discovery, but good old Dr. Vivaldi disappeared into it a year ago and hasn't been seen since. Barring some miracle, the author might be forced to come up with a new name to attach to his personality-free academic stereotypes. Please, no. 

  The answer is "fiction."

We stand there in silent thought, wondering how something could be bottomless and so on. Before this philosophical onanism can offer the massive pay-offs you'd expect some strange force pulls me into the chasm and I'm in free fall. I'm given a choice to aim for a ledge, but decide against it because all that boring but useful knowledge I gained a few minutes ago suggests a change in gravity should kick in and save me from the horrible death that is so common in these stories. 

Instead I land in a heap on the ledge. It turns out the pages for the two choices were reversed. A pretty embarrassing mistake considering what a big money operation this was at the time and that this is the very first choice. Oh well, play it where it lies, right? A snowbank prevented serious injury and like the true hero that I am I'm able to offer pitiful cries for help to the Geology Dream Team up above. They're getting ropes ready, but then I remember the bizarre sucking force and decide to warn them off and hopefully forestall their appointment with mortality. Yes, I'm the kind of person who roots for the security officers in old Star Trek episodes. As doomed as these guys clearly are, I want to see them defy the odds.

 Believe it or not they actually survive. Really!

Forewarned, the rock scientists are able to rig up some ropes and pull my sorry rear end out of the dead drop slot. Everyone then immediately agrees we should quit while we're ahead and give up on all the amazing and totally radical adventures that might have otherwise occurred. So we go home. The End. 

Yeah, I spent more time reading what even the author described as dull introductory material than in the actual story itself. I did save those guys who I'm sure take the dirt nap on every other path, but that was about it. I can't really give you a fair rating after this kind of run, but based on what I did read I'd say don't get your hopes up. Hey, at least Dr. Vivaldi won't be coming back. Yeah, right.

Look at the nerd with the science book! Hilarious! Can't stop laughing!

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Choose Your Own Adventure #19: Secret of the Pyramids

Last time the Twist-a-Plot pain was delivered via a somewhat risible tale of the evils lurking behind the local news. Today it's back to Choose Your Own Adventure to check out a book that represents a major milestone in the development of this series. In 1983 the demand for wussy vehicles tales laden with far left ranting and space/time adventures that are obviously drug abuse metaphors had outstripped the ability for R.A Montgomery and Edward Packard to respectively supply them. This meant new authors would join the stable, with wildly varying results. Dismissing the mysterious D. Terman this is the first entry by someone other than the two founding fathers of this glorious empire.

The writer in question is Richard Brightfield, who we already got to know in a book all about sub-mission. Judging by that effort he shares R.A. Mongomery's fascination with impractical modes of transport and is deeply interested in various pseudo-sciences that have fallen out of favor. We're going to turn that loose in Egypt. I'm already dreading the inevitable "sand buggies" and "ley line intersections."

Alternate title: "Secret Agent for ISIS"

Like any great work of literary fiction it starts with chilling out at home, doing absolutely nothing because pretty much every piece of technology that now dominates day-to-day life had yet to be invented. I get a call from Uncle Bruce who just got back from Egypt and is planning to return soon. Offered an invite, I'm all over it, as opposed to the 2014 reaction which we would be "Naw, got these video games to play. 'Sides, that whole area is now dominated by a violent and nihilistic democracy gone mad. Smell you later." 

Instead, I'll smell him right now as we take an airplane to Rome, breezing through the non-existent security and taking several bottles of soda on the plane, or at least I would assume. I learn that my relative is working on a less than credible theory involving cosmic rays, big gaping holes under the pyramids and the dream of producing unlimited energy. Something tells me a lot of this guy's speeches start with "Is such a thing even possible?" and end with "...it was aliens!"

Meanwhile, some guy is craning to listen, but because airline paranoia isn't really a thing yet I dismiss this as meaningless. I also note he looks strange, but the tight Brightfield prose doesn't explain how, so I guess you could call this "Choose Your Own Superficial Prejudices." R.A. Montgomery would just declare him a midget and be done with it.

Please, share your unlimited energy via cosmic rays theories.

Arriving in Cairo (Egypt, not Illinois) my Uncle and I part ways so he can deal with "red tape." Finally something a modern audience can relate to. The otherwise undescribed strange man presses a piece of paper into my hand and then runs off. It says "Beware the Sphinx." Yeah, thanks for the tip. If I see that sucka I'll be sure to blast him in the center of the face with Napoleonic artillery, assuming someone hasn't done that already.  

I want some answers, or maybe an actual physical description of some sort, so I follow the man. We get your patented exotic locale cab chase that used to be common in popular entertainment before scenes of characters typing on keyboards replaced that as the go-to dramatic bridge. Then a push through a "thick crowd" and I spot the runner going into a cafe. Man, all these rich descriptions of Egypt, the author must have done tons of research and not just watched part of an Indiana Jones movie with the sound turned off or something similar.

Next we get belly dancers. I assume the scimitar-wielding fanatics, foul-tempered camels and nervous guides are still to come. I find a table and try to adjust my eyes to the poor light. I've got to find this stranger, because if I don't there's no way I can tell anyone else what to look for. "He was just strange, all right?"

Just depicting what's in the book, nothing gratuitous, no way.

I'm given super strong Egyptian coffee (Turkey, Egypt, same thing) and one of the dancers locks eyes with me, but I wreck it by immediately passing out. I wake up chained to a bed. I'm still in the same building and can hear the music coming from below. Yup, this is one amazing story about the Pyramids. Before anything even more freaky can occur one of the dancers frees me from the lock and helps me climb out the window. Yup, it's all going down in this tiny cafe. Casablanca would have been way better if light bondage, knock out pills and dancing girls with hearts of gold had been bigger plot elements, maybe replacing that French anthem scene.

Myself and the low-level sex industry employee make it out of the window and scurry over some rooftops, chased by unknown but bad-intentioned pursuers. We do the obligatory roof-to-roof jump and the exotic dancer has to drag me up to the next building, a scene lovingly depicted in a full page illustration. "Are all belly dancers as strong as you are?" I lamely ask. I'm told she was trained by acrobats and is probably only doing the hip-shaking to pay her way through community college. Or was kidnapped by a gang. It was one or the other. 

I really didn't think sex trafficking was going to be a thing in this book, but there it is. 

 

 Fans of fad workouts, hold on to your hats!

It turns out this entire quarter of Cairo is controlled by the belly dancer cartel, so escape is by no means certain. We finally make it out hidden in a donkey cart and after leaving the area part ways. Morning finds me in some cemetery and after a pointless freak-out I'm reunited with my Uncle and share the amazing story of erotic slavery, chain kink and the physical benefits of acrobatics. Suffice it to say, I'm on the next flight back to New York. I guess all those questions about space energy and the dangerous Sphinx will have to go unanswered.

I'll concede that this book overcame considerable limitations (i.e. the author being a lazy hack) to rise to the level of acceptable mediocrity. I don't think it will win any awards for originality or descriptive prose, but the story I got was decent enough. Besides, there was belly dancing slavery. There will always be that.

I've had it with...you know what, just forget it.

Check Out My Books!

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read free excerpts here and here.

His first novel "The Foolchild Invention" is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.