The California Voodoo Game

On a personal note on the progression of time, I remember picking up my copy of The California Voodoo Game from the second-hand section of Rainy Day Books (Fairway, Kansas) and reading it while my mom was at work. I was, at most, 13. This was the first book I ever read in the Dream Park series - and it lead to some pretty wild speculation about my own future career. Somehow I parlayed my skills at math (awesome) and tennis (not so hot) to become a fearsome warrior the likes of which the world had never seen... Two decades later, I suck at math, Rainy Day Books is on Twitter and The California Voodoo Game is as wildly entertaining as ever. First published in 1992, The California Voodoo Game is the third and final book in Niven and Barnes' Dream Park series. The overriding premise is that, in the 2050s, the ultimate spectator sport is Live Action Role Playing (LARP). The geeks have successfully inherited the earth. "Gaming" is a combination of physical skill, strategy and some pretty phenomenal holographic technology. Players wear special lenses that let them "see" things based on their character's powers and skills. Holographic special effects abound, but there's also a lot of climbing around, leaping off of things and whacking at props with foam-rubber blades. The lion's share of the trilogies entertainment value comes out of these scenes. Not just watching the characters crawl around being chased by tentacle-monsters, but also seeing how those tentacle-monsters were brought to life. The California Voodoo Game goes a step further than the other two books in the series: the teams in the Game are competing against one another - something like the SuperBowl of Swords n' Sorcery. If there's a flaw in the series, it is the heart-on-its-sleeve charge to promote LARPing. My 13-year-old self may have glided past the heavy-handed messaging in search of more action (or the sex scenes), but my 30 year-old self didn't. Like with Piers Anthony's Killobyte, the authors of the Dream Park series aren't happy to let an entertaining concept sell itself. Showing that fantasy/sport sword-gaming will be COMPLETELY AWESOME is a very easy pitch. Showing LARPing as the means to send people to Mars, get nerds laid and end terrorist conflicts... that's over-egging it. More skillfully done, each of the novels combines a murder mystery with a Game. Although using a Game to cure eating disorders is a stretch (seriously, that's book two), the combination of fantasy escapism & professional sporting is a fantastic foundation for intrigue. The California Voodoo Game is a particularly well-crafted mystery - the reader knows whodunnit from the early pages (hell, everyone does) - but the "why" is a tangled mystery that isn't revealed until the very end. Of the three books in the Dream Park series, Voodoo is perhaps the most entertaining - but also has the weakest characters of the lot. The series protagonist, Alex Griffin (the theme park's head of security) is almost a b

When science fiction like this emerges, it brings a sense of wonder, a moment of shock. "This Isn't Far Away!". California Voodoo Game tip-toes the fine lines of modern technology to bring a tale that is intriguing and imaginative. When role-players of our present meet and adopt the virtual reality technology of the near-future, then the world of this novel isn't far away. The cast of characters is vast, and often we don't get a very indepth vision of them. The Game, which takes on a life of its own for the players, is the most fully fleshed of the "characters". The Game, virtually painted over a huge and somewhat hazardous real-world, is made even more risky when some of the players are playing for higher stakes and breaking every rule.Okay, so the plot and the writing wasn't the greatest in Sci Fi Fiction today. The characters won't glow in godly pop-culturdom for years to come. But--the technology, the fantasy of this not-so-distant future is so compelling, it makes this book a near perfect escape.Gaming geeks of the world..rejoice! This one is for you. To the future of gaming..closer than we imagine.

The ending uses the torque of the climactic fight scene brilliantly; the beginning uses the Kama Sutra Gaming Society just enough. I'd like to see Niven use 'The Theory and Practice of Instant Learning' in his Internet scenes: a teleoperated World Wide Dream Park?

Dream Park was great, and California Voodoo Game even better. If the role-playing computer geeks ever conquer Disney World, it will be like this.I would like to note that while Larry Niven can be seen in this work, the flavor is much more like Steve Barnes' work.

Once again, Larry Niven proves himself to be a master of storytelling, weaving fantasy and science into a stunning tale of swordplay and circuitry, fencing and foul play. Definitely the best of the Dream Park series