Novels adapted from videogames are numerous, but novels about the phenomenon and culture of videogaming have been few and far between—until recently. Here are 3 great novels from the burgeoning subgenre of videogame lit.
In Lucky Wander Boy, we follow the story of Adam Pennyman, whose life’s work is assembling a massive encyclopedia of every videogame ever. The entries in it (and we get to read a few) are more like personal essays that examine events in his life through the lens of whatever videogame he was playing at the time. One chapter, in which he tells us about the time he was convinced that he was curing his grandmother’s cancer by playing Microsurgeon, just wrecked me.
While re-playing games to prepare for writing their entries, he can find no trace of one of his childhood favorites, Lucky Wander Boy. He begins a quest to find it and play it again, but it proves to be as elusive and mysterious as Polybius. His search is really for meaning, and things get pretty metaphysical by the end.
The paperback edition of this book appears to be out of print, but you can easily buy it used or get it on your Kindle. By the way, the author is currently one of the showrunners for Game of Thrones on HBO.
You’ve read this, right? Ernest Cline’s amazing novel is already being made into a movie by Steven Spielberg. It’s set in a fairly grim future where poverty is rampant, but so is an obsession with videogames from the 1980s and classic geek culture in general. That’s because a brilliant billionaire game developer died and left the world a game to play, and the winner gets his estate.
The game is played in an impossibly vast virtual world that started as a MMOG and grew to essentially become an alternate internet. Most of the world is jacked into it so regularly that the in-game money has become the most stable currency in the world.
Interest in the big game has died down until our hero, Wade Watts, solves a puzzle and rockets to the top of the leaderboard. Soon, he’s competing with millions of people and an evil corporation to find the remaining challenges and figure out how to beat them. Every clue, puzzle, and challenge he faces relies on his knowledge of 80s pop culture and his skills in classic arcade games.
The novel is chock full of geeky references, breathless action, and a ton of heart. I think you’ll love it as much as I do.
Our protagonist, Russell, gets a job at a AAA game development studio, Black Arts, which was founded by a couple of his old buddies. One of them died under mysterious circumstances while developing a new game engine, WAFFLE, that is to be the basis for Black Arts’ next game.
Black Arts isn’t actually doing so well financially, and their next game has to be a hit. While working on the game, Russell encounters a serious glitch that puts the whole project in danger of falling apart. As he investigates it further, he comes to realize that the bug may have been deliberately programmed into the engine by his deceased friend.
As he gets closer to understanding the nature of the “bug”, Russell finds that his own life may be in danger. But is it actually a bug—or a feature? Did the death of Russell’s friend have something to do with Black Arts and WAFFLE? Is Russell getting too close to the truth?
YOU is a fascinating book that delivers a sci-fi mystery wrapped up in an insider’s view of the world of AAA game development. The first edition featured cover art by Superbrothers of Sword & Sworcery fame, so it looks really good on a shelf or coffee table, too!
3 comments