The Dream Park novels of Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

Dream Park - Orbit paperback œ4.99
The Barsoom Project - Pan SF hardback œ13.95
Dream Park:The Voodoo Game - Pan SF hardback œ15.99

If I could have any treat possible, I'd love a trip to Dream Park.
This resort, set in the California of the future, after a large
part of it was devastated by the big earthquake everyone had been
expecting for years, is a live, virtual reality, fantasy
role-playing area. Games are set up by a Game Master, and
interested players - of which there are many - can book a place on
a Lore Master's team. This being the 21st century, technology has
progressed in leaps and bounds. Holograms are used extensively in
the Games, as well as live actors. Sometimes it's hard to tell
where reality ends and fantasy beings. And all Games are filmed
and later sold as entertainment.

The first book, Dream Park, introduces the reader to the resort,
owned by Cowles Industries. A 'grudge' Game between Game Master
Richard Lopez and Lore Master Chester Henderson is about to take
place. It's big news and a lot of experienced and novice players
would like to be on Chester's team.

The team is selected and enters the gaming area of Dream Park.
Their destination - New Guinea where the Cargo Cult is still
active. The natives have been diverting cargo belonging to the
Europeans but one tribe has stolen something very important. It's
up the Gamers to get it back ... whatever 'it' may be. Chester and
the others are determined to succeed but Richard Lopez is equally
determined that they won't.  However, everything must be played
according to the rules.

Things get more complicated when a valuable, experimental item
is stolen from Dream Park. During the theft a security guard is
killed. All the evidence points to one of the Gamers being
the guilty party, having sneaked out of the Gaming Area overnight.
There's only one way to find out who did it. Alex Griffin, Head of
Security at Dream Park enters the Game at the first available
opportunity to investigate from the inside.

The tension keeps up right through the book, not only because of
the theft and murder but also because of the Game itself. The
characters threw themselves into their parts and I felt I was
along there with them, cheering them on, marvelling at the effects
and feeling it was all for real.

                         * * * * *

The second book, The Barsoom Project, involves a plan to terraform
Mars but this book is still basically a Dream Park novel, though
the Barsoom Project is an integral part of it.

Eviane had made her first visit to Dream Park eight years before
the time at which this novel takes place. Then she took part in
The Fimbulwinter Game which ended with a spectacular shoot-out
between the Gamers and the minions of the Cabal, an evil sect.
Eviane took aim with her rifle and shot two of the Cabal. Even
she was surprised by the realism of the effects as the first man
died. So were the Dream Park technicians who realised that a real
rifle had, somehow, been exchanged for one of the trick ones the
players should have been using. One man lay dead, another
seriously wounded. Who was responsible? Only someone working at
Dream Park could have made the switch ...

It's now eight years later and Eviane is back at Dream Park with a
friend, Charlene Arbenez, niece of Ambassador Arbenez from the
zero-gravity orbiting laboratory, Falling Angel. They are taking
part in a special Game, the Fat Ripper, designed to 'rip the fat'
from overweight individuals, but used too by anyone with an eating
disorder, sufferers from substance abuse and so forth. The Fat
Ripper uses the same setting as the Fimbulwinter campaign.

One person at Dream Park, seeing Eviane's face on the screens,
goes into a panic. What is she doing here? Why wasn't he told?
There's only one thing to do - kill her out of the Game. It isn't
until her character is 'killed' in an unplanned attack, to the
astonishment of the rest of the staff, that her identity becomes
clear to Alex Griffin, still Chief of Security at Dream Park and
then he has to make the decision - should he put this unstable
girl back into the Game and see what happens? Or would that be
dangerous, not only to her, but to the rest of the players,
especially Charlene who, because of her uncle, is a target for a
possible terrorist attack?

In the background looms the Barsoom Project, on which so much
money and prestige rides. How far will people go to make sure it
doesn't succeed?

The characters, once again, are excellent and the scenario
believable. The Barsoom Project, after which the book is named, is
really incidental to the storyline since it is the Fat Ripper
which takes up most of the book. As the characters go through
their gruelling adventures in an aim to come to terms with
themselves, you get very caught up with their pain and successes.
However, the possibility of sabotage and/or murder being
interwoven into this fantasy setting (real as it is for those
taking part in it) makes the whole book a great read.

                         * * * * *

In the third book, Voodoo Game, various teams (Army, University of
California, Apple Computers, Texas Instruments/Mitsubushi and
General Dynamics) have been entered in a special contest scenario,
The Voodoo Game, which will take place over several days in a
building owned by Dream Park's parent corporation.  Not far into
the book, before the Game starts, one of the security officers
connected with the building is murdered by one of the Gamers. This
fact isn't kept from the reader, neither is the murderer's
identity.

The Voodoo Game hasn't been running too long before the various
officials connected with it also work out who the murderer is.
But, like the reader, they don't know why. Various theories are
put forward and shot down as the Voodoo Game progresses. Will they
be able to prove the murderer's guilt and bring him to justice?
And does he have an accomplice?

The book is very well-written and I found it very hard to put
down, just like the previous two. The characters are believable
and the setting ... well, imagine playing a real-time RPG in a
derelict building in the middle of the next century with all the
technological advances that will have been made in that time.  All
monsters are visible though the VR visors, as are traps, treasure,
auras and so forth, providing the characters are of the right
class. It's an RPG player's dream. And, no, I didn't guess why the
murderer had 'dunnit' either. It's worth reading Dream Park
and The Barsoom Project first but even read on its own, Voodoo
Game will make sense to a new reader.
                                               Sue









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