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Choose Your Own Adventure #21
Hyperspace
YOU ARE ABOUT TO DISCOVER WHAT LIES BEYOND THE UNIVERSE.
Your new neighbor, Professor Zinka, is a brilliant scientist who is exploring the mysteries of Hyperspace. One day he invites you into his secret laboratory to show you his most daring invention—the hypolaser. Before you can stop him, he pulls a red lever—and vanishes into another dimension!
What should you do?
If you decide to pull the red lever too, turn to page 26.
If you decide to pull the green lever and try to bring your professor back, turn to page 33.
Be careful! If you enter this strange new universe you might meet your own double, or become the ruler of an alien race—or even be turned into a bat!
Your new neighbor, Professor Zinka, is a brilliant scientist who is exploring the mysteries of Hyperspace. One day he invites you into his secret laboratory to show you his most daring invention—the hypolaser. Before you can stop him, he pulls a red lever—and vanishes into another dimension!
What should you do?
If you decide to pull the red lever too, turn to page 26.
If you decide to pull the green lever and try to bring your professor back, turn to page 33.
Be careful! If you enter this strange new universe you might meet your own double, or become the ruler of an alien race—or even be turned into a bat!
128 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
1 person is currently reading
288 people want to read
About the author
Edward Packard
169 books125 followersEdward Packard attended and graduated from both Princeton University and Columbia Law School. He was one of the first authors to explore the idea of gamebooks, in which the reader is inserted as the main character and makes choices about the direction the story will go at designated places in the text.
The first such book that Edward Packard wrote in the Choose Your Own Adventure series was titled "Sugarcane Island", but it was not actually published as the first entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure Series. In 1979, the first book to be released in the series was "The Cave of Time", a fantasy time-travel story that remained in print for many years. Eventually, one hundred eighty-four Choose Your Own Adventure books would be published before production on new entries to the series ceased in 1998. Edward Packard was the author of many of these books, though a substantial number of other authors were included as well.
In 2005, Choose Your Own Adventure books once again began to be published, but none of Edward Packard's titles have yet been included among the newly-released books.
The first such book that Edward Packard wrote in the Choose Your Own Adventure series was titled "Sugarcane Island", but it was not actually published as the first entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure Series. In 1979, the first book to be released in the series was "The Cave of Time", a fantasy time-travel story that remained in print for many years. Eventually, one hundred eighty-four Choose Your Own Adventure books would be published before production on new entries to the series ceased in 1998. Edward Packard was the author of many of these books, though a substantial number of other authors were included as well.
In 2005, Choose Your Own Adventure books once again began to be published, but none of Edward Packard's titles have yet been included among the newly-released books.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
January 21, 2023
A mind-bending, trippy, and very creative installment to this old series. I don't recall this when I was a kid. I might have been growing out of them when this one came out. It's a shame because with it scientific theory driven story and space travel, as a Star Trek and Star Wars hungry kid I like to think I would have loved this one.
June 12, 2013
Okay, I remember being unsure whether I liked this Choose Your Own Adventure book or whether it just freaked me out, but I'd never read a book quite like it. It of course had the usual twists and turns that resulted from letting the reader choose the storyline, but what's different about this one is that the abject bizarreness of the results are actually explained somewhat by the plot. Sometimes in Choose Your Own Adventure, you could literally be choosing the apparently safest option and you would immediately get violently devoured by a snake, arrested, or cursed by someone you'd never met before. But in this book where pulling a lever takes you into "hyperspace," you have no idea what to expect and that seems about right. It reminds me a little of the Infinite Improbability Drive from Douglas Adams's Hitchhhiker's series, and I had some echoes of William Sleator's The Boy Who Reversed Himself. I think the author just went to town enjoying himself because he could get away with it here. I loved the fourth-wall breaking and the theoretical concepts (though in many cases they were poorly fleshed out). It was a lot of fun for me to read as an imaginative child, though I think I believed myself to be missing something when it just wasn't there.
June 27, 2015
A gateway to the stars
28 September 2012
I think I am getting to the books were I am really vague about their contents. Many of the later Choose Your Own Adventure books I would have read probably in one sitting and put them aside, and while the cover is recognisable (and it could simply be that I saw it in a shop and thought to myself that I wanted it) I an quite vague about the story. I do remember that my local library did have a number of them and because as a kid I really liked them I would have borrowed them. However, it is interesting that the earlier ones seem to sit in my head a lot more than many of these later ones (and I will probably not be writing any more commentaries on them after the next one).
Hyperspace is one of those concepts that speculates about ways to cross the vast distances of space without having to spend huge amounts of time doing so or having to deal with the problems of sub-light travel (namely that the faster you go, the heavier you get). The idea is that there exists another dimension which is smaller than this dimension and the hyperspace drive allows you to jump into that dimension to be able to travel to the nearest star (that I what I understand of the concept). Today, many of these ideas are little more than speculation, and sometimes I wonder whether we have the economic will to actually consider whether such forms of transport are possible.
Obviously, we need to take a few more steps before we look at interstellar travel, such as establishing colonies on other planets. However, the problem once again is economic will. In our modern capitalist society we always look at the cost-benefit analysis, or whether the benefit of a project is going to outweigh its cost. Many of these ideas will not turn a profit for years down the track, and investors do not want to have to wait that long. This is more so in an environment where the sharemarket is falling.
For instance, there are many companies out there that are exploring new ideas, however while during times of credit growth their stock price might rise on anticipation of results, during times of credit contraction the opposite will happen. Namely, when there is not much money circulating, a company will find it difficult raising capital to continue with the project, and while the project may initially prove profitable, what ends up happening is that the company's seed capital gets burned up in the inevitable failures that one requires to reach success, which means the company has to seek more finance to continue the research. Investors want success and they want success through a proven timeline, and this rarely happens. While money may flow freely during boom times, when those times come to an end, the value of the stock inevitably falls. As they say, the market rises on the rumour and falls on the fact.
28 September 2012
I think I am getting to the books were I am really vague about their contents. Many of the later Choose Your Own Adventure books I would have read probably in one sitting and put them aside, and while the cover is recognisable (and it could simply be that I saw it in a shop and thought to myself that I wanted it) I an quite vague about the story. I do remember that my local library did have a number of them and because as a kid I really liked them I would have borrowed them. However, it is interesting that the earlier ones seem to sit in my head a lot more than many of these later ones (and I will probably not be writing any more commentaries on them after the next one).
Hyperspace is one of those concepts that speculates about ways to cross the vast distances of space without having to spend huge amounts of time doing so or having to deal with the problems of sub-light travel (namely that the faster you go, the heavier you get). The idea is that there exists another dimension which is smaller than this dimension and the hyperspace drive allows you to jump into that dimension to be able to travel to the nearest star (that I what I understand of the concept). Today, many of these ideas are little more than speculation, and sometimes I wonder whether we have the economic will to actually consider whether such forms of transport are possible.
Obviously, we need to take a few more steps before we look at interstellar travel, such as establishing colonies on other planets. However, the problem once again is economic will. In our modern capitalist society we always look at the cost-benefit analysis, or whether the benefit of a project is going to outweigh its cost. Many of these ideas will not turn a profit for years down the track, and investors do not want to have to wait that long. This is more so in an environment where the sharemarket is falling.
For instance, there are many companies out there that are exploring new ideas, however while during times of credit growth their stock price might rise on anticipation of results, during times of credit contraction the opposite will happen. Namely, when there is not much money circulating, a company will find it difficult raising capital to continue with the project, and while the project may initially prove profitable, what ends up happening is that the company's seed capital gets burned up in the inevitable failures that one requires to reach success, which means the company has to seek more finance to continue the research. Investors want success and they want success through a proven timeline, and this rarely happens. While money may flow freely during boom times, when those times come to an end, the value of the stock inevitably falls. As they say, the market rises on the rumour and falls on the fact.
July 13, 2025
Arguably the last book of Edward Packard's innovative early phase with Choose Your Own Adventure that includes The Cave of Time, Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey?, Inside UFO 54-40, and Underground Kingdom, Hyperspace may be the most creative of them all. When mathematics professor Karl Zinka moves into the neighborhood, you ask him what sort of work he does, but he says his experimentations in quantum physics are too complicated to tell. He offers you a book titled Hyperspace, but should you accept it and go home or put a few more questions to him first?
Stay at his home long enough, and Professor Zinka invites you to see his laboratory. His new invention, a hypolaser, could in theory open the realm of hyperspace, a place beyond the third dimension where anything is possible. Advise him to delay trying out the hypolaser, and he may end up zapped into hyperspace anyway. Pull the same lever he did, and you too are transported to the fourth dimension. Through an act of sheer will you can launch yourself into the fifth dimension and meet this book's author, Edward Packard. Can he lead you away from destruction? Even Packard can't know about dimensions he hasn't experienced himself. If you traveled to the alternative universe with the professor, you come face to face with that universe's version of you. Maybe you’ll meet your family...only to realize they aren't the same people you know. Leave them, and you meet a girl named Susan and her brother Pete, but your memory is fading and you can't recall your own name. Are you doomed to a permanent identity crisis? Take a different path and you find yourself in a facility with people who, like you, are nothing but the brain waves of a dreaming human. You'll cease to exist as soon as the dreamer wakes, but before that happens you might cross paths with Dr. Nera Vivaldi from other Choose Your Own Adventures. She breaks the news that you are only a character in a book, but can you work together and somehow attain reality?
Take the book Professor Zinka offers at the first decision and you'll see what he means about his work being complicated. If you persist in reading the book, Professor Zinka calls to inform you that his latest experiment went terribly wrong and hyperspace is leaking into our universe. You could call the police, but what do they know about theoretical physics? If you instead go to the professor's house, you may rescue him as well as the universe. Professor Zinka couldn't be more grateful, but if he sends a priceless container of bottled hyperspace as payment for your heroism, can you resist opening it? Carelessness with the substance could end our universe. If you chose to skip ahead in the professor's book to an easier section and don't ever receive his distress call, you could end up in the pages of a Choose Your Own Adventure, pursued by aliens. You could open fire on them, but are you prepared to face what happens if you do? Alternatively you could wind up in the Omega universe with two aliens named Telar and Raza who control all things via their thoughts. The adventures in this book are way out there...but are they perturbing reality in ways you can't undo?
I'm impressed by the creative zigs and zags attempted in this book, but it doesn't quite work. Internal continuity is sporadic, which is explained in part by the nature of hyperspace, but results in a narrative canvas that can't be relied on. There are lots of missed opportunities for story ideas rooted in the book's crazy concept; Edward Packard opts more for clever tricks than the sort of true innovation that could have revolutionized gamebook literature. Hyperspace is one of the most unusual Choose Your Own Adventures, but I only rate it one and a half stars; a better book with a similar off-the-wall premise is Packard's Dream Trips from the Bantam Skylark Choose Your Own Adventures. Ultimately, Hyperspace just doesn't live up to the hype.
Stay at his home long enough, and Professor Zinka invites you to see his laboratory. His new invention, a hypolaser, could in theory open the realm of hyperspace, a place beyond the third dimension where anything is possible. Advise him to delay trying out the hypolaser, and he may end up zapped into hyperspace anyway. Pull the same lever he did, and you too are transported to the fourth dimension. Through an act of sheer will you can launch yourself into the fifth dimension and meet this book's author, Edward Packard. Can he lead you away from destruction? Even Packard can't know about dimensions he hasn't experienced himself. If you traveled to the alternative universe with the professor, you come face to face with that universe's version of you. Maybe you’ll meet your family...only to realize they aren't the same people you know. Leave them, and you meet a girl named Susan and her brother Pete, but your memory is fading and you can't recall your own name. Are you doomed to a permanent identity crisis? Take a different path and you find yourself in a facility with people who, like you, are nothing but the brain waves of a dreaming human. You'll cease to exist as soon as the dreamer wakes, but before that happens you might cross paths with Dr. Nera Vivaldi from other Choose Your Own Adventures. She breaks the news that you are only a character in a book, but can you work together and somehow attain reality?
Take the book Professor Zinka offers at the first decision and you'll see what he means about his work being complicated. If you persist in reading the book, Professor Zinka calls to inform you that his latest experiment went terribly wrong and hyperspace is leaking into our universe. You could call the police, but what do they know about theoretical physics? If you instead go to the professor's house, you may rescue him as well as the universe. Professor Zinka couldn't be more grateful, but if he sends a priceless container of bottled hyperspace as payment for your heroism, can you resist opening it? Carelessness with the substance could end our universe. If you chose to skip ahead in the professor's book to an easier section and don't ever receive his distress call, you could end up in the pages of a Choose Your Own Adventure, pursued by aliens. You could open fire on them, but are you prepared to face what happens if you do? Alternatively you could wind up in the Omega universe with two aliens named Telar and Raza who control all things via their thoughts. The adventures in this book are way out there...but are they perturbing reality in ways you can't undo?
I'm impressed by the creative zigs and zags attempted in this book, but it doesn't quite work. Internal continuity is sporadic, which is explained in part by the nature of hyperspace, but results in a narrative canvas that can't be relied on. There are lots of missed opportunities for story ideas rooted in the book's crazy concept; Edward Packard opts more for clever tricks than the sort of true innovation that could have revolutionized gamebook literature. Hyperspace is one of the most unusual Choose Your Own Adventures, but I only rate it one and a half stars; a better book with a similar off-the-wall premise is Packard's Dream Trips from the Bantam Skylark Choose Your Own Adventures. Ultimately, Hyperspace just doesn't live up to the hype.
August 12, 2021
I literally just read it cover to cover which was actually kinda perfect for a book about fracturing time and space.
(Read it a million times back when I was a kid.)
(Read it a million times back when I was a kid.)
February 6, 2020
This may take the prize for the weirdest CYOA book out there. It's even stranger than "You are a Shark" or "Inside UFO 54-40." It gets meta-fictional in interesting ways and even offers some basic engagement with existentialist questions. It's a good one for people of any age who likes surprises and unusual content in their books.
July 5, 2020
La serie de Elige tu propia aventura es, literalmente, un clásico de nuestra infancia. He releído algunos, años después, y me parecen un poco cortos de miras, limitados en las posibilidades, pero cuando tenía 10 años cada uno de ellos era una maravilla lista para ser explorada hasta que hubiera dado todo lo que tenía dentro.
Al final siempre sabías que ibas a recorrer todos y cada uno de los caminos posibles. La emoción estaba, por tanto, en ganar y pasarte la historia al primer intento. Si no podías, pues nada, seguro que en el intento 18 acababas encontrando el camino. A veces los autores iban "a pillar", poniéndote los resultados buenos detrás de decisiones que eran claramente anómalas.
Recuerdo haber aprendido tanto palabras como hechos y datos en estos libros. No nadar contra la corriente cuando quieres llegar a tierra, dónde colocarse cuando un avión va a despegar, un montón de cosas interesantes y un montón de historias vividas, decenas por cada libro, que convirtieron a las serie en una colección fractal, donde cada vez podías elegir un libro nuevo entre los que ya tenías.
Llegué hasta el tomo 54 y dejé de tener interés por la serie, pero la serie siguió hasta superar los 180 títulos. Tal vez mis hijos quieran seguir el camino que yo empecé. Si quieres que lo sigan, pasa a la página 7.
Al final siempre sabías que ibas a recorrer todos y cada uno de los caminos posibles. La emoción estaba, por tanto, en ganar y pasarte la historia al primer intento. Si no podías, pues nada, seguro que en el intento 18 acababas encontrando el camino. A veces los autores iban "a pillar", poniéndote los resultados buenos detrás de decisiones que eran claramente anómalas.
Recuerdo haber aprendido tanto palabras como hechos y datos en estos libros. No nadar contra la corriente cuando quieres llegar a tierra, dónde colocarse cuando un avión va a despegar, un montón de cosas interesantes y un montón de historias vividas, decenas por cada libro, que convirtieron a las serie en una colección fractal, donde cada vez podías elegir un libro nuevo entre los que ya tenías.
Llegué hasta el tomo 54 y dejé de tener interés por la serie, pero la serie siguió hasta superar los 180 títulos. Tal vez mis hijos quieran seguir el camino que yo empecé. Si quieres que lo sigan, pasa a la página 7.
August 28, 2021
Hyperspace is the first metafictional Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) book, likely the result of Edward Packard having a psychotic break after having to write half of the preceding entries in the series. The text is prefaced by the usual WARNING!!! that the book is not linear, followed for the first time by A SPECIAL NOTE from the author babbling some postmodern nonsense, and then two full pages of a SPECIAL WARNING!!! babbling about hyperspace. All of the extra prefacing is apparently supposed to ease the reader in to the fact that Hyperspace doesn't actually have a plot.
The various branches of Hyperspace mostly fling weirdness at you. In one, the point of view character (you) starts reading a CYOA book called Hyperspace, but the character in the book isn't reading about themselves in a book, the book they're reading is about traveling through hyperspace in a ship, with the book-within-a-book's text italicized to let you know it's not really happening. Once you reach an ending in the book-within-a-book, you're given the option to loop back to an early point in the story where your character starts doing things for themselves instead of just reading. The story the character is reading has no bearing whatsoever on the story that you are reading, and its plot is comprised of the typical things that would happen in a CYOA book, so it makes absolutely no sense that they weren't just things the point of view character was doing instead of reading about. Another branch has you travel to an alternate dimension where you run into Doctor Nera Vivaldi, a character from previous CYOA books. Your character identifies her as such and names the books you/they have read about her in, and that path can end with her dismissing your impending death with "It's only a book, we'll have another chance." Thank you, I wouldn't have known that I wasn't really dying in real life without that chestnut. Still another nonsensical path is your meeting the book's author Edward Packard and asking him which choice to make next in the book, only for him to fall into a pit, but you know he survives because you're reading the book and he had to have lived to write it. Still another again is a proverbial rabbit hole where you're fumbling around in another reality that's actually a dream, but whose dream is it? Your character's? A hospital patient's? The reader's?A sleeping giant's? It's any of the above, depending on your choices, because consistency is out the window.
I have a headache.
There are some paths in the book that are actually mostly normal for a CYOA story, but the endings are unsatisfying for most of them. In a surprising number you either get stranded or deliberately choose to stay in an anachronistic alternate dimension with an evil mirror universe goateed version of yourself, because being a twin is allegedly so much fun that you're willing to permanently abandon your family without telling them. Mom and Dad will just have to wonder for the rest of their lives if you're lying in a shallow grave somewhere, victim of a serial killer. Fun. In one ending you go to another dimension and return, but on the way back your chromosomes get mixed up and you turn into a bat. No warning of danger. No indication that you will transform into something. No reason whatsoever for you to turn into a bat specifically. The remaining bits are all you wandering around strange, vaguely-defined fourth-, fifth-, or sixth-dimensions, where inexplicable things are happening with absolutely no through-line to any of it.
Hyperspace is a dozen bad ideas jammed together awkwardly, and the metafictional elements don't work at all. There's nothing to latch on to in this, because the text of the book isn't a branching story so much as a very cheap philosophical exercise. I don't want to cast aspersions on Edward Packard, but people were still doing a lot of cocaine in 1983.
The various branches of Hyperspace mostly fling weirdness at you. In one, the point of view character (you) starts reading a CYOA book called Hyperspace, but the character in the book isn't reading about themselves in a book, the book they're reading is about traveling through hyperspace in a ship, with the book-within-a-book's text italicized to let you know it's not really happening. Once you reach an ending in the book-within-a-book, you're given the option to loop back to an early point in the story where your character starts doing things for themselves instead of just reading. The story the character is reading has no bearing whatsoever on the story that you are reading, and its plot is comprised of the typical things that would happen in a CYOA book, so it makes absolutely no sense that they weren't just things the point of view character was doing instead of reading about. Another branch has you travel to an alternate dimension where you run into Doctor Nera Vivaldi, a character from previous CYOA books. Your character identifies her as such and names the books you/they have read about her in, and that path can end with her dismissing your impending death with "It's only a book, we'll have another chance." Thank you, I wouldn't have known that I wasn't really dying in real life without that chestnut. Still another nonsensical path is your meeting the book's author Edward Packard and asking him which choice to make next in the book, only for him to fall into a pit, but you know he survives because you're reading the book and he had to have lived to write it. Still another again is a proverbial rabbit hole where you're fumbling around in another reality that's actually a dream, but whose dream is it? Your character's? A hospital patient's? The reader's?
I have a headache.
There are some paths in the book that are actually mostly normal for a CYOA story, but the endings are unsatisfying for most of them. In a surprising number you either get stranded or deliberately choose to stay in an anachronistic alternate dimension with an evil mirror universe goateed version of yourself, because being a twin is allegedly so much fun that you're willing to permanently abandon your family without telling them. Mom and Dad will just have to wonder for the rest of their lives if you're lying in a shallow grave somewhere, victim of a serial killer. Fun. In one ending you go to another dimension and return, but on the way back your chromosomes get mixed up and you turn into a bat. No warning of danger. No indication that you will transform into something. No reason whatsoever for you to turn into a bat specifically. The remaining bits are all you wandering around strange, vaguely-defined fourth-, fifth-, or sixth-dimensions, where inexplicable things are happening with absolutely no through-line to any of it.
Hyperspace is a dozen bad ideas jammed together awkwardly, and the metafictional elements don't work at all. There's nothing to latch on to in this, because the text of the book isn't a branching story so much as a very cheap philosophical exercise. I don't want to cast aspersions on Edward Packard, but people were still doing a lot of cocaine in 1983.
May 13, 2010
Like most of the Edward Packard CYOA books, this one was a fantastic work of a powerful imagination. Possible storylines lead to terror, paradise, and transcendence. Dr. Nera Vivaldi makes another appearance in this book, as she does in nearly every E.P. SciFi CYOA. I always felt relieved and happy to see her, even though, when she shows up, the shit is usually about to hit the fan. She may very well be the first fictional female I had a crush on.
February 13, 2016
This was a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book that I read while I was in grade school. The only thing I remember about it was one of the death pages... somehow another universe was leaking into ours and the natural laws (or lack thereof) of that place was turning everything in our universe into formless bunches of dust. That really stuck with me.
http://youchosewrong.tumblr.com/post/...
http://youchosewrong.tumblr.com/post/...
February 15, 2008
This is one of my favorite books of all time, and my fondest memories of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books revolved around this title. I can't even remember why I liked it so much, but for some reason the story captivated my 10 year old imagination and held it tight.
April 29, 2011
Explore the msteries of Hyperspace in adventure #21 of the 'Choose your own adventure' series... in these books the reader gets to be the central character by choosing what path the tale follows through a variety of endings...
April 8, 2020
Fabulous and insane. You get to read a Choose Your Own Adventure book within THIS Choose Your Own Adventure book! You get to meet and interact with Dr. Vivaldi (yes, THAT Dr. Vivaldi)! AND you get to meet and interact with Edward Packard (the author)! So meta! That Edward Packard is a crazy dude.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 9, 2013
the adventures that I went through when I was bored I just read these books over and over again you would never get to the end of the story.
November 26, 2013
I enjoyed the twists and turns in this book. Always a fun read.
June 1, 2016
Ridiculous. Absurd. Awesome.
January 22, 2019
I enjoyed reading this book. I like the aspect of going from page to page getting different results. I like how there is alternative endings and after you can reset your choices.
January 31, 2019
This was a good book. I really liked my adventure and I would highly recommend these books to other people.
July 8, 2019
This book was absurdly meta and I loved it.
February 24, 2015
I had to restart 5 times before I got a happy ending.
October 11, 2024
Or; Baby's introduction to Multi-Dimensional Theory within the practices of metafictional narrative. Very strange, nigh nonsensical. The Dadaists would be proud this sort of thing snuck into children's literature; so, perhaps, would be the theoretical physicists. A book you give to an 8 year old just to watch them, after reading, stare into space for a few hours with wide, uncertain eyes. Also a great way to introduce children to the concept of disquiet. 4 stars would recommend.
March 20, 2023
Awesome book! So many crazy outcomes and it was so fun. You can go to other dimensions, universes, you can even be imaginary. So imaginative and just a great adventure.
Read
December 26, 2024pretty sure I read this one because I remember the weird cover
Read
March 29, 2011I suppose to get full value from these books, you have to read all the 'happentracks' (to use Michael Coney's term). I don't tend to, though--I pick one route, and follow it, which kind of defeats the purpose, I suspect. The narrative is necessarily choppy, because you have to keep thumbing back and forth. And the stories aren't very complex, generally. But it's an interesting concept, and deserves further development. I'd heard there was some attempt at such in hyperText, but I haven't seen any to compare with these.
This volume is excessively self-referential. I don't mind the occasional in-joke (The Doctor explaining his repeated failures to fix the TARDIS: "That type's not my forte", or explaining fleeing in fear of being accused of starting a fire: "I had enough of that in 1666", to name two good examples--though some people find even Doctor Who excessive in that regard). This is too overt, and involuted.
Why SHOULD the poorly-defined 'hyperspace' result in people becoming unreal? In an effectively infinite number of alternate universes, there must be some in which nearly any fantasy is literally true (cf Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest). But such universes would be no less real or without consequences than any other.
I do like the nonviolent resolutions, but there's no real description of individual variation WITHIN universes. It's too circumscribed. Though there's mention of travel and exploration, there's no real description of it. Characters from other books are recycled, but few new ones are added. And there's an assumption that your other-world doppelgangers will be like you in character, despite often widely divergent experiences.
In sum, a good idea, not very well realized.
This volume is excessively self-referential. I don't mind the occasional in-joke (The Doctor explaining his repeated failures to fix the TARDIS: "That type's not my forte", or explaining fleeing in fear of being accused of starting a fire: "I had enough of that in 1666", to name two good examples--though some people find even Doctor Who excessive in that regard). This is too overt, and involuted.
Why SHOULD the poorly-defined 'hyperspace' result in people becoming unreal? In an effectively infinite number of alternate universes, there must be some in which nearly any fantasy is literally true (cf Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest). But such universes would be no less real or without consequences than any other.
I do like the nonviolent resolutions, but there's no real description of individual variation WITHIN universes. It's too circumscribed. Though there's mention of travel and exploration, there's no real description of it. Characters from other books are recycled, but few new ones are added. And there's an assumption that your other-world doppelgangers will be like you in character, despite often widely divergent experiences.
In sum, a good idea, not very well realized.
November 22, 2024
Meh.
Not one of the best. But need to review it.
Someday.
-----------------------------------------------
PERSONAL NOTE :
[1983] [128p] [Children's] [Not Recommendable]
-----------------------------------------------
★★★★☆ Choose #5 The Mystery of Chimney Rock
★★★☆☆ Choose #14 The Forbidden Castle
★★☆☆☆ Choose #21 Hyperspace
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Meh.
No uno de los mejores. Pero tengo que reseñarlo.
Algún día.
-----------------------------------------------
NOTA PERSONAL :
[1983] [128p] [Niños] [No Recomendable]
-----------------------------------------------
Not one of the best. But need to review it.
Someday.
-----------------------------------------------
PERSONAL NOTE :
[1983] [128p] [Children's] [Not Recommendable]
-----------------------------------------------
★★★★☆ Choose #5 The Mystery of Chimney Rock
★★★☆☆ Choose #14 The Forbidden Castle
★★☆☆☆ Choose #21 Hyperspace
-----------------------------------------------
Meh.
No uno de los mejores. Pero tengo que reseñarlo.
Algún día.
-----------------------------------------------
NOTA PERSONAL :
[1983] [128p] [Niños] [No Recomendable]
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September 1, 2016
Hyperspace. What does that mean? Well, it means that just about anything can happen--and you're in the driver's seat! But you can't expect to know what will happen to you when you enter time and space in a way unlike you've ever imagined before. . . .
Choose Your Own Adventure was a ton of fun for me as a kid, but sometimes it really bothered me that playing it safe still often led to terrible ends and vice versa. In this one, there was even some meta elements that weren't typical of the rest of the series, and truly bizarre occurrences were par for the course. It was a lot more whimsical than most of the rest, and I got a feeling like the author just maybe smoked some wacky weed and went to town.
Choose Your Own Adventure was a ton of fun for me as a kid, but sometimes it really bothered me that playing it safe still often led to terrible ends and vice versa. In this one, there was even some meta elements that weren't typical of the rest of the series, and truly bizarre occurrences were par for the course. It was a lot more whimsical than most of the rest, and I got a feeling like the author just maybe smoked some wacky weed and went to town.
May 30, 2015
I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books, and constantly borrowed them from the library. I owned a few, too, and would mark little pencilled notations on all the endings I managed to reach in my own copies (I'd tuck aside a piece of paper for the ones from the library). When I was nine and ten, these books got re-read so many times it was unreal, and they paved the way to me wanting to write, too, as sometimes I got annoyed at an obvious, missing option.
This one I loved especially, for it's sci-fi flavor.
This one I loved especially, for it's sci-fi flavor.
December 10, 2015
ÉSTE ES UNO DE ÉSOS TOMOS ESPECIALES DENTRO DE LA SERIE...DE ÉSAS PIEZAS QUE SE VALORAN CON EL PASO DEL TIEMPO. SE PODRÍA DECIR QUE ES UNA SEGUNDA PARTE O SPIN OFF DE LA EXTRAORDINARIA 'OVNI 54-40'; EL ENTRONO ESTÁ 'InPREGNADO DE ÉSTA'..
SUMAMENTE EXTRAÑO, PERO SIN LLEGAR A LA CÚSPIDE DEL ANTERIORMENTE MENCIONADO, Y CON UNA NARRATIVA ETÉREA Y PROLONGADA, YA QUE, CURIOSAMENTE, TAN SÓLO CONTIENE 15 HISTORIAS.
DIMENSIONES Y ESPACIOS QUE JUEGAN CONTIGO.. ¿O TÚ CON ELLOS?, LO DESCUBRIRÁS CUANDO LO LEAS;)
SUMAMENTE EXTRAÑO, PERO SIN LLEGAR A LA CÚSPIDE DEL ANTERIORMENTE MENCIONADO, Y CON UNA NARRATIVA ETÉREA Y PROLONGADA, YA QUE, CURIOSAMENTE, TAN SÓLO CONTIENE 15 HISTORIAS.
DIMENSIONES Y ESPACIOS QUE JUEGAN CONTIGO.. ¿O TÚ CON ELLOS?, LO DESCUBRIRÁS CUANDO LO LEAS;)
July 28, 2021
Dentro de la serie, este era uno de los libros más extraños. Pero era un libro muy divertido de leer precisamente por su ingenio y creatividad.
La idea de otras dimensiones era por aquel entonces un terreno poco explorado por los libros de ficción (Al menos los libros de ficción dirigidos a un público infantil.)
Quizá en esta época no resulte un libro tan sorprendente para los pequeñines, pero sigue siendo un favorito mío.
La idea de otras dimensiones era por aquel entonces un terreno poco explorado por los libros de ficción (Al menos los libros de ficción dirigidos a un público infantil.)
Quizá en esta época no resulte un libro tan sorprendente para los pequeñines, pero sigue siendo un favorito mío.
February 14, 2011
Ok bit not the best one of its series.
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