Trouble on Planet Earth

Choose Your Own Adventure #29

by R.A. Montgomery, Mariano Trod (Illustrator), Claudio Griglio (Illustrator)

SOMEONE OR SOMETHING IS DRAINING EARTH'S OIL RESERVES. CAN YOU CRACK THE CASE IN TIME?

Everyone knows that Earth has limited oil reserves. How can they go missing overnight? Is it an evil multi-national corporation? A rogue element in the government? Some crazy scientist? When the trail takes you into outer space, you are terrified for the first time in your life. A mysterious galaxy beyond the Milky Way seems to be siphoning Earth's oil using laser straws. The world's economy and life as you know it will crash to a halt, unless you can stop them.

You followed three men to a small house. You enter a narrow passageway to a green staircase. Your heart is racing. Just as you are about to climb the stairs, the upstairs door opens. You flatten yourself against the wall in the shadow of the stairs. Maybe they won't see you! The three men come down the stairs talking in low voices, but soon disappear. If you follow the men, turn to page 111. YOU choose what happens next!

Genres: Choose Your Own Adventure, Fiction, Gamebooks, Childrens, Science Fiction, Young Adult, Adventure

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Raymond A. Montgomery (born 1936 in Connecticut) was an author and progenitor of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure interactive children's book series, which ran from 1979 to 2003. Montgomery graduated from Williams College and went to graduate school at Yale University and New York University (NYU). He devoted his life to teaching and education.

In 2004, he co-founded the Chooseco publishing company alongside his wife, fellow author/publisher Shannon Gilligan, with the goal of reviving the CYOA series with new novels and reissued editions of the classics.

He continued to write and publish until his death in 2014.

Reviews

[Peter Derk · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, so in this book, there's an oil crisis. I apparently think the Earth has "given up" and that's why there's no more oil. So I am pretty stupid from the get-go, which is fitting because I'll probably end up making stupid decisions. Stupid does as stupid is, to reverse the phrase.

My brother, Ned, is pretty sure something else is going on. Which makes me trust Ned at first. I mean, after all, to think that there might be something beyond the Earth "giving up" on providing oil seems like a sound leap to make.

When it's decision time, we have to decide whether or not to go to Saudi Arabia and solve the mystery ourselves. I don't know exactly how old we are, but we look to be in our early teens, based on Ned's picture. Unless maybe I'm a lot older?

I made the decision by virtual coin toss, tossing "Todd Redden's Decision Coin" to be specific. Apparently there's this small market for coins that have been made for decision-making. I guess it's probably small because, you know, you could just use any old coin. There are "Yes/No" coins, "Hell Yeah/Hell Naw" coins, "Fuck Yes/Fuck No" coins, and as with anything customizable that probably had more use in the 70's, vaguely pornographic "Heads/Tails" coins that I probably don't need to explain. But it's a butt or oral. I said I didn't NEED to explain, but that doesn't mean I don't WANT to.

We go to Saudi Arabia on our points. Apparently we do this sort of thing a lot, solve mysteries. In the Saudi airport, Ned becomes transfixed by mandalas and wants to just stay there and stare at them. He tells me to go check in to the hotel.

Let's pause. I have a brother. We traveled internationally. If we got to the airport and he was like, "Dude, I'm going to stare at these designs. I've only seem them on lower back tattoos, so it's cool to see them in another medium. Just go to the hotel, I'll meet you there." My response would be, "First of all, we're staying in a hostel. I don't know who you think you're on vacation with, but them's the breaks. Second, fuck you. Let's go. Quit dicking around. We have a world crisis to solve here, and this is no time to spend a couple hours staring at anything."

Anyway, Todd Redden's coin decided me to go ahead and leave Ned. Who is promptly captured by some evil organization who overheard our mission. I guess they were so confident that we'd fuck up their evil plan that they captured Ned. They GREATLY overestimated us, to say the least.

I guess Todd Redden's coin wasn't a lot of help. And it doesn't even have a sexy lady like that 70's coin. Letdown.

[Josiah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Science fiction meets environmentalism in Trouble on Earth, a classically convoluted R.A. Montgomery gamebook. You and your brother Ned are international detectives. His extrasensory perception routinely turns up leads that solve tough cases, and you do the hard work of strategizing. What faces you now is a daunting challenge: all crude oil reserves on earth have vanished, which could plunge mankind into armageddon. Ned suggests you start investigating in Saudi Arabia, but your instinct is to head to Washington, D.C. and volunteer as assets to the U.S. government. Ned flips a coin to decide, but who will win?

In D.C. you meet CIA director Martha Thornberry, who fills you in on what the government knows. Some say a group called the Organization for World Domination is behind the missing oil, but a prominent scientist believes a nuclear accident is to blame. Pursue the OWD lead and a message comes in from an American agent named Boris, pleading for immediate help in Egypt. After arriving in Egypt, you're in a car when you notice a light flashing Morse code. Take a closer look and you might happen upon a murder scene, with a warning addressed to you. Will you listen to Ms. Thornberry’s demand that you give up and return to the U.S.? If you never went after the Morse code light, you and Ned run into armed guards at the facility that Boris infiltrated on behalf of the U.S. government. Bluff your way inside and you might extract Boris without anyone dying, but play dumb with the guards and you find Boris isn't as pleasant as you hoped. If you reached out to the scientist instead of looking into OWD, it may turn out a nuclear waste problem has doomed earth already. Avoid that, and you end up at an island that conceals an off-grid nuclear power plant, where a meltdown is underway. You'll be lucky to escape without being blasted to radioactive smithereens.

Head for Saudi Arabia from the first, and a man at the airport offers to be your guide. Dismiss his offer, and Ned gets drawn into a shop selling mandala paintings. Ned is fascinated and doesn't want to leave, but if you wait for him, he steps right inside a mandala. Follow him in and you'll see a surreal world where Ned seems happy to stay forever. Eventually he claims to have an answer to the oil crisis, but is he in his right mind? If you never followed Ned into the mandala, you discover that a man from the store has Ned tied up. The man is an alien from the planet Zermacroyd, come to steal your planet's oil to remedy Zermacroyd's fatal energy shortage. Can you thwart his plot? Had you accepted the guide's offer at the airport, Ned never sees the mandalas, but the guide isn't who he pretends to be. He's with Interpol, leading his own investigation. When you become separated from Ned and the Interpol agent and meet a man who promises he can help, he leads you into a building and orders you to forget the whole case. Sneak back in later, and you can search the room he took you to. Its technology is beyond anything you know, but maybe you can type in simple commands and find evidence pertaining to the oil mystery. You're in danger, but be smart and you might stay alive.

A common criticism of the original Choose Your Own Adventure series is that the stories are dry, so I appreciate R.A. Montgomery trying to give you and Ned a humorous rapport. Your age isn't stated, but you don't behave like adults, and some of the quirkiness is charming. The callback to Zermacroyd from Montgomery's Space and Beyond is surprising and fun. Trouble on Planet Earth isn't a good book, though. There are as many different explanations for the oil vanishing as there are main story paths, and most are silly. The book's first decision hangs on a coin flip, taking it out of your hands. Montgomery avoids political rants with one or two painful exceptions, but I only rate Trouble on Planet Earth one and a half stars. It isn't Montgomery's worst, but is hardly a literary work of art.

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah, my childhood.

Not nearly enough science fiction endings, and your brother Ned is annoyingly plot-hooky. Can't abide psychic older brothers. :P

Seems like all the cool endings require that Ned take the lead?

Meh.

[Jorge Rosas · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two main branches and one of them finishes fast and unsatisfactory and the other is quite a journey! Always fun to follow every possible path.

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of abrupt endings, but still fun.

[Miho · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read it with my husband. My choices led us to a better outcome than his choices :) It was a fun book to read over beer together.

[Petercsm730 · Rating 1 out of 5]

If the choices were this book or a blog about sewing custom bonnets for cats, I'd CHOOSE the latter.

Trouble on Planet Earth, Choose Your Own Adventure #29 (or #11 for the reissued series), by R.A. Montgomery may be the worst CYOA book that I've read. The plot follows you and your brother as you try to figure out why all the world's oil has disappeared. I'm just going to bullet point my thoughts on this book. It's a mess.

-Your brother Ned apparently has ESP. Here's the dialogue explaining said powers: "It's a look you know only too well, the look he gets when the special knowledge hits him- knowledge from some secret source. Even Ned can't explain it. It just happens to him. 'I feel the knowledge,' he announces." The whole book's written like this.

-There are lots of non-endings. Sometimes no matter which path you choose it ends in either "We'll start over again. THE END" or "Give me time. We'll think of something. THE END"

-There's little cause and effect at work here. If you don't choose to follow someone then a boulder falls on your head the next page. If you follow your brother's advice, who's usually right, then on the next page it turns out he's been wrong a lot lately. I like random surprises in these books because that's how life works and it keeps things interesting. But that's all this book is, much to its detriment. Sometimes it looks like the book's about to take a fun twist only to see you dead on the next page.

-The CIA Director in this book was a woman, which is pretty unique to any of the books I've ever read.

-For some reason in a couple of pictures depicting some aliens (as described in the text) the artist, Ralph Reese, has included a middle-aged man with a crew cut and business suit.

-On page 71 it says to go to page 96. It should read go to page 94 instead.

-The culprit responsible for the oil disappearing changes depending on what path you pick. There is no consistency or continuity. It's stupid and as a kid I would've been confused and/or irritated. The culprit can be anything from a terrorist group siphoning the oil to the same terrorist group simply making it seem like there's no oil to Zermacroyd aliens. Or evil orbs. Or the oil just dried up. Or a nuclear power plant melt down on a volcanic island (which sometimes erupts and sometimes doesn't based on whether you chased somebody or some other completely unrelated event). And so on. No effort seems to have been made for a cohesive narration. It all comes across as very lazy.

-There's more odd (stupid) moments like guards finding you via their "sensory devices" (no explanation on what that means) but they apparently don't have enough sensory detection to know not to be wandering around in a maximum radiation area without suits. And at one point you may find yourself inside of a painting, which leads to a plot where our heroes replenish our oil reserves by taking oil from the past. Think about that one for a second. The book is full of junk that makes little sense and it was a very irritating read. Don't waste your time. Ironically I followed it up reading one of my favorite CYOA books so far, Sabotage by Jay Leibold.

[Remo · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Lindsay Bragg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a few of these for a work project, believe it or not (that's how you know you have a pretty fun job). This was one of the better ones I read. The perfectionist in me made me read every possible ending and mark every possible branch to make sure I got them all. I enjoyed the zany, ridiculousness of the options. It was definitely a children's book, but the adult in me appreciated the accurate articulation of the randomness of life.

[Jai · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was just ok for me. I'm not sure if I'm an adult or not but it just seemed corny and a bit stereotypical. A few parts just had me scratching my head like huh?

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

The world needed depended on my expertise, and, for once, I didn't blow it up.

[James Tomasino · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has the charm of weirdness. The endings are quite varied and I never felt railroaded into a single path. Deaths aplenty in these pages!

[Patrick Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s always SOMETHING going on on this crazy old planet. This time it’s ecological!

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

There sure is.

[Mandyalam0de · Rating 4 out of 5]

My son and I went back several times to get a decent ending, it was amusing.

[Emmita · Rating 3 out of 5]

He hecho un poco de trampas para llegar a los 25 libros leídos este año, pero por lo menos me ha servido para visitar unos libros que me encantaban de pequeña :)

[Christian Franco · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was good and had a good story structure and also a good problem and it was excellent and also it took me three tries to get a good ending in this book. I think everyone should read the series.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked it and recommend it for writers at all levels.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ooh, a green CYOA! This one really speaks to our generation. Of course, it goes without saying that most of the "adventures" end in an early death completely unrelated to the purported alien-oil-stealing plot. (I'm convinced that this series is subtitled: My First Existential Reader or A Child's Introduction to the Meaninglessness of Life and the Inevitability of Death.)

However, diligent page-turners are eventually rewarded with a few spectacular and ecotastic endings.

I'm partial to the star trek flavored intervention:
"This court finds Earth guilty of neglect toward itself and others. The punishment is to have all of earth's oil resources removed and redistributed to other needy planets, forcing Earthlings to devise other, and, we hope better ways to solve their energy needs."

But sometimes there's just nothing like a good enviro-apocalyse...
"Buildings waver, quiver, and tumble in upon themselves, as the earth's crust heaves in a gigantic convulsion. The disappearing oil was only the smallest symptom of the world's fatal illness. A cloud of poisonous air belches into the sky, eventually enveloping the earth in a mist of death."

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Our oldest has been bringing home various You Choose books from her elementary school library. And now at our local library we've discovered some of the books from the original Choose Your Own Adventure series that I read when I was a child. I remember loving books like this in my childhood and I am excited that our girls are discovering them as well.

This book features an oil crisis, with very different paths and reasons for the situation. This book has many different paths to follow and we had fun reading them aloud. It really is a bit of nostalgia for me as we read these stories; I can't remember which of the series I read for sure, but I know that I read as many as I could get my hands on.

Overall, these are entertaining, though sometimes violent stories. I think I prefer the "You Choose" series because they have an educational and historical context, but the books in this series are interesting, too.

new word: burnoose

[Todd Holland · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a kid, I really enjoyed the Choose Your Own Adventure series. It was one of the few series of books I collected back in my youth. I was at the library yesterday with my son for storytime when I stumbled upon the row of these looking for books for my daughter to read. I instantly was hit with that great feeling of Nostaliga and had to pick some up.

This one was really well written, although the plot seemed far-fetched, but that was the idea of the adventure books. The book flowed just like I remember as a child and the different endings I reached did not disappoint. This book is really a good showing on how well this series has stood the test of time and is worth a read through once...which in choose your own adventure books means several times. It is always difficult to get every ending because you have to remember what you have done in the past but it is fun to try!

Good Entry Level book to the series.

[Cory · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a goofy, goofy little book!! I can't bring myself to dislike it, as so many people have over at another website specializing in reviewing gamebooks like these.

Typical of R.A. Montgomery, this book lacks internal consistency. Depending on your choices, the missing oil might be part of a conspiracy by the OWD - Organization for World Domination, it might be a hoax, there might be no explanation at all, or it might be aliens.

For some reason, the zaniness works in this book but I can't explain why.

The endings are a different story. I honestly don't believe there was one "golden", truly satisfying ending. That was the biggest black mark against this book. There were a bunch of abrupt cop-out endings.

Better endings would have made this a strong entry in the CYOA series.

['Nathan Burgoine · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whats happening to earth's oil? Adventure #29, Trouble on Planet Earth... in these books the reader gets to be the central character by choosing what path the tale follows through a variety of endings...

[Gilianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good book to read. It was very interesting how you could choose how the story went. I think the author had a really good idea with the book. I think the author could have the book be more fun maybe. Overall this was a really good book and I recommend it.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was written by Al Gore

[Hslc10 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was really good but not well written it told you about these kid super spy kids and it tells about their past adventures and it really leads you to wonder more about the kids.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just as I remembered it from fifth grade. BTW, jacket copy is misleading--few of the endings involve outer space.

[Jasmine Tran]

It is such a good book

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

pretty good