The Galactic Pirate

Be an Interplanetary Spy #2

by Seth McEvoy

You are an Interplanetary Spy. Your mission is to capture Marko Khen, the Galactic Pirate. Marko and his band of criminals have been kidnapping animals and turning them into monsters. You mus recover the animals and smash Marko's sinister plans.

Genres: Gamebooks, Fiction, Games

Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the Interplanetary Spy book I remember most from my childhood. It must have been the first book I read and owned.

In this story, you must track down the evil space pirate, Marko Khen, who has stolen animals from the Interplanetary Zoo and mutated them into horrible monsters. This book came out one year after Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, so there is a little poetic license here.

Comparing this to the first book, there are several improvements. Structurally, the page numbers are not as sequential. In the first book, your choices landed you in the same page range (e.g. 1-50, 51-100). The choices in The Galactic Pirate sends you all over the book, which makes it more interesting and keeps you guessing when the story will end.

There are also a greater variety of puzzles. One requires you to fold the page of the book. Another puzzle requires you to transliterate English letters and this task is repeated with variations in more puzzles.

Lastly, the pacing is better. The climatic ending had several phases to it that really had you struggling to finally defeat Marko Khen.

The story telling is still very linear - if you get it wrong, you die in lots of different and horrible ways (including the return of my favorite - “you made a mistake and everything blows up!”) But one ending flirted with the idea of getting caught in a time vortex that fast forwards or returns you to a particular point. Yet strangely the choice says you *almost* made it. I’m not sure why they would bother with telling you could *almost* turn to page 63.

There is also a nice little continuity reference. You wear the same round-helmeted spacesuit as from the first book. Also, the Sand Dragon you used to capture the Kirillian in Book One is one of the species of animal captured for mutation by the evil pirate.

On to Book 3 - Robot World.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back when I was a kid, there were dozens of variations on the "Choose Your Own Adventure" style of book. The Interplanetary Spy series was one that focused more on a linear plot that required visual puzzle solving skills to progress through. In this particular book, you got a cybernetic glove and had to track down a notorious space pirate who was kidnapping creatures from the galactic zoo and mutating them into killing machines. What kid could resist a plot like that? Certainly not me. I loved every page of this book. I wish I knew where my copy was now... I hope one of my siblings found it and maybe will pass it on to their kids.

[Adam Duclos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm pretty sure this was one of my favorite "Choose Your Own Adventure" books from when I was in grade school. I read a lot of them from the library, but only owned two. this one was cool. You were a space spy, teamed up with a 'bioroid' artificial human, and sent to take down a space pirate. You had to find your way through the book, doing your best to make the right decision. Now, in the other book you had, you basically had nothing but chance to get you through to a 'good' ending instead of an ignominious death... there wasn't a single story in that book, which was frustrating sometimes. Basically, with every flip of the page, the entire universe changed. This one, on the other hand, had some choices that were puzzles, so you could actually have an active and constructive choice in finding the goal. So, for every time you were asked if you wanted to go take a shortcut through the bioroid factory or whatever, there was another choice where you were chasing someone (by solving a 3D maze) or picking which hangar was the right size and shape for your space ship to dock in (unless you wanted to blow up by wedging into a hangar too small, or landing in one so large that a bigger vehicle doesn't even see you and squishes you when it lands). I liked it!

(the other book was Space Patrol)

http://youchosewrong.tumblr.com/post/...

[Dane Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

The “Be an Interplanetary Spy” books are basically puzzle books with a storyline shoe-horned in to make it more engaging to a younger audience. The puzzles can be quite clever, but other than getting the puzzle right or wrong there is not much in the way of actual choices to be made.

Probably the biggest flaw I found with this book was many of the death/fail pages are used repeatedly, so once you become used to which page numbers are bad endings it’ll spoil some of the puzzles later on as you’ll immediately be able to see which ones will lead to a failure before solving anything.

[Weathervane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not impressed. It would be okay for a kid, but the puzzles are mind-numbingly simple, and there's no character or description for the reader to latch on to. The only thing it really has going for it are the many large illustrations, which don't quite measure up to the level of an average comic book. Not worth the time.

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I wish I’d known of this series as a child. Imagine a Choose Your Own Adventure book where you have to solve a small puzzle before making your choice. Some of the puzzles were very easy, while others were quite challenging. I found this book in a used bookstore, but I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more in the series!

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Again, kind of a disappointment after having read it as a kid.