Story: Listless Adam Pennyman has been drifting through a variety of creative jobs since college, working for independent movie studios and dot coms, and usually getting fired when his bluff is called on his invented qualifications for these gigs. In his spare time, Adam begins toiling on a true labor of love, the Catalogue Of Obsolete Amusements, a comprehensive list of arcade and home video games which usually dwell on his own philosophical interpretations of each game’s meaning. When the time comes to deconstruct his all-time favorite, however, Adam is at a loss – Lucky Wander Boy hasn’t been, and can’t be, played on an emulator, and it’s never been made available for any of the modern machines. A chance encounter with an old high school buddy lands him a new job at a Hollywood development entity precariously balanced between on-again, off-again movie deals and a series of sometimes questionable web ventures, and it just so happens that this studio holds the film rights to Lucky Wander Boy. Now, not only does Adam think he may have a chance to rediscover the object of his youthful fascination, but he may be able to bring it to the big screen in a unique vision and meet the game’s enigmatic creator. And all he has to do is break every rule and endanger every relationship in his life to do it.
Review: An interesting debut novel by D.B. Weiss, “Lucky Wander Boy” made me break out in a cold sweat a few times just from the familiarity factor alone. Why I’d find myself relating to a guy who spends large amounts of his free time compiling an exhaustive compendium of video games he used to play as a kid, I have no idea. Some of the scenes involving a small scale retrogaming get-together, and the descriptions of Pennyman’s moment of epiphany when introduced to emulation and his journey into the dark heart of eBay to reacquire the real hardware, rang of authenticity. But does all of this tell a story?
Yes, it does, and it’s interesting that what Weiss is really digging into here isn’t so much video games, but a book about cause and effect, moments of decision, and possible consequences. Old video games, though Weiss certainly sounds like he knows what he’s talking about there, are really the metaphor in this case: a split-second decision in Pac-Man might get you the yummy bonus fruit, or it might get you a one-way trip to a monster’s digestive tract. That he filters his experiences through a pixellated 8-bit gauze doesn’t make Adam Pennyman dysfunctional – we all run reality though our own filters to varying degrees. But it gives Weiss a chance to offer a little bit of metacommentary on Pennyman’s milestones and mistakes, by giving us a peek into his subconscious thoughts (the entire book is written, more of less, in the first person).
“Lucky Wander Boy” is also damned funny. Yes, people do try to stump each other by imitating old arcade game sounds. (Maybe a fairly specialized breed of people, granted, but it does happen.) And though it verges on “this job sucks” clichè sometimes, Pennyman’s gig at a lowbrow Hollywood development outfit is a rich mine of laughs – especially the boss who protests vigorously that he’s not a mainstream Hollywood bullshit artist (when, of course, he is precisely that). Having worked with others in various allegedly creative fields myself, I got a laugh out of the supporting cast at Pennyman’s job – those, too, rang true.
Without getting too detailed about it, the final few chapters are invigoratingly mindboggling, taking one chain of events and extrapolating multiple possible outcomes, and finally hammering home the metaphor of the Lucky Wander Boy game itself (a game which, by the way, is a product of the author’s imagination, but it’s a clever one). It’s this chapter that finally makes it clear that “Lucky Wander Boy” isn’t just “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty” reprocessed through the eyes of the Atari generation, and in fact there are a few places where I began to question where the point of divergence for all these possible outcomes was. It gets the old what-if? machine going even after you close the cover, and that’s usually something I enjoy tremendously.
Quite an entertaining read, though its video game millieu may narrow its audience a bit. But don’t let those trappings put you off of giving it a read.
Year: 2003
Author: D.B. Weiss
Publisher: Plume
Pages: 276