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Nov. 25th, 2015 04:35 pmDoes anyone remember Invitation to the Game? I mean, at least someone does, because the reason I reread it is because I hit a good Yuletide fic from last year (Eden, for the curious).
Invitation to the Game is a middle-grade book set in a near-future in which the government assigns professions a la the Giver, except most people are actually assigned to become unemployed underclass, because robots. When protagonist Lisse graduates from high(?) school, she ends up unemployed and living in a giant warehouse with a bunch of her classmates, all of whom are deeply frustrated because they have various useful skills that they are completely unable to use in the current dystopian economy. (Lisse herself is an English major and therefore has no useful skills.)
In other words, for a book written in 1990, it does an astoundingly good job of tapping directly into the post-2008 night terrors of a generation of snake people, so ... well done, Monica Hughes!
Anyway, after they spend a while sitting around and being depressed, they are invited to participate in a mysterious virtual-reality-ish game where they wander around a mysterious landscape and effectively simulate such exciting escapist activities as walking through a desert, climbing random rock formations, not being able to find potable drinking water, etc. Since this is still more interesting than their actual lives, they all get hooked. In the big twist, ( spoilers! )
The protagonists of Invitation to the Game are pretty much flat as cardboard. (Annoying Privileged Rich -- oh, God, and I JUST got why he's named Rich, OKAY, MONICA HUGHES, FINE -- is really the only character who deserves the term, because at least hating everything and being cranky all the time provides something like a personality trait.) The book is compelling anyway, thanks to the world and setting -- and, I mean, who doesn't love a classic group-of-kids-band-together-and-survive-their-environment-against-the-odds story? It's like a very simplistic version of 7 Seeds.
(Though really you should just go read 7 Seeds.)
Invitation to the Game is a middle-grade book set in a near-future in which the government assigns professions a la the Giver, except most people are actually assigned to become unemployed underclass, because robots. When protagonist Lisse graduates from high(?) school, she ends up unemployed and living in a giant warehouse with a bunch of her classmates, all of whom are deeply frustrated because they have various useful skills that they are completely unable to use in the current dystopian economy. (Lisse herself is an English major and therefore has no useful skills.)
In other words, for a book written in 1990, it does an astoundingly good job of tapping directly into the post-2008 night terrors of a generation of snake people, so ... well done, Monica Hughes!
Anyway, after they spend a while sitting around and being depressed, they are invited to participate in a mysterious virtual-reality-ish game where they wander around a mysterious landscape and effectively simulate such exciting escapist activities as walking through a desert, climbing random rock formations, not being able to find potable drinking water, etc. Since this is still more interesting than their actual lives, they all get hooked. In the big twist, ( spoilers! )
The protagonists of Invitation to the Game are pretty much flat as cardboard. (Annoying Privileged Rich -- oh, God, and I JUST got why he's named Rich, OKAY, MONICA HUGHES, FINE -- is really the only character who deserves the term, because at least hating everything and being cranky all the time provides something like a personality trait.) The book is compelling anyway, thanks to the world and setting -- and, I mean, who doesn't love a classic group-of-kids-band-together-and-survive-their-environment-against-the-odds story? It's like a very simplistic version of 7 Seeds.
(Though really you should just go read 7 Seeds.)
