Reading the 80s - 1984

Money, A Suicide Note (Martin Amis)

John Self, our possibly not that reliable narrator (believe me he’s lying to himself even more blatantly than he’s lying to us) is probably, apart from his humour, one of the least likable people imaginable. He’s offensive, he’s a bully. He drives drunk. 

Sometimes he even wakes up and realises he’s been in a fight he doesn’t remember.

The weird thing is, he's not even enjoying it that much. He’s got problems with his teeth, he’s got problems with his hair and his face and possibly his heart. As well as the drink there’s the food and the women and the cigarettes. There’s the threatening phone calls he ignores and the trips back and forth over the Atlantic.

But to him that’s all ok. He’s about to hit the big time with a movie loosely based on the story of his life and the money is going to fix everything..  

What Amis has captured here is how, in a way I don’t think was true of earlier decades, money had a personality of its own – and not a nice one. In the eighties it wasn’t just about having money to consume (although everyone in the book does plenty of that) it was about consuming to show you’ve got money. To show yourself you’ve got money. To show yourself you’re a have, and not a have-not.

It’s a merry go round. It’s a hysteria captured incredibly vividly. As John Self says – if we all stopped believing in money tomorrow it wouldn’t exist. But we won’t.

 

Deathtrap Dungeon – Ian Livingstone

This is one of the Fighting Fantasy books. All of which were incredibly popular when I was a child, part of a wider zeitgeist where I would also put Dungeons and Dragons and Indiana Jones and the monster Top Trump cards. 

I also remember a book series aimed at younger readers with a main protagonist called Pip, in which you (or Pip) got sent to page 14 when you (they) died and a semi comforting ‘ho hum, back to the drawing board’ type narrator wished you better luck next time. 

Fighting Fantasy doesn’t pull it’s punches quite so much. If you are crushed to death or dragged into a monster’s slime pit to be predigested and eaten later at their leisure you are told. The pictures are also wonderfully gruesome in a way I think would appeal to children. Skulls and monsters and swords.  

I don’t remember the other books well, so can’t be sure if they all involve such an array of monsters, or if it’s because of the set up. Baron Sukimvit has created his Deathtrap Dungeon as the ultimate challenge, with beasts and traps of all descriptions, maintained (as we find out) by not always willing servants. Being an adult now I’m intrigued – given that the challenge is only open once a year – about what the rest of the year is like for these servants. Filling the slime pit, resetting the traps, feeding the giant insects. Is there a library and refectory somewhere? Do they look forward to the challenge as a change or see it as a disruption (oh for pity's sake, someone’s set off the giant rolling ball again. I suppose I should give Fred a hand to put that back).  

As a book - the narrative works as well as something written as a game could feasibly do. Stopping to do battle every few minutes is always going to break up the flow. I remember trying to create similar games myself using index cards and it is incredibly difficult to keep track and not give people too many or too few options. 

As a game - well despite my resolve to play fairly I did all the things I did as a child. I started off drawing a map the way they recommend and working out the ‘battles’ honestly, but by the time I’d died a few times I got bored and just took the highest roll as the winner (I’m convinced the whole thing with the dice rolls is a covert way of getting children to do subtraction). I never did find the three jewels you need to finish the quest and read through the book to find out where the missing one was (a ninja has it, so there’s obviously a section I missed. There’s an iron key I don’t know how to get to too, and a dinosaur, so maybe I’ll go round again and actually draw the map properly this time. Or more likely, maybe I'll give up).

It was fun - I can see why they were so popular - but I can also see why video games came in and filled that niche. Fewer sums for a start.