I owned three Choose Your Own Adventure-style books growing up. I remember reading the first one constantly, to the extent where I would walk while reading and ignoring my my classmates. My only recollection of the plot was that at some point you could get stuck in a giant pinball machine, which resulted in death.
This was quite a blow to me, as my main aspiration at this age was to be stuck in a giant pinball machine, and live to an old age before staring down the great shiny orb and refusing to dodge.
Presumably this would be for a noble purpose.
In any case, the second book I owned, in which you tracked a criminal from outer space, totally sucked. Pretty much every wrong turn lead to death, to a point where I was suspicious of the author’s intent.
The imaginatively titled Sail with Pirates from the publishers of Choose Your Own Adventure was the third and last book in my possession, and I have almost no memory of it, so after having left it in my bag for about two weeks, I decided to finally go ahead and choose my own adventure.
Here’s something I would not have expected: The book opens up with the equivalent of a User Agreement Form, in which the reader implicitly agrees not to kill anyone or alter to the flow of time. I must ask the same of you. If you cannot agree to this, do not read any further.
To continue:
In the book, just as on this blog, the reader will not actually be given any opportunities to kill anyone, or alter the flow of time. In fact, hunting for the treasure through time is just about as straightforward and exciting as literary Connect the Dots. Here’s an example of what happens after you decide to mutiny against the milquetoast Captain Phips:
You decide it would be fun to be a pirate. You go to sleep in your hammock without saying anything to Phips.
You dream that a snake is wrapping its coils around you, squeezing tighter and tighter.
“Aha!” someone shouts, waking you up. It’s Captain Phips. He’s found out about the mutiny! You try to jump to your feet, but you can’t. There’s a rope tied tight around your hammock! Most of the sailors are tied up the same way.
“Now what have we here?” Phips says, striding around the room, “A group of mutinous moths, all wrapped up in their own cocoons! Fishes like to eat moths. Maybe I’ll feed you to them!”
Shudder.
The scenario itself is strange for an adventure story: you and the rest of the able-bodied mutineers go to sleep, ready for mutiny in the morning. Or you know, whenever.
Perhaps what’s most disappointing, even a little jarring, is just how easily time travel is accomplished. Normally I would assume that you’d have some bulky time-ship, or maybe some futuristic piece of stupid-looking jewelry that needs to be concealed from your pirate crew, but the book never really gets into this and assumes that time travel is as easy as blinking an eye.
It’s not that I object to this method: the book would have to be twice as thick to manage these ideas. But casually moving BACKWARD and FORWARD through time like you’re moving through the aisles at Wal-Mart just strikes me as morally reprehensible. I could deal with it if the following factors were in place:
1. Time travel gives you migraines:
“Give me that sextant, ” says another man. “We are between twenty degrees thirty minutes and twenty one–”
“Would you SHUT UP?” you scream, clasping your hands to your temples, “Haven’t you primates heard of LONGITUDE? Aaargh!”
2. Time Travel leaves you incredibly cynical.
Go ahead, mutiny,” you mumble, “Won’t do any good. I can skip ahead to the part of your life where you die after drinking kerosene for want of whiskey. Or I can show you the part of my life where my kids won’t visit me in the old folks home, because they can’t stand the smell.”
3. The book would end like this:
The silver pieces slip through your fingers as you ponder just what in the hell you’re going to do with currency from 1641. You can’t very well claim to have come by it honestly. Nor can you claim that you’ve been diving off the coast and just happened to stumble across it. For one thing, you don’t own any scuba gear, and also, you’re twelve years old.
Maybe you could go back and spend the money in 1639, before the ship sank. No! That would alter the very structure of time? Or would it? What if there really is no treasure? What if you can’t travel through time? What if you’ve been locked up in a hospital during this adventure? Which hospital and when?
Congratulations, Time Traveler: You have found the treasure, but you have lost your mind.
As lame as going back and forth through time in search of money–whose actual worth compared to GOING BACK AND FORTH THROUGH TIME is entirely negligible, the entire book is worth it for the spread that opens the story:
See those whorls? They help you travel through time. Sometimes they make you hypnotized, but in this case, they help you travel through time. Maybe.
A book which contains anecdotes about:
