CYOA: #4 Space And Beyond by R. A. Montgomery

In 1977, Star Wars came out and space opera jumped from an obscure genre that had been popular decades ago when Buster Crabbe made Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials to serious mainstream entertainment. In 1978, Battlestar Galactica was out, and in 1979 Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. On Memorial Day 1980, The Empire Strikes Back came out. 

R. A. Montgomery jumped into the trend with a very early entry in the Choose Your Own Adventure series, Space and Beyond which had its first printing (by Bantam, at least) in January 1980. My copy is a 6th printing from March 1981, and has a cover price of $1.50; and I bought it new. It's pretty old now; quite yellow, and somewhat brittle and stiff with age. The cover says that there are 44 possible endings, out of 117 pages. This book, along with Montgomery's Journey Under the Sea Packard's The Cave of Time and Terman's By Balloon to the Sahara were all published by Montgomery's Vermont Crossroad's Press before even the series was picked up by Bantam and became mainstream. It's a real vintage part of the series, and it... unfortunately, really shows.

It was one of the very first ones that I picked up when I discovered the series. I was drawn, as I was to the similar-themed Third Planet From Altair, by the space opera vibe of the book. However, I wouldn't really suggest that Space and Beyond delivers space opera. Rather, it delivers a bunch of really hoaky concepts set in outer space... sometimes. This is probably the most primitive and poorly written of all of the books that I've managed to still hang on to. Some of that is Montgomery being Montgomery. Some of it is the newness of the concept still, probably needing some polish before it became really good. 

Paul Grainger is the iconic illustrator once again, showing you a protagonist character who's a full grown adult with a big chin, a manly cut to his figure, and an odd bowl cut with black hair. Montgomery mentions that you're three days old, but because of the speed of your spacecraft, you've aged 18 years. OK. I always like Grainger's illustrations; they're whimsical and yet also sometimes dark and edgy, and always iconic. Like Montgomery's earlier outing in the series (#2 Journey Under the Sea) he gives you a protagonist that is an adult, not a kid and throws you into situations that seem adult-like. 

But the flaws in the writing are noticed almost immediately. You get very little exposition—not that you need much, but maybe a bit more context would be nice—before being asked to make a choice. In fact, on almost every page that doesn't have a full page illustration or an ending, you make a choice. You're making probably too many choices too quickly without having any time to digest the results of your choices.

Which, actually, seem to matter very little. You may make a choice to head for the planet Phonon or Zermacroyd on page 1, the planets of your father and mother respectively, but at no point in the book do you actually arrive at either destination, and in fact almost immediately you are put into situations where your goal of reaching your native planets are cast aside and forgotten. This makes all of those choices seem really quite arbitrary and pointless. In some cases, it's even worse than that; you'll go to a new page after making a choice, and it makes almost no reference to your choice at all, or even the situation that you were in. You might even feel like you've accidentally turned to the wrong page and ended up in some other plotline. 

While certainly a crippling flaw, this isn't even the books' worst. No, the biggest problem is Montgomery's hippy moralizing and philosophizing. Why is it that in the better part of a dozen branches do you somehow end up on earth criticizing modern culture, human nature, or noodling with idle thoughts of socialism and communal living? And that's only the times when you're on earth; there's at least another 100-150% more content where you do the same thing on some other world or scenario. It's funny that I used to think of Montgomery as the more "just throw gratuitous fun stuff in there" guy relative to Packard. That may yet turn out to be true as I continue this review of the series and remember stuff that I haven't read in decades, but holy cow is Montgomery's idle philosophizing just terrible in this book. It's almost the anti-space opera; instead of ever doing anything cool or fun, you just stop and think about how terrible human nature is and why can't people just all get along and stop polluting, or whatever other moral crusade Montgomery wants to hammer in the narrative?

I had kind of remembered the first flaw, but not the second until I re-read it. I'm pretty sure that this was a significant low point in the early wave of the series, or maybe even among all of the ones that I still own. I've you're looking to collect these, only the strong draw of nostalgia (and maybe the flipping through Grainger's evocative art) would make this one worth picking up. I don't recommend it.

Anyway, let's take stock of some of the bizarro-things that happened to me as the protagonist through the course of re-reading this one:

• made the incredibly stupid decision to land on the surface of a black hole and was treated to a neat Grainger illustration and simply the text that I was never heard from again.
• went through a black hole to find it was a strange hollow prism inside with a Luddite hippy commune that I settled down in
• joined a circus and no longer cared about trying to find dad's world
• inexplicably suddenly ceased to exist. I'm not even kidding. It's entirely possible that Montgomery was high when he wrote most of this book.
• tried to boost the signal of my SOS and somehow caused my own ship to blow up. lolwut
• ditched the trip to mom's world, joined the academy, graduated top of my class, and joined a 12 year exploration voyage on an experimental new ship
• sat with a strange hippy guru and project my mind back in time to the big bang
• escaped from a close encounter with a black hole, and resumed my journey to Phonon. This is the closest I actually ever got to arriving at either destination
• traveled back in time to a war on Mars, but I didn't do anything except muse about the nature of war, and how I am part of a new way; a way of sharing. Gag.
• traveled back in time to Olduvai Gorge and the Lucy skeleton, and decided to hang around meddling in the formation of early humanoid society. What a self-righteous wanker I am!
• travelled to Earth, got a brief lecture about pollution, wars and the energy crisis, and decided to join the United Nations to make it a better place. Retch.
• travelled back to Earth, and had vague reports of all kinds of catastrophes that were supposedly caused by nuclear explosions. I guess I was stuck there, though? Not even sure why this was the end, except that after the delivery of that nauseating pitch for globalist Babelism, Montgomery just had no idea what else to say.
• Blown up by the people of Lodzot. This ending was shown in the choices, so of course, nobody actually chose it unless you were just sick and tired of reading and wanted an excuse to bail out of the narrative, though.
• Became a military commander of the rocket force, but immediately second-guessed my choice because war = makes Montgomery sad.
• took command of some alien expedition and was treated to the most surreal, incoherent couple of paragraphs I've ever read before being told that the narrative was at an end without anything happening.
• tried to fly into the sun with an alien scientific expedition, with predictable consequences. Seriously; who would choose this except someone looking to make sure that they see all of the branches?
• traveled too fast and somehow just disappeared or disintegrated or something
• chose to travel to the future, but inexplicably spent a page discussing the past
• chose to travel to the past and got a paragraph of incoherent something or other. It didn't sound like a good ending, but I also have no idea what was happening other than that I didn't appear to be happy about it.
• traveled to the past, looked at space, and thought that it's beautiful
• got radiation sickness along with the population of a whole planet. Presumably, although I don't know for sure, I died of it.
• escaped a space war, and then I was back alone in space, the end. Hey, what about trying to find the planet I was originally looking for instead of just ending the narrative, Montgomery?
• Brokered a peace treaty between two warring factions that comically didn't even know what they were fighting about.
• led a military group in a retreat, but my opponent also retreated and everyone just stopped fighting. I presume this is the kind of guy who voted for Jimmy Carter, since he clearly believed that bad guys will just leave you alone if you suck up to them enough. Betas gonna beta, I guess.
• destroyed an alien craft that attacked me, but then second guessed if it was a good thing to blow it up because violence even in self defense makes Montgomery sad
• escaped a war only to have all of my energy give out and my civilization revert to stone age technology
• surrendered instead of retreating and then... the end? What happened? Dunno. That's too much trouble for Montgomery to figure out.
• had an ending that had no bearing on the choice that took me here, but had something to do with a space version of the UN declaring that instead of capitalism, we're all switching immediately to a system of sharing. Whatever that is supposed to mean.
• The other choice from the same branch had the space UN announce, with no reference to the choice I made, that energy all throughout the galaxy is draining like a battery. I'm on my own. Uh... Oookay?!
• became the leader of an alien expedition that I just discovered. For some reason, I didn't lead it to the planet that was my original goal!
• became the leader of yet another military revolution, complete with finger-wagging about militarism. Got captured, but the war went on.
• visited a planet that inexplicably turned into Earth although it had a different name earlier. Interviewed a student, but then he captured me and made me some kind of research experiment
• same thing, except this time it was a politician and I was a feather in his cap at rallies and stuff
• suddenly had a secret weapon that was never mentioned ever before, stopped time briefly during a fight, and when it restarted, everybody was a peaceful hippy.
• became a pirate. Immediately got captured and put in prison
• became a pirate. Was successful, but then money was outlawed, everybody became a communist, and for some reason there was no reason to pirate anymore. Huh?
• while on Earth, join a ship leaving because pollution and war has made the planet unlivable (again.) Implied that this may be the genesis of the ship that I was born on.
• Didn't like Earth. Montgomery gave me a brief lecture criticizing Earth, and then suggested that maybe I should just start over. Really, that actually happened.
• zapped a planet to dust to eliminate a plague
• while looking for a cure for a plague, only found a reference to human sacrifice (uh... what?!) and therefore, couldn't go through with it, so people are all still sick, and the narrative just stops.
• had two or three sentences about the hopelessness of getting people to care about pollution. Uh... what?
• tries to go to the galactic court about the plague on Axle. They decide not to interfere. Story stops.
• police do interfere on Axle. No cure. Now everyone has the plague and a police state. Prescient for 2020, I suppose, except presumably the plague was meant to be real in the narrative here, rather than just an overhyped version of the flu.
• apparently sitting out under the moons and drinking liquids is the cure for the plague. Amazing!

There are some good space opera themed books in this series, including Third Planet From Altair and Space Patrol, both of which were pretty early. There was another whole series called Star Challenge that had nothing BUT space opera titles, and every single one of them (at least the ones I had; I don't have every single title) were better than Space and Beyond. Like I said earlier, except for the nostalgic art, or to be a completionist collector, or maybe if you can get it cheap to be amused by how bad it is like a terrible b-movie, you should avoid this title.