#13 - "Freeway Fighter" (1985), by Ian Livingstone

The aluminium-foil ducts really give it that "B-movie" feel.

 

Dateline: 1981
 
The scene is a cold, concrete-floored garage where STEVE and IAN write gamebooks. They are not yet billionaires. Rain rattles upon the iron roof.   A busted washing machine appears to have vomited its contents across one half of the garage, the foamy wash hemmed in by a dyke of sopping towels. A dusty black-board leans against the wall, a map of the Maze of Zagor marked up on it, variously smudged, scribbled on and over-written. There are two hammocks strung from the rafters. In the centre of the garage is a battered wooden picnic table, bearing a 1940s-era typewriter. Next to the typewriter, there lies a grimy tyre iron and an eyeless teddy bear. Unpainted war-game miniatures with missing heads and limbs are strewn everywhere.

STEVE is sitting at the typewriter, tapping hunt-and-peck at the keys, pausing occasionally to alternately sigh or glare skyward towards an uncaring God.

Metal rasps and graunches are heard as the roller door is raised. IAN enters.

STEVE: "Ian! Where've you been all afternoon! You're supposed to be helping me break this GANJEES scene."

IAN: "Oof, come off it, Steve! I've been down the pictures! Seen Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior - cor, it were a right blast! Top action, car chases, a fit bird in tennis gear, this film's got it all! One bloke gets his fingers chopped off trying to catch a metal boomerang, it's ace!"

STEVE: (annoyed) "Well, that's fine and well, but if you're not going to help me I'll take your name off the cover of Citadel of Monsters (working title). Now listen to this - suddenly, a big spooky face flies at your face. You throw yourself down on the ground and begin to feel frightened -- "

STEVE chews on the end of a pencil.  
(continuing) "I don't think it's intense enough. Maybe I should say very frightened. What do you think? You throw yourself down on the ground and begin to feel very frightened."

IAN: (offhandedly) "Very frightened, definitely."

STEVE: (nodding) "Yeah... mmm."

STEVE produces a bottle of Twink and begins daubing it upon the manuscript. Meanwhile, IAN paces up and down, visibly pumped up from watching Mad Max.


Moments pass, Ian suddenly jolts as if hit by a static shock.

IAN: "Here, I've just had a wizard notion, Steve!"

STEVE: (tongue protruding from corner of mouth as he hunches over the manuscript, twinking away) "And what would that be, Ian?"

IAN: "Listen, do you think we can get the license to do a Mad Max gamebook?"

STEVE:  (sighs, looks up) "Fat chance, mate. You know I wanted to get the license for Star Trek but I couldn't keep Roddenberry's assistant's assistant on the line long enough to even explain what a gamebook is! Don't even bother. Look though, there's no reason you can't do a gamebook about driving around the wasteland and just call it Mad Gordon or something."


IAN: "What a smashing idea! Yes, I'm definitely going to do that!"

--------------------------

And that, friends, is how the world came to have: FREEWAY FIGHTER
But as we shall see, the road from conception to reality can be rocky and bandit-harried...

Never thought I'd say it, but the American cover is better.

Background

Well if you want a post-apocalyptic setting you need an actual apocalypse to get there and while there are many options, only a few are classics. Given the vintage ('85) you might expect that Ian would go for global thermonuclear war, but he obviously thought that was played out and you know what: he was right. So instead he went for a devastating pandemic which may seem pretty obvious to today's reader but I assure you was quite recherche in the mid-80s.

Ian decides to really throw Us Readers into the moment of the World's Doom by forgoing the FF-traditional title "BACKGROUND" and instead titling the passage:

VID NEWS BULLETIN

DATELINE 21 JULY 2022

This boundary-pushing format is then instantaneously abandoned in favour of the usual past tense narrative - somewhere along the creative highway the concept was turfed but the title remained, lingering uselessly like an outie belly-button. Ian tells us that actually the world of 2022 is super utopian, World War III was completely averted, East and West are cooling out together with a vodka and Coke, some kind of revolution in agriculture means no-one is hungry, and "increased mobility [has] led to people's greater understanding of one another." (Do not forget that the man went back-packing around Thailand to research Deathtrap Dungeon so he knows what's up)

Ian then says that 21 July was a hot day (everywhere?) and he remembers about the news bulletin idea and he tells us what was on the news that morning, which was basically that everything is great and "England is to play the United States in the World Cup final in Sydney" - no doubt this notion tickled him pink, but what must've seemed like a truly fantastical scenario in 1985, nowadays seems kind of more viable (except for the part about England making the final, obviously)

Okay so there's nothing in the news bulletin about an apocalypse anyway, but later that afternoon a killer virus breaks out in New York and four days later, 85 percent of the world's population is dead. As far as viruses goes this is over-achieving and I bet the virus had cause to regret it afterwards. Better to piss around for generations havin' a ball like the common cold, than burn yourself out from workaholism and leave nobody alive to infect afterwards. Take it from me, viruses, you gotta play it smart in the modern world.

I tell ya! Today's virus got it tougher than evah!

But anyway. Ian then labours through half a page in order to tell us that "Mad Max happens". Mad Max is such effective short-hand for this scenario that the author'/s annoyance at having to explain Mad Max from first principles is palpable. So I won't put myself to the same trouble because you already know the drill - one thing that struck me though was that Ian Livingstone describes the marauding wasteland gangs as "the new barbarians", which is also the title of an entertaining Italian film that coincidentally explores many of the same themes.

"The New Barbarians" is considered a snuff movie by fashion store mannequins.

To complete the circle, the trailer for The New Barbarians is, by chance or fate, a functional precis of the plot of Freeway Fighter (you can watch it in lieu of reading the rest of the post if you are in a rush).

Anyway, we established that Mad Max has happened. YOU are one of luckier people in this scenario, you eke out a comparatively civilised existence in a walled town called New Hope, that clings to some virtues of the vanished world. One day you are cooling out the garage tinkering with some shit and a couple of guys "from the town council" run in all pumped up about something they heard on the short wave. Somewhere to the south is another town called San Anglo and they called up to make a deal - 10,000 litres of petroleum in exchange for "grain and seeds". They tell you that a Dodge Interceptor will be kitted out with guns and a bunch of James Bond shit and suggest that you are just the man to volunteer to drive. You immediately agree, in accordance with the now well-established  tendencies of Fighting Fantasy protagonists (i.e. obedience to small town authorities, and a thriving death-wish).

By the by - it occurred to me on later reflection that the unspecified amount of grain you are delivering to San Anglo has to be able to fit into a highly modified 1984 Dodge Interceptor, which is a two-door and you couldn't put a baby in the back seat even if you folded it, whereas it is clearly stated that you will be driving a petrol tanker back with ten thousand litres in it.

The Interceptor - it fits exactly one sack of grain, propped up in the passenger seat like a person.

Gotta be a trap, right? Who's gonna trade ten thousand litres of Texas Tea for three handfuls of trail mix? Gotta be a trap.

Rolling Up My Dude

First up there is an exciting innovation in the Character Sheet for Freeway Fighter as it includes a field for "Driver's Name", which to my delight had been filled out already by a previous imaginaut:

Dartin Shot. They call me "Star". As in "star shot". Which means, like, "good shot".
I am good at shots. Am like a Hollywood star, of shots. Shot celebrity.
I can shoot darts.
Okay seeya.

And here are Mr. Shot's stats, they are okay:

SKILL - 10
STAMINA - 23
LUCK - 8

You also get to roll stats for your vehicle:

FIREPOWER - 8
ARMOUR - 28

This is basically just SKILL and STAMINA for cars. The Interceptor also gets its own character sheet which is pretty sick:

Come on, they're not called "Spare Wheels" you damn nerds. Do some research.

Since some punk kid had already written on (and carefully shaded) parts of my DODGE INTERCEPTOR SPECIFICATION, I got my pencil out and under "Car Modifications" wrote:

In my version of Freeway Fighter, Dartin Shot threw away the grain.

The Adventure

Something felt very familiar to me about this adventure, mainly because I have seen Mad Max, but also because I have driven road trips before. Your main concerns in Freeway Fighter are basically the same as driving inter-city in the real world, i.e.

1) Am I Gunna Run Out Of Petrol, and;
2) Those Other Assholes On The Road, plus;
3) Am I Gunna Get A Speeding Ticket.

But oh yeah, we can scratch #3, because in the lawless badlands of the hollowed world, of course you will not get a speeding ticket. Dartin Shot, being a "glass half-full" kind of dude, devotes significant time and mental energy to this consideration:

"Despite the hazard of having to avoid abandoned cars, the highway is wide enough for you to gather plenty of speed. It's exciting to drive so freely, without fear of being hauled in by the police for violating some traffic regulation or other. "

What a refreshing attitude! Contrast this with that other well-known work of post-apocalyptic fiction, Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Well, I think we can agree that the guy in that book is a right gloomy sod and no mistake.

“You walk out in the gray light and stand and you see for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The BLIND DOGS of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like GROUND-FOXES in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” 

This guy resolutely refuses to see the "upside" of the collapse of civilisation/all-moral-boundaries. Does the protagonist in The Road ever take a moment to appreciate life? Not really. But look what he's getting away with - no laws, no limits - you can wee wherever you want - you can take the shopping cart out of the supermarket car-park and push it around with all your stuff in it, and you won't get in trouble.

But here's ya boy Dartin "Star" Shot again:

"The road is open and wrecked cars are an infrequent hazard. The speedometer reads well above the  maximum speed-limit that used to control the road, but you know that there is no chance of getting a speeding-ticket now."

He's still thinking about it! It's still a big deal for him. This is truly to "make lemonade when life gives you lemons".
  

When life gives you New Barbarians...  just take a moment to appreciate that at least there's no fukken five-oh breathin' down ya neck, ya feel me?

Anyway the first couple of encounters once you roll out the gates of New Hope are not much to write about. Dartin overhears a guy shooting at a dog and then drives past a phoney gas station which is pretending that it still sells gas, an obvious trap. Instead of falling for that one he goes to a McDonald's drive-in and pretends to order. "This is sick!" Dartin says to himself, "I can do whatever I want."

And he has another one of his Deep Thoughts further down the road when he notices shit is kind of run down.  "You didn't realise how much maintenance was needed to support civilisation." Nobody is mowin' the lawns or nothing! Shit is crazy.

People used to take a bit of pride, you know?

At last Dartin gets an overdue reality check when the RED CHEVVY on the cover rolls up on him with guns blazing. I couldn't be bothered so I used one of my four rockets, which allow you to instantly win combat. Dartin surveys the wreckage. "Who were these people and why did they attack you without warning?" he wonders. It's like topsy-turvy land out here! Dartin suddenly understands why the mechanics swapped his indicator lights and windscreen wipers for a hundred machine guns with infinite ammo.

Just then the radio fires up, someone from back at New Hope lets you know that a biker gang attacked the town and kidnapped the town leader, Sinclair, "so, ah, keep an eye out for them, okay hon?"

Given that this book was written by an Englishman in 1985, I can only conclude that the character of "Sinclair" is a reference to the great British inventor and lap-dance enthusiast, Sir Clive Sinclair.

You acknowledge the message and say goodbye - the prose in this section is so workmanlike that you get the impression that Dartin Shot doesn't really give a shit about Sinclair - Dartin just rolls his eyes and nonchalantly drops the receiver with a careless flip of the wrist. "Sinclair? That guy? Pffft."

Ian doesn't give much of a shit about Sinclair either, really.  If you tiki-tour around for a while and blow up a few goons you can find him locked up in a shack in an abandoned town. Your only interaction is that he tells you about the raid on New Hope and his kidnapping. Normally that sentence would segue into some information about... the raid on New Hope and Sinclair's kidnapping, but in this case all we know is that Sinclair TOLD us about it, i.e. we know the general topic of some words he said. Readers are generously invited to dip their brush into the rich palette of their own imagination and just go nuts conjuring up this gripping account for themselves!  A rare treat for Us Readers - but I wasn't feeling very inspired at the time, so my mental image of Sinclair's kidnapping was basically just the first ten seconds of this video:

Sinclair: "Oh no, 'Mad Max' is happening to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...!"

Then he fucks off on a Harley. You get one LUCK point.

Beyond that, there's a single, final off-hand reference to Sinclair on the winning paragraph 380, where you return to New Hope with the fuel tanker and the grubby post-apocalyptic urchins of that town throw a sad parade with three handfuls of confetti they've been hoarding. And, we are told, "if you managed to rescue Sinclair during your adventure, consider your mission a triumph." But if you didn't, hey, good job anyway. It's Mad Max out there, you're gonna lose your town mayor once in a while, right? People are over Sinclair already, I mean, he only invented the motherfukken ZX Spectrum.

I guess Ian wanted to add some higher stakes to the story beyond "will the town of New Hope manage to scam a butt-load of petrol", but why bother to introduce this sub-plot if you're gonna leave it so soggy? Let's be clear, Sinclair is no Mungo, not by a long shot.


Anyway, you have the general idea of this book already. You drive around and a bunch of dumb things happen, all of which are car-themed. e.g. you see a broken-down ambulance or a broken-down bus. You drive under a bridge and a guy on top of the bridge tries to drop a rock on you or something. I didn't really care about any of this stuff.

Notable Encounters

There's really only one encounter in this book which rings my bell, which is this guy, Leonardi.

It's Leonardi! Love that guy.

Leonardi and his pals have blockaded a road. Here's what happens when you reach the blockade:

Two armed men in leather uniforms approach you and tell you that the only way you will be allowed to drive any further south is to win a speed race along the straight road, against their ace driver. If you lose the race, you will be forced to turn back.

Okay, but... why? What's their motivation? Who knows! Ian is wracking his brain for car-themed encounters here. Do you know how hard it is to come up with a whole gamebook's worth of car-themed encounters? It's pretty hard.

So then Leonardi pulls up in an E-Type Jag and he winds down the window and looks at you and here is an exact transcription of what he says:

"Hi, my name's Leonardi. I used to play ball for the Mets, but now I race cars. Too bad you are driving that old trash can, but good luck anyway."

You then race up the road a little bit and the book tells us there are six people cheering at the finish line. If you lose, Leonardi will get out of his car and say:

"You're good, but you're just not good enough. You'd better turn around now and head back towards the canyon."

...leaving us none the wiser. You can also get into a fight with Leonardi and blow him up but you'd have to be kind of a dick to do that.

Failure, and a Long Walk

Anyway I didn't get to race Leonardi when I played, because I fell foul of #1 on that earlier list - I ran out of gas. In fact this is the most probable way of losing, you need to employ Bizarre Search Behaviour to scrounge five or six cans of petrol on your way to San Anglo or you get sent to paragraph 364 which basically says "too bad you ran out of petrol, guess you're walking home, lol".

It would be nice if the petrol scarcity thing was set up a bit better - just have a guy in New Hope warn you about conserving fuel or something, make you nervous right from the get-go since it is undeniably the biggest threat in the game.

Might coulda strapped a rocket launcher on one of these bad boys instead.

The SKELETON Count

The inclusion of magically re-animated undead in this setting would have been a challenge to justify (while undoubtedly making for a better read). So, it will come as no surprise that:

This message is brought to you by That Skeleton with the Weird Bosom Portholes from The New Barbarians.

Before I explain what I counted instead, I should point out that it is hypothetically possible, however unlikely, that a female person or "Wo-man" might someday have cause to read this blog, and that this chimerical being, whom I have dared to imagine, might be dismayed by the sweaty-lidded Male Gaze inherent in my "SEXY DAMES Count", which you may recall stood in for SKELETONS way back when I wrote about Island of the Lizard King, sometime around the turn of the century.

It has been on my mind for these many intervening years that the Sexy Scales are very much askew and that there is a balance to be restored, a debt that must needs be redeemed.
Well, my Hypothetical Lady Readers - consider it paid in full:

The SLAMMIN' BODZ Report

(Editorial notes - listening to "I'm Too Sexy" is MANDATORY while reading this section)
(Yes, "on repeat", of course on repeat, why are you even asking)
(Okay if you're really that upset, you COULD listen to "Deeply Dippy" instead but it will make a lot less sense thematically)

The SLAMMIN' BODZ Report is brought to you by modern-day Right Said Fred.

Let the count-down begin!
(You are listening to the song, right?)

Chuck

Chuck here takes great care of himself, all of his striations and individual muscle fibres are plainly visible and just pressed up against his straining, creaking skin like you would not believe. Tap on those pecs and they'll sound off like a couple of finely tuned timbales! We asked Chuck for the secret behind his amazing achievement, it turns out he attaches diving weights to his Uzi and also he always take the stairs.

That's another Fighting Fantasy:

Vincente "Kid Panther" Cobretti

Ladies, some of you out there prefer more of a dancer's physique, am I right? Don't interrupt me to agree. Well look no further than  the "Kid Panther", Vincente Cobretti. As the unacknowledged love-child of Lt. Marion Cobretti (Sly Stallone's character in Cobra) and whoever Olivia Newton John was playing in the video for Physical, he attributes his bod almost entirely to lucky genes.
"But I also got my own technique called Micro-Training!" he blurts. "This week I've been really focused on pumping up that vein in my left elbow pit."

The Total Micro-Training (C) System with Vincente "Kid Panther" Cobretti is available now on VHS and Betamax.

ANIMAL

As the leader of a gang of New Barbarians, ANIMAL has made it to the very top of his profession. But he still makes time to keep his body in top condition by energetically beating strangers to death in unregulated lucha libre combats, or "pounding ass", as he describes it. "You better believe I am pounding ass day and night", he will state unequivocally when asked, and sometimes when not asked also.


Incredibly, ANIMAL has achieved -1.7% body fat, yes that's MINUS 1.7%. His body contains small amounts of the anti-matter form of fat, which scientists have not yet decided whether to call "anti-fat" or "taf". This also means that one sip of a thickshake would cause him to literally explode in a detonation three times more powerful than the destruction of Hiroshima. "It definitely keeps me on target in my intake control," Animal confided warmly to us. "Uh uh uh! No cheating!" he added with a throaty chuckle, waggling one deliciously muscular index finger from side to side.

Maximus Doombro

Maximus Doombro is a well-known local character, tooling about the wasteland in his instantly recognisable CHARIOT, a converted Toyota Hilux. We asked Maximus how he came up with his unique look.

"When the plague hit," he tells us, "me and some buddies holed up at a sauna called 'Centurions' where we always used to go, it was like a Roman-style place, just a fun place with a theme, you know."

"Eventually we ran out of tinned spaghetti and we had to go out foraging, and we didn't know what to expect, so we raided the costume closet and I found this gladiator helmet and some of the boys put on some legionary gear and we stepped out and said 'Hello, world! Here we are, this is us!' Well, we felt a bit silly at first, but you know, everybody in the wasteland has been really supportive, the kids like it when they see us, the parents are supportive, a lot of the dads ask me how they can get into it, it's just a bit of fun and colour for everyone."

The CHARIOT has bullet holes in the fuel tank, so it's pulled by a harnessed team of six gleaming body-builders, crawling on all fours with ball-gags stuffed into their drooling mouths.

"We each get one day a week riding in the back," Maximus explains, "it's fitness AND it's fun."
"And of course our friendship is stronger than ever!" he laughs. "Come on boys, mush, mush!"
And the CHARIOT is rolling again.

------------------------

Well, that concludes the SLAMMIN' BODZ Report, I hope all of the heterosexual women out there thoroughly enjoyed it. I felt a bit strange while I was writing it and zooming in closely on the detail of all those incredible muscles, but this was one for the ladies and I will do anything to be fair.

Final Thoughts

Well I suppose it probably fairly clear that I found this book pretty boring and a bit rubbish. I feel like Ian Livingstone didn't enjoy writing it, and thus I didn't enjoy reading it. He was much more enthusiastic writing high fantasy and it shows. It's a shame that the book got fixated on the car angle because there is a lot of fun tropes you can play with in a post-apocalyptic setting (consider something more akin to the Fallout series - there's no reason why this book couldn't have been populated with bizarrely mutated animals and such to spice it up). This is also a contributing factor as to why it has taken me so many months to finish writing about the bleedin' thing.

Back in the day, of course, Ian had Steve Jackson to kick his arse for him...

Dateline, 1985

The scene is a breath-takingly beautiful, sun-lit conservatory full of rare tropical plants and exquisitely tasteful furnishings. This is where IAN and STEVE write gamebooks. A small fountain plashes endearingly. Two white tigers lounge together on the floor. Hot ladies are carrying drinks around and what-not. 

STEVE is stretched out in a sun-chair, reading a book about cryptography.

STEVE (looking up from his book): "I say, Ian, I dropped three hundred thousand pounds at the roulette table last night, I think we better put out another gamebook, what! How's that Mad Gordon thing coming along?"

IAN is seated at a mahogany table nearby. He looks up from a charcoal sketch he is working on. It is a manticore blazing a J.

Ian: (shrugs) "Oh, I dunno mate, I started it but... cars are boring. I got bored."

STEVE's eyes smoulder with rage, like lava from a magic volcano where a boss lives.

Steve: "That's the bloody attitude I've been telling you about! FINISH THE BOOK, IAN."

Ian: "Look mate, I'm really not bothered on this one --"

Steve: "Don't tell it to me, Ian. Tell to the Board of Directors when you hand in your resignation."

Ian: "Oo-er, I'll get cracking then, eh."

And then he finished it off in a big rush in one afternoon, and he couldn't even think of an extra 20 paragraphs about cars so he made it finish on paragraph 380. The End.

#9 - "Caverns of the Snow Witch", by Ian Livingstone (1984)

Thaggnar's video-conference with Björk
spirals into opprobrium.  

Well, here we are knocking about in the imagination of Ian Livingstone again. Get used to it - the man was prolific. On the cover, both "caverns" and "a snow witch" are clearly depicted, but the star of the show appears to be a bumbling ORC whose boss has hit him up via crystal ball to chew his ass out for leaving the fridge door open. You can tell that he is bumbling because he has a flail stuffed into his belt such that the spiky bit is dangling in front of his crotch - if the homie makes any sudden movements then he is going to get a rude awakening, in the nuts. This might also explain why he's been standing still long enough for icicles to form on his pants.

You are an accident waiting to happen my friend.

It's a dramatic scene. Basically everyone seems to be just howling and freaking out - even the icy skulls that got stuck in the wall somehow - which led me to the alternative interpretation that they've just been told that a wandering swordsman is headed their way.

OH NO I HEARD IT IS THE SAME GUY WHO MADE A MAP OF THE SCORPIONS SWAMPS

So, you could be forgiven for thinking that the book is about a debutante ORC's struggle to make it in the high-pressure world of a modern henchman. You could also be forgiven for thinking that this book is about his boss THE SNOW WITCH, but she actually gets killed off halfway through. The book has an unusual structure, all the stuff about Caverns and a Snow Witch is just the first half, with the boss fight in the middle of the story rather than at the end. The adventure was first published in short form - just the Snow Witch bits - in the second issue of Warlock magazine, which believe it or not was an actual magazine about Fighting Fantasy that you could buy.

The Snow Witch - whom my research tells me has the lovely name of Shareella - made her debut on the cover in the contemporary haute couture of 1984, a snow-white leotard, bead belt and an early "rampant" prototype of her characteristic birdy hat.

What a feeling, bein's believin' / I can't have it all, now I'm dancing for my life

So the shorter adventure from Wizard magazine comprises the first half of the book, and it's fairly self-contained - the second half is kind of a medical drama. 


Background

Our protagonist starts out this adventure travelling with a caravan as a hired caravan guard - as far as fantasy role-playing set-ups go, this is pretty conventional. Then again, it's a damn sight better than some of his predecessors, those guys who you'll remember spent their days wandering the countryside alone, killing indiscriminately and composing erotic fan fiction about their own swords in the quiet intervals while they walk to their next massacre. In terms of characterisation, it's a big step up.

You work for Big Jim Sun, "a man to be reckoned with", who runs caravans up into the Icefinger mountains for the fur trade. At the moment the narrative picks up, our hero is walking ahead of the six carts over a frozen lake, poking the ice with a sword - from which we can see that Fighting Fantasy protagonists can apparently find ways to satisfy their death wish even when they're not in the midst of an official adventure. Suddenly the sound of a hunting horn blasts out across the ice, which is the mediaeval equivalent of yelling "OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT" - Big Jim thinks it might've come from the trading outpost that the caravan was heading for, and he sends you ahead to check. What you find is a "scene of ugly carnage", the bodies of six men massacred by some enormous creature. You report back to Big Jim and he asks you to hunt and kill the beast - by yourself, natch - which you agree to attempt for the sum of 50 GP.

It's actually a succinct and nicely atmospheric intro, which left me with little to make fun of. So, moving on...

Rolling Up My Dude


SKILL - 10
STAMINA - 20
LUCK - 11

Still avoiding single-digit SKILL scores, lucky me. I have my 10 PROVISIONS, hooray! I wish that they would bring back the rules from Warlock where the book would tell you that you could eat, at sensible times. I am running out of jokes about the instantaneous feeding/healing mechanic.

The Adventure


You wake up in the morning to find that the weather is shitty and fresh snow has covered the beast's tracks. You are, of course, undeterred and just start walking in a direction. Your first challenge is how to pass a crevasse in the ice. You can walk around it, or cross an "ice bridge" that has naturally formed across it, which if you think about it, would be fucking crazy. I was reminded of the first choice in Scorpion Swamp, where you could walk around the puddle or jump it. This isn't the sensible, predictable world of Scorpion Swamp though - when I decided to play it safe and walk around the crevasse, Ian hit me with a goddamn WOOLLY MAMMOTH (SKILL 10, STAMINA 11).

For fuck's sake.

A MAMMOTH, featured in the popular television game, "Skyrim".

Despite being evenly matched on paper, the MAMMOTH only got one good shot in before I chopped all of its legs off and rolled it down the hill. After that the weather worsened so I "hurriedly cut blocks of ice out of the mountain-side and [built] a makeshift igloo" and sat inside scarfing PROVISIONS to keep warm - all authentic survival lore I think - only to clamber out a while later to find that I'd been a few metres away from a trapper's log cabin. Naturally I busted in and ran a Goldilocks up on that joint, eating the trapper's stew and nicking a couple of weapons that were lying under the bed, i.e. a spear and, believe it or not, a war-hammer that I guess the trapper kept handy in case he needed to fight someone in plate armour. I left, following the fresh footprints that led out from the front door (yes, it was clear that the hut was actively inhabited - I was mentally prepared to feign anger and inform the trapper that I don't see your name on it and it's a free country and he should've locked the fucking door if he should happen to recognize his war-hammer poking out of my pants later on).

Now, some readers of the blog might be intrigued as to the identity about the killer beast that I was tracking - let me inform you now that if you're actually reading the book, this mystery is almost immediately ruined in Paragraph 1 when Ian informs you that "you set off towards the mountains where you hope to find the abominable killer beast"  - any six-year old with a passing interest in cryptozoology now knows it must this guy:

Eeeeeeek!

Yes, that hairy snowman who has been single-handedly keeping the word "abominable" alive for the last five decades or more - the YETI. This picture kinds of bugs me out by the way. It's well drawn, but very awkwardly composed. The YETI is standing at the bottom of a cliff or something? It's also clear that the artist's sympathies lie with the YETI, with its innocent labrador eyes, and its posture that of a 1950s TV housewife encountering a mouse, combined with the poise and gravitas of a surprised kitten.

See what I mean. 

The YETI inadvertently eviscerates the trapper while flapping its wrists, squealing and looking away with its eyes screwed shut - "incensed by the vicious attack, you scream at the Yeti and run through the snow to attack it". Before engaging, you get to chuck the spear, if it you have it - perhaps the trapper has a moment of baffled recognition as it flickers past his dying gaze - and if you manage to skewer the YETI it turns an unavoidable SKILL 11 STAMINA 12 fight into an unavoidable SKILL 10 STAMINA 9 fight (yeah, cheers Ian). I won the fight but the YETI got a few solid hits in, amidst all the effeminate shrieking and hopping about, so I'll confess that I was already chewing on a chicken drumstick from my PROVISIONS as I knelt at the side of the dying trapper.

Guy from "Final Fight" demonstrates best practice in the healing arts.

"With great effort he reaches up and grabs you by the neck, pulling you down so that you can hear his dying words." As I did for Mungo in Lizard King, I have taken the liberty of imagining what these might have been. "In terrible pain he struggles to whisper his story..."

Trapper's Last Words

"Ahem. Stranger, as you know, the Icefinger Mountains are a cold and inhospitable land, but for most of my life I've made them my home. I've earned my living hunting and trapping beasts. I eat the meat that I kill and scrape the furs for trade. But all that's behind me now, since, as must now be quite obvious to you, I am dying in agony. Perhaps five years ago, I first heard tell of the Crystal Caves, a great warren carved into the face of glacier, so-named for its abundance of valuable water crystals.  It is home to the wicked Snow Witch, Shareella, and her cult of followers. Now, the Snow Witch, as you may have heard, is a beautiful yet evil sorceress, who is trying to use her dark powers to bring on an ice age so that she can rule supreme over the whole world - can you imagine that? Well, it's more than a right-thinking trapper like myself can stand. So, since that day five years ago--"


Hold up, hold up, hold up - actually, no. You know what? I can't be bothered. There is honestly so much exposition in this trapper's dying words. He's worse than Bigleg in Forest of Doom. Somebody needs to let these guys know that when it comes to last words, pithiness is what gets you over. You shouldn't be glancing at your wrist-watch during a guy's dying words. You shouldn't start wondering what might be for dinner. You shouldn't have to interrupt to clarify whether the man is, in fact, actually dying at all, or whether there might still be enough time to drag him down off the mountain or e.g. invent all of modern medicine.

Anyway, he does eventually die. One of the many things he tells you before doing so is that he found the entrance to the Crystal Caves and marked it with a scrap of fur (the entrance has an illusion cast on it so it looks just like a wall of ice), and he begs you to go and kill the Snow Witch, and just in case you aren't civic-minded, "legends say" that there are treasures frozen into the walls (SPOILER - this is a dirty fuckin' lie). The book then tells you that you consider going back to Big Jim Sun to collect your 50 Gold, but "the thought of an quest through the Crystal Caves beneath Icefinger Mountains excites you, and you decide to set off to find them". I would've preferred to be given a choice here actually - could've been a nice "bad ending" for the narrative, you go get your 50 GP and invest it in starting up a one-stop apothecary in Port Blacksand that sells hag's hair, black pearls and lotus flowers, then a couple of years later Shareella's Ice Age hits and you're left starving out in the tundra with nothing for breakfast but old acorns and cursed Turkish Delight. Big Jim Sun, as a fur trader, gets to retire a millionaire, but everybody else is having a rubbish time, I bet you wish you tried to stop the Snow Witch when you had the chance: Your Adventure Ends Here.

I wish it was written that way, but instead you just get herded to the Crystal Caves by your overwhelming excitement.  When we arrive, we get the to books first T-junction! I thought it would never come - I went left. I bumped into a MOUNTAIN ELF in the corridor but I was just like "oh hey, what's up" and he was like "you know, maintainin', tryin' to get over" and that was that. Then I fell into a pit trap, which does 1d6 damage - in my case, a full 6 STAMINA damage. I reached into my PROVISIONS for a can of corned beef even as I ruefully rubbed my bruised tail-bone. Here I was stuck in a pit, surrounded by a fortune in precious water crystals! Yet I would trade it all for a step ladder, or even a good, solid, rope.

Then looking up I saw these two goofballs:

It's the guys who really did the singing for Milli Vanilli!

These GOBLINS threw down a rope and ordered me to throw my sword up to them, which I did. They wanted to take a prisoner, which in their shoes, would not have been my strategy. If I was the GOBLIN here, I would've run and hid in a box. I may lose a lot of Fighting Fantasy books, but the day I die because something a GOBLIN did? There ain't a calendar for that. What happened next is basically my favourite option in the whole book: If you wish to pull hard on the rope in an attempt to pull them down into the pit, turn to 314. 

You have to Test Your Luck to make it happen - really you'd think the GOBBIES should be testing their luck though - but if you make the roll, one of them lands on his head and doesn't get up, the other is a SKILL 5 STAMINA 4 fight which is pretty dang easy even when you're penalised for having thrown your sword away like a ding-dong. You're still at the bottom of the pit afterwards, which is kind of a minus, but we already established the heroes miraculous powers of ice-working when he assembled an igloo in five minutes during a blizzard, so it's no real surprise that you're able to hack a staircase out of the wall with one of the dead GOBLIN's daggers.

So, back on track then. Next up? A PUZZLE ROOM. The situation is that there's a sword and a spear poking out of these cute little circular pools in the ground. Someone carved a poem in the ice in front of them:

Sword or spear

Strength or fear

How to choose

Win or lose

I had to look up "doggerel" in the dictionary just now because I thought it meant "poetry that a dog would write" - not really, as it turns out, but near enough.

Plus there's the frosty corpse of an ORC pointing at the sword.
He has an honest face, don't you think?

You can choose to take one of them with you or just write the whole thing off as a bad joke if you like - after all, it's hard to imagine someone setting something like this up outside of the context of a birthday party or a game show. It's not a very good trap, since there's an even chance of getting a really good weapon with zero consequence. So my working theory is that someone who lives in the Crystal Caves set this up as a fun surprise for their best friend to find, the whole set-up including the dead ORC has some kind of special in-joke meaning between these two good buddies, balloons were gonna come down from the ceiling, et cetera, but like an asshole you have just blundered in and ruined it.

I chose to pick up the sword, because they rhymed spear with fear in the poem, plus the ORC was pointing to it. I had to make some assumptions about what the ORC was thinking when he died, I mean if it had been a SKELETON instead then the pointing would definitely mean "I'm going come back to life and get you if you even touch that sword" but since it was an ORC I thought he probably just meant "oh wow, look at that brilliant sword". This proved to be a sound line of reasoning as it was a Sword of Speed, giving +1 SKILL. I then had the option to rifle through the ORC's belongings - and since no Livingstone adventure would be complete without the opportunity to eat something nasty, you find a moldy loaf of bread - eat, Y/N? "What the hell, I could use the penicillin", I thought and tucked in - when you break it open you find a key inside, "oh great a key", and then you just throw the bread away like you were never seriously going to eat it in the first place. (This bothered me and I also never found out what the key was for).

Further up the tunnel you come across an incongruous sight at a side-entrance:

Your view into the cave is partially blocked by an old tattered animal skin hanging down over the entrance, but you can see the lower torso of a man wearing green and purple hose, and pointed red slippers. [emphases mine]

"Oh shit" I thought, "we got us a HARLEQUIN".

"Mother and Child with HARLEQUIN", 18th Century (artist unknown)
There is so much to make fun of in this painting that I actually better not even start.

Despite their garish clothes and fabulous manner, HARLEQUINS cannot be trusted as is clear from the evident cuckoldry in the historically accurate painting above.

That HARLEQUIN's been doing more than just helping out in the kitchen!
(Though it also explains why hubby was acting like he'd never seen a tit before)

A HARLEQUIN can also get you by doing some unexpected flamboyant shit that you can't even decipher but then a long time afterwards you realise he was dissing you and it was so deadly.

Days later, I knew I had been dissed so hard.

Finally, one can never underestimate the sexy allure of an accomplished HARLEQUIN and their expertise in deploying those wicked wiles to sow confusion and discord among their foes.

I should mention that doing a Google Image Search for the word
HARLEQUIN will net you 50% fan-art of the Harley Quinn character
from Batman, and 50% medical photos of harlequin ichthyosis.

I don't recommend it. 

With all this very much in mind I steeled myself for the deadliest encounter yet as I flung aside the gross ratty old animal skin curtain, ready to confront my chequy fate. But fortunately I was spared - before me stood nothing more fearsome than a MINSTREL (yes "MINSTREL" is capitalized in the book). You have the option of attacking him - but you can also "ask him about his music". If you've spent much time hanging out with musicians then like me you'll know that's it's not always clear which is the more dangerous course of action. I asked him about his music and steeled myself.

The MINSTREL is pathetically grateful for your acknowledgement and has a quick gripe about how under-appreciated he is before playing a magic song which gives you 4 STAMINA points (putting it on par with a bowl of cornflakes in the Fighting Fantasy system). Then he sends you on your way, though I would've liked an extra paragraph where the reader could give him carefully worded feedback.

The MINSTREL strums the last chord and looks at you expectantly in the ensuing silence. What do you say?
    "I liked the loud parts." - turn to 83
    "You looked like you were having fun." - turn to 177
    "Wow, you are fully, like, the male Jewel!" - turn to 204


I daresay any of those answers would net you an encore of his other song - it's the one he plays if you attack him, it paralyses you and then he slaps a slave collar around your neck. I haven't mentioned it previously but basically everyone you meet in the Crystal Caves is wearing these iron collars (like the ORC on the cover) which will give the wearer a gentle throttling if they disparage the management, try to escape or worse yet, unionize. It says little for the Snow Witch's leadership qualities that she is unable to inspire a genuine cult of personality among the various GOBLINS and TROGLODYTES in her employ. It's also worth noting that the MINSTREL is the only guy we've seen so far who isn't wearing a slave collar, roped in instead by the merest sniff of patronage from the Snow Witch (or "beloved Snow Queen" as he enthuses) - because, hey, forgetting the megalomania, and the eternal Ice Age thing - a gig's a gig, right? It kind of reminds me of the New Zealand marching band that was commissioned to play at Colonel Qadaffi's birthday party some years back, but that's another story (it was in Wikileaks).

You'll never make General now, Colonel Qadaffi. 

So anyway, next stop down the hallway was a room with ten guys it (an assortment of GOBLINS, ORCS, and NEANDERTHALS, if you must know). Since I've never seen a Fighting Fantasy paragraph that bothers to give you rules for fighting ten guys, I decided to sprint past them. One of them hiffed a dart at me and another tried to smack me with a whip, but once I got to the other side of the room they didn't bother to give chase. That's what you get if you put slave collars on your staff - they were just doing enough to be able to say they'd tried.

They could've got the better of me too, since I ran straight down a dead-end. There was a pit at the end with a dwarf trapped in it, having large water crystals dropped down on him from a shaft in the ceiling by giggling school-goblins. I helped him out despite the fact that he pretty much dared me to walk away ("Curse you, stranger, if you do not aid me!")  In his gratitude he gifted me a sling with three bullets and yelled "Beware the White Rat!" as he ran away. There's a white rat later in the book that turns into a SKILL 12 WHITE DRAGON - which this dwarf must've known, but apparently couldn't spare the breath to add "...cos it turns into a Dragon!" as he took to his heels. It's one of those useless hints, like the Delphic prophecies, where you get to think "oh so that's what he was talking about" later on - i.e. when you're relaxing in the DRAGON's belly. I just saved this miserable dwarf's life, I don't want the spoiler-free version of the goddamn hints. So we can agree that this guy was a bit of a tool.

Then while I was on my way to the next T-junction I came to a spot where the tunnel split into three instead, which almost never happens. And out from one of the tunnels comes my high school physics teacher in his dressing gown.

When did you get your ears pierced, sir?
It's a hot look for you. 

Turns out this maroon is an evil ILLUSIONIST - the prism is not actually a prop for an optics lesson, it's magic. He pulled out that old classic of creating illusionary copies of himself. "Oh no, which one is real, and which is but an illusion" I said in a bored voice as I expertly skewered the real ILLUSIONIST (it was  just a lucky guess but you have to back yourself in these situations). I smashed his prism and a genie came out, the ILLUSIONIST went running back up the tunnel shrieking, and the genie said 'Boy do I owe you a favour! Get at me later and I'll do you a solid! Invisibility, baby! Ciao 4 now!'

Then he vanished. I shrugged and went right.

As soon as you enter the tunnel, an iron grille drops behind you, barring your retreat. It is impossible to lift and there is nothing you can do but find out what lies at the end of the tunnel. You soon arrive at another iron grille which blocks your way forward.

There's a lever on the other side of the grill (grille?) which you can't reach but could maybe throw something at, like, I dunno, a dagger. So the book asks you if you have any daggers. If you don't, you lose.

This "U GOT DEATHTRAPP'd" message is brought to you by Ian Livingstone,
and Ian Livingstone's cameo as a novelty rubber mask.

At this point I pretty near flew into a rage, since I'd just been given a sling and three bullets, which would be an equivalent, if not better, method of hitting the lever from the wrong side of the grill.

Uh-uh, no.


Failure, and Death

About a day and a half later I suddenly remembered that I had used one of the GOBLIN's dagger to climb out of that pit trap earlier. I checked, and the book doesn't say that you throw it away, so presumably I still had it. Though I was still pretty pissed at Ian for not letting me use my sling bullets, I decided that my duty to this blog must come first, so I picked the book up again and Tested My Luck to see if I could hit the lever with my one dagger.

I made the shot and immediately after escaping ran into this hombre:

CRYSTAL WARRIOR - SKILL 11, STAMINA 13, GLEAMINESS 178 thousand million

He is "made of quartz" and is the first and only actually crystal thing in the Crystal Caves (putting aside my snarky references to water crystals) - perhaps there were once crystals lying all over the place but someone gathered them up and stuck them all together to make this guy. He's invulnerable to edged weapons so the book asks if you might've perhaps stolen a war-hammer from under someone's bed earlier, and if so you can fight him. I had the hammer on my side but not the dice - he killed me, the end.


Monsters, Combat, Noteworthy Encounters

Somehow in the course of writing up this post I've ended up describing every encounter I experienced in my adventure, in the order they happened. Not usually my modus operandi - I feel bewildered, like a man waking up on the floor with gaps in his memory and blood on his hands. Most times I have more to talk about in this section, but I guess I can comment on a couple of the other encounters I noticed when glancing at paragraphs I wasn't supposed to.

This book is once again full of tough combat which seems to give the lie to Fighting Fantasy adage that the "one true path" can be walked by even a useless old SKILL 7 knucklehead. The YETI is an unavoidable SKILL 10 fight at minimum - other fights are merely hard to avoid, such as the CRYSTAL WARRIOR who did for me.

Probably the most outrageous of all though is this ludicrous-looking inbred who has, can you believe this, SKILL of 12:

BIRDMAN, motherfucker!

And reminiscent of the IMITATOR in Deathtrap Dungeon, we meet another hastily re-branded refugee from the D-and-D Monster Manual, the "BRAIN SLAYER":

Unfortunately, "mind flaying" is a licensed process under patent held by TSR, Inc.
But if you'll bear with me a moment I believe I achieve comparable effects by slaying your brain
without incurring additional delays or license fees.

The SKELETON Count

Again! By this time I'm sure the pressure all the SKELETONS pent up in Ian's psyche must've been growing to astronomical levels. Certainly the artist was feeling the strain, the suppressed desires for loads more skellies worked its way onto the page in the form of dozens of skulls doodled into the detail of the artwork.

For example if you scroll back up to the picture of the ILLUSIONIST you should be able to count nine skulls in his dressing gown plus the massive one in the background - at a total of 10 skulls, it's the most thoroughly skull-saturated drawing in the book, but it's not alone.

More typical is this drawing of a barbarous MAN-ORC with just 3 skulls.

"Get out of here! This tree-house is for MEN-ORCS only!"

In total...

...and that includes the FIVE on the cover - though I won't guarantee that I found all of them.

Final Thoughts

Well, the good thing about this book is probably the story, though I only survived through the shitty parts of it. The boss fight with the SNOW WITCH takes place halfway through the book as I noted earlier, it involves playing a literal guessing game with her and looks like it would be a pretty horrible experience. But after that you are left suffering the effects of a curse, you have to escape the caves and then you go on a cross-country journey with two companions, trying to find someone to lift the curse as your life slowly drains away - along the way you get embroiled in events that reveal this book is actually a prequel to Forest of Doom, and paragraph 400 ends with you watching the sunrise from the summit of Firetop Mountain and reflecting on how good it is to be alive. It's all quite different from the run-of-the-mill and looked pretty fun as I skimmed it.

I praised the plot of Lizard King too (inasmuch as I praise anything I guess) and it seems like the story aspects in Ian Livingstone's books seem to improve very quickly after the first couple.  From a design point of view though, there's a lot of technical sloppiness here - I already expressed myself regarding the iron grill trap, but I'll point out that I do recognise that, very obviously, a gamebook author can't allow for every idea a reader would have about how to deal with a situation. However if you set up a situation where one essential item could very easily be substituted for another, but that isn't allowed? You will provoke frustration.

Another gripe relates to that GENIE that suddenly burst out of the prism and said he could turn me invisible if I wanted - pretty handy, but the only way you can ever invoke this is if you encounter the CRYSTAL WARRIOR and you don't have the war-hammer - only in this case can you ask the Genie to turn you invisible and you can sneak past. Your third option is to sit on the floor and weep as the CRYSTAL WARRIOR laminates himself in your pulverised viscera.

Again in this book we have the situation where each item has only one correct use and only one opportunity to use it. There are cases where an essential item crops up only one or two encounters before you have to use it (e.g. an item that lets you deal with the White Rat/Dragon is an example), which feels contrived. I get the sense that there wasn't much going on in the way of play-testing and review at this stage (in 1984 I still imagine Jackson and Livingstone as emaciated youths clad in flour-sacks, furiously typing away in a garage somewhere, that first cheque for one hundred million pounds still in the post).

So, thanks for reading. Next time we will be back in the ever-sadistic clutches of Steve - the real Steve, not that American guy who makes his books too easy - with the first book in the series which I have never previously played: House of Hell.