So I’m on a video game book jag, and I can’t get off it without mentioning this one: Invasion of the Space Invadersby Martin Amis.
Just the author and title are enough to give us some pause here. The author is apparently a well-known literary writer. I have to take that from other folks, because I’ve neither read any of his books nor heard of him, but that’s what I’ve been told. The title is a tautology. Invasion of the Space Invaders? Of course they’re invading. They’re invaders!
There are apparently some real gems in the book as well. I say apparently because the book is out of print and used copies are going on Ebay for as high as $200, putting it far out of my range. But here are some of the quotes I’ve dredged up:
PacMan player, be not proud, nor too macho, and you will prosper on the dotted screen.
There is something wilful, is there not, something voulu, about putting the last coins you own into one of these squat monsters . . . that is part of the spur. What more eloquent and effortless way of showing that you don’t care, that nothing matters? . . . Money has never looked cheaper. It looks disposable, throwaway stuff.
Before . . . these tribes of spacefaced conquered would brood about God, Hell, the Father of Lies, the fate of the spirit, with the soul imagined as an inner being . . . But now the invader is a graph shadow swathed in spools and printouts, and he wears an alien face.
Yeah, that’s a little more esoteric than I got with Arcadian. That prose, together with the fact that the author has disowned the book and Steven Spielberg wrote the intro, has made this book quite a highly sought prize. I’m not going to plunk down the $200 to get it, but if you do, let me know how it is. And if you’d just like a sample, you can find it here.
