An Adventure of the Far Future

In September 1983, the fourth Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Starship Traveller, hit the shelves of all good booksellers, and quite possibly some of the bad ones too. At this early stage in the franchise's history, creators Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were still the sole writers working on the range (a year later outside writers would be brought in when it became apparent that the series' popularity meant new titles were needed faster than two men alone could possibly write them), and Jackson, having already written or co-written two high fantasy-based books, took an early opportunity to experiment: Starship Traveller is the first of several science fiction FF entries; the influences of Star Trek are most obvious, but references to Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, among others, are also present. (Later editions of the book also included a notice on the copyright page stating the book was not in any way related to the American role-playing game Traveller, which had caused some minor controversy when it was first published!)

You are, as ever, the hero, but in this case the hero is the captain of the Traveller, a starship which is sucked into the Seltsian Void, a known black hole. Emerging in a parallel universe, you and your crew begin roaming uncharted space in the hope of finding a way back home (the entire setup being oddly prescient of Star Trek: Voyager even before we get into the many encounters reminiscent of The Original Series, including a teleporter accident merging two people together, a virus that causes fits of madness amongst your crew and being forced into gladiatorial combat on one of the planets you visit). As with all the other science fiction titles released before they were halted due to not selling as well as the fantasy ones, this book has many unique rules: in addition to rolling up your own statistics, you also need to do so for the Traveller's weapons strength and shields, and the statistics for the six other members of your crew (the Science, Medical, Security and Engineering Officers, plus two Security Guards). The book offers perhaps the Fighting Fantasy franchise's first use of the Surprisingly Realistic Outcome trope; should any of your officers be killed when beaming down to a planet, there will be a less experienced replacement available from the many redshirts you also have on board, whose SKILL score is automatically 2 less than that of the dead crewmate they're replacing. The replacement is forbidden from leaving the ship to explore planets, as they are the last available candidate for the position and you cannot risk losing them. In addition to the franchise's usual combat rules, there are also instructions for ship-to-ship combat and phaser fights, which are unusually explained as and when you get into fights to avoid putting off readers with several pages of new and unique rules.

What we are chiefly interested in here, though, is the book's big puzzle: how to get home. You need to find both the sector number of a black hole you can use to get home, and the stardate at which the two universes will be touching. When you seek out the black hole, you need to take the sector number, subtract the stardate, and turn to that numbered section to see if you are successful or not. If you remember the keys puzzle from The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first book in the series which Jackson co-authored, you may notice the similarities between these two designs.

One curious thing is that at section 83 (a section you shouldn't visit on a successful playthrough), a piece of information you can pick up is that you need to be travelling at warp speed 3 when you enter the black hole, and the reference for failing to find the way home because your coordinates were wrong reads "You will never know whether or not this was the correct black hole... perhaps it was your angle of entry, or maybe it was your speed, or even the information you have". It seems possible that the correct warp speed was originally going to be the third number you needed and this is a remnant of that idea (Starship Traveller is also a good 60 sections shorter than the usual 400 references), but it is also possible this is a deliberate red herring of exactly the type Jackson was so fond of.

In any event, scattered across the planets you can travel to are three different sector numbers and three different stardates; one of the sector numbers and one of the stardates are mutually exclusive with each other (they're both found on the same planet but you can only get one) so you won't find both on the same playthrough, so that leaves a total of eight possible combinations. As with the keys in Firetop Mountain, finding the correct way through the book is a case of trial and error: all the different space and time coordinates come with variations on "you can't be sure if this information is definitely correct", with nothing definitively pointing you towards which is right and which is wrong.

Another oddity is, despite the extensive unique combat rules, it is possible to successfully solve the book without ever getting into a single fight! An oversight, or a subtle anti-violence aesop? (A popular fan myth about Jackson's previous gamebook, FF #2 The Citadel of Chaos, is that it is not only possible to beat it without ever getting into a combat scenario -- the game's end boss being a Puzzle Boss you don't have to fight conventionally -- it is possible to never have to roll dice at all, but this is not the case, as there is a grand total of one unavoidable fight.) Starship Traveller, at least in its original printings, is also dedicated to 72 different people, all of whom are named individually, which is probably some kind of record; they were the 72 people employed by Games Workshop at the time.

Starship Traveller also contains the opportunity to overrule your Science Officer and beam down to a planet you know is entirely covered with water, which is one of my favourite ways to die in interactive fiction:

Your Science Officer protests strongly, but you will not change your decision. Taking two crew members with you, you beam down on to the planet's surface.

You materialize on the surface of a vast ocean. As your sensors warned, the entire planet is covered with water. Frantically, you try to signal the ship with your communicator, but it is no use. Your lungs are bursting but you can do nothing to prevent the three of you drowning. Your adventure is over...