Item - Hyperspace

Now THIS was something interesting. One of the most bizarre CYOA books of all, this one had everything - books-within-a-book, the ability to meet the author, being able to get 'bottled' hyperspace, the works.

Charmingly free of internal logic, this was a mind-twister for the target audience, with great interest in exploring pretty much every possible story, and even just re-reading it for pleasure.

On balance, probably my favourite of the series, although party because it was just so different from the remainder.

More reviews by Aussiesmurf

Ratings: 2

Hyperspace is indeed weird. First of all "you" are actually reading a CYOA book in the story, and then you fall into some confusing hyperspace which is random-event filled and spans to fifth and sixth dimensions.

It feels like Ed's trying to mix several concepts into one book, all of which didn't blend too well. The multi-dimensional thing was actually interesting, yet he failed to explore further than 10 pages.

All in all a courageous attempt, but one has to feel that Ed's abstract hyperspace is just one too many dimensions to grasp.

More reviews by barryattles

This is definitely a weird book. Events that occur are strange and unrelated, you have the option of reading a gamebook within the gamebook, and Dr. Vivaldi makes an odd appearance. Good stuff.

More reviews by Demian

Lots of imaginative work here. NOBODY can know what each dimension is like. Packard takes you to a book of hyperspace, or TO hyperspace. You can end up in a perfect number of adventures here. It's great! But it has its flaws: the fact that it ends abruptly if you explore with the other you (Bah) is all I can think of. I counted 18 ends (Counting the book in the book's ends.)

Rating: 7.5/10

More reviews by Good

Arguably the last book of Edward Packard's innovative early phase with Choose Your Own Adventure that includes The Cave of Time, Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey?, Inside UFO 54-40, and Underground Kingdom, Hyperspace may be the most creative of them all. When mathematics professor Karl Zinka moves into the neighborhood, you ask him what sort of work he does, but he says his experimentations in quantum physics are too complicated to tell. He offers you a book titled Hyperspace, but should you accept it and go home or put a few more questions to him first?

Stay at his home long enough, and Professor Zinka invites you to see his laboratory. His new invention, a hypolaser, could in theory open the realm of hyperspace, a place beyond the third dimension where anything is possible. Advise him to delay trying out the hypolaser, and he may end up zapped into hyperspace anyway. Pull the same lever he did, and you too are transported to the fourth dimension. Through an act of sheer will you can launch yourself into the fifth dimension and meet this book's author, Edward Packard. Can he lead you away from destruction? Even Packard can't know about dimensions he hasn't experienced himself. If you traveled to the alternative universe with the professor, you come face to face with that universe's version of you. Maybe you’ll meet your family...only to realize they aren't the same people you know. Leave them, and you meet a girl named Susan and her brother Pete, but your memory is fading and you can't recall your own name. Are you doomed to a permanent identity crisis? Take a different path and you find yourself in a facility with people who, like you, are nothing but the brain waves of a dreaming human. You'll cease to exist as soon as the dreamer wakes, but before that happens you might cross paths with Dr. Nera Vivaldi from other Choose Your Own Adventures. She breaks the news that you are only a character in a book, but can you work together and somehow attain reality?

Take the book Professor Zinka offers at the first decision and you'll see what he means about his work being complicated. If you persist in reading the book, Professor Zinka calls to inform you that his latest experiment went terribly wrong and hyperspace is leaking into our universe. You could call the police, but what do they know about theoretical physics? If you instead go to the professor's house, you may rescue him as well as the universe. Professor Zinka couldn't be more grateful, but if he sends a priceless container of bottled hyperspace as payment for your heroism, can you resist opening it? Carelessness with the substance could end our universe. If you chose to skip ahead in the professor's book to an easier section and don't ever receive his distress call, you could end up in the pages of a Choose Your Own Adventure, pursued by aliens. You could open fire on them, but are you prepared to face what happens if you do? Alternatively you could wind up in the Omega universe with two aliens named Telar and Raza who control all things via their thoughts. The adventures in this book are way out there...but are they perturbing reality in ways you can't undo?

I'm impressed by the creative zigs and zags attempted in this book, but it doesn't quite work. Internal continuity is sporadic, which is explained in part by the nature of hyperspace, but results in a narrative canvas that can't be relied on. There are lots of missed opportunities for story ideas rooted in the book's crazy concept; Edward Packard opts more for clever tricks than the sort of true innovation that could have revolutionized gamebook literature. Hyperspace is one of the most unusual Choose Your Own Adventures, but it's Packard's first real dud of the series; a better book with a similar off-the-wall premise is Packard's Dream Trips from the Bantam Skylark Choose Your Own Adventures. Ultimately, Hyperspace just doesn't live up to the hype.

More reviews by KenJenningsJeopardy74

What is it with gamebooks and mad professors? Especially ones who just happen to be your neighbour. Moreover, what is it with gamebooks and multiple universes?

As Demian said, this book is weird (how the heck can you bottle hyperspace?). At least Mr. Packard was probably aware of just how strange this book is. It doesn't take itself seriously at all and is probably a self-parody (quite unlike most of R. A. Montgomery's "works"). Packard even wrote himself into the book - he's on page 79, complete with illustration.

Although the illustrations here are below average, the writing itself is pretty funny and was likely intended to be. This is one CYOA that can please an adult reader as much as it can a kid.

More reviews by Stockton

Users have pointed out that you can meet the author himself, Edward Packard, in this one, and it’s true. The moment is indicative of the book as a whole, a flimsy mess of gobbledygook with few satisfying endings and a few lazy shortcuts designed to lengthen the adventure without doing any extra writing. Speaking of writing, many of the pages of Hyperspace are ridiculously short, like three sentences, making the whole thing fly by. There are a few memorable sequences, but the choices aren’t interesting, and the whole affair feels like randomness. A victory lap for the series, celebrating a particular brand of weirdness, but ultimately a mess of noise signifying nothing.

More reviews by williamtuttlewho