Allen Varney's Blog: The PARANOIA worldview - Posts Tagged "paranoia"

Under a new imprint called Ultraviolet Books, I've launched a new line of ebook novels and stories based on PARANOIA, the classic satirical science-fiction roleplaying game of a darkly humorous future. So far, in the ten weeks since launch, I've been marketing these new tie-in novels to the gaming community, which is already familiar with the game. But in the longer term, I dearly hope to reach out and appeal to the Goodreads community -- the readers, especially the science fiction fans.

Originally published in (appropriately) 1984, PARANOIA is a cross between Karl and Groucho Marx -- a bracing remix of Aldous Huxley and The Office -- George Orwell meets Terry Pratchett. Set in Alpha Complex, the future underground city ruled by an insane Computer, PARANOIA books present light-hearted stories of backstabbing, treachery, Bouncy Bubble Beverage, Emergency Bathroom Break Requisition forms, and Internal Security "Friendly Tap Justification" forms (to be completed after truncheon use). If you like reading about repressed teenagers groping sparkly vampires, this book will touch you in the bad place. But if you like Philip K. Dick and think Survivor needs a higher body count, your friend The Computer requires you to enjoy PARANOIA.

I'm editing and packaging the books and writing three of them; the others published so far are by longtime designers for the RPG. The first three UV Books novels are Gareth Hanrahan's Reality Optional, Traitor Hangout by WJ MacGuffin, and my own Stay Alert, Book 1 of a trilogy called The Troubleshooter Rules. (Read a free Stay Alert preview here on Goodreads.) All these titles are previously unpublished and DRM-free. The books are available in Kindle format on Amazon, in ePub on Barnesandnoble.com (here's Reality Optional in ePub), and in both formats, plus .PDF, on DriveThruFiction.

I'm extremely pleased with the quality of the books. For the three novels published so far, the Amazon review scores are heartening: On the US and UK sites combined, Reality Optional has 15 reviews (eight 5-star, six 4*, one 3*), Stay Alert has 11 (five 5*, five 4*, one 3*), and Traitor Hangout has four (two 5*, two 3*). And these aren't just from gamers, but from citizens new to the joys and rigors of Alpha Complex. One reviewer said of Reality Optional, "If William Gibson had had an accident destroying half of his brain after he wrote Neuromancer, received a transplant of Terry Pratchett's extra lobe, then collaborated with Neil Gaiman, this book could have been the result."

The Ultraviolet Books line is the latest move in a continuing effort to redeem PARANOIA from a prolonged period of decline the RPG suffered in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After a long, harrowing stretch of editorial mismanagement, the game fell out of print. But a hardy band of fans kept the memory alive; and in 2004 we united in an energetic crowdsourced effort to return the game to its former glory. The RPG redesign worked well. In the comprehensive RPG.net Game Index, the new editions of PARANOIA currently rank #15 of 2,000 core rules sets, and #20 overall of nearly 55,000 entries.

The same spirit of redemption motivates the new UV Books novel line. This is the aspect I hope Goodreads readers will find most interesting about Ultraviolet Books: the works we take as our examples, and the legacy we hope to uphold.

In these books we're hoping to continue a tradition of smart science fiction satire that produced some of my favorite books: The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl & C. M. Kornbluth, Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Sladek's Roderick and Tik-Tok, and just about anything by Philip K. Dick or Robert Sheckley. In my view that tradition has subsided in recent decades. The audience is relatively small, and for a publishing conglomerate the finances don't make sense. But for a small, scrappy band of High Programmers -- on our own! backs to the wall! fighting The Man! -- the business case is more attractive.

Still, it’s not about the business case, and it never has been. It’s about doing right by PARANOIA -- rescuing it from its past, but more important, bringing it to a wider audience and letting the idea become what it wants to be. Like any loyal citizen, we’re all just trying to serve The Computer as best we can.