Dream Park

By: Larry Niven, Steven Barnes

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

A group of pretend adventurers suit up for a campaign called "The South Seas Treasure Game". As in the early role-playing games, there are dungeon masters, warriors, magicians, and thieves. The difference? At Dream Park, a futuristic fantasy theme park full of holographic attractions and the latest in VR technology, they play in an artificial enclosure that has been enhanced with special effects, holograms, actors, and a clever story line. The players get as close as possible to truly living their adventure.

All's fun and games until a park security guard is murdered, a valuable research property is stolen, and all evidence points to someone inside the game. The park's head of security, Alex Griffin, joins the game to find the killer, but finds new meaning in the games he helps keep alive.

©2017 Larry Niven and Steven Barnes (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Entertaining

I enjoyed the book. Was a little unsure at first but when you get into it it wasn’t that bad

A fun read, especially for gamers

I read this years ago when it was first published. It was a good read then and seemed really innovative. On listening to it now, I've enjoyed it again. The book hasn't aged perfectly, but it is far from seeming very far off.

The plot was interesting. Its a murder mystery wrapped in a futuristic theme park live action role playing game. As for the Audible presentation, the narration is fine, but not great. I'm a bit annoyed by the narrator's emphasis on the word "Park" whenever he says Dream Park. I think the plot was pretty good and the clues were there to determine who done it, but it wasn't obvious. The game descriptions were fun, but there were a few things that don't seem reasonable as far as safety concerns for the in game weapons. I'd have liked a few more details on the in game weapons and game tech.

Role-playing to death. What is real? What is fake?

Live action role-playing (or LARPing) is a real thing, believe it or not. As mixture of improvisational acting and strategy it is an event hard to categorize if you never heard of it before. It's not really acting, not really a sport, not really a convention, nor really a board game...it's a blend of all of these things and people really do participate in these organized events to goof off in a fictional scenario have fun with fellow enthusiasts.

This book was written in 1981, to play with the concept of what such events would be like in a future with advanced technologies used to enhance the immersion of these LARPing games. Ironically, it's spooky how close this book comes to ideas being implemented today. "Dream Park" is basically a murder mystery set in a theme park in a future where virtual reality, reality television, videogames, and special effects have become so advanced and blended together that the gamers discover that this immersion can be potentially harmful  when you can't distinguish between real or fictional threats.

While the murder mystery is the over arcing threat of the story, this audiobook would mostly be recommended to listeners who appreciate ideas and concepts built around the plot rather than the plot itself. Again, written in 1981, it's a tad dated in some respects, yet it has the same imaginative feeling that opening an old journal or time capsule filled with predictions and ideas would inspire.

I’m Old

Here, let me adjust the controls of my Way-Back Machine and put it on auto.
I first read this book when it originally came out and thought it was great. Back then, I thought that of almost all of Larry Niven’s work. I was surprised to find an audible version and it is still a good story. Though with time I think everything would change to more of a “WestWorld” technology if it was written today. Anyway, an excellent adventure story.

The True Fathers of LitRPG

Larry Biven & Steven Barnes are the true fathers of LitRPGs, and this book is the proof of it. It's not the greatest compared to the stuff we have access to now, but it is worth the read. A good story with a fun mystery included.

Kind of slow moving, but...

I thought this book was kind of slow moving, but by the end, I was thinking about listening to book 2. However, book 2 isn't in Audible Plus and while I ended up enjoying book 1 by the end, I just can't justify a credit on book 2. The weird thing is that they have Book 4 in Audible Plus. Go figure.

This book had the old-timey feel of a 1960s or 1970s Novel. At the beginning, I was thoroughly unimpressed and fell asleep several times while listening without an urge to rewind and see what I'd missed. By the end of the book, it was keeping my interest. As far as mysteries go, it was weak. There were no breadcrumbs cleverly hidden to help us figure out who doneit. It was just a 3rd party reveal with nothing we could have deduced. As a science fiction story, it was pretty good. Nice concepts, but the story line was very plodding. Character development was weak except for a few key characters. Unless this series improves drastically, I can't see spending a credit on it. As a casual free listen while doing other things, this book was worth listening to, but unless book 2 comes to Audible Plus, I don't see myself continuing with the series.

The narration was smooth and well done, but it's hard to separate narration from the material. On a better book, I probably would have given another star for Performance.

Great Classic SciFi Fantasy

Enjoyable story for anybody who likes old-style RPGs. Or maybe even newer style too! :). (Might want to skip the prologue first time around)

Wonderful book, great performance

I read this book so many times over the years that I've lost count, and when I found the audio book I had to give it a try. Great performance, with only a few errors ("voice-o's"?) that weren't edited out to tarnish it.

started slow, almost quit but very glad i didnt

i listened for the first hour or so and almost quit it, kept going because i didnt want want to look up something else for my commute. glad I didnt! i was so good i found my self sneaking out to the car on break from work to listen for a few minutes. great detective and role playing game. i might actually listen again.

Meh

A weird idea for a story with (in my opinion) poor execution. I just couldn't get into it.