Interstellar pig / William Sleator.—
197 p. ; 22 cm.
ISBN: 0-525-44098-4
1. Board games – Fiction. 2. Science fiction.
813.54
The beach house Barney’s parents have rented for two weeks is too far from town for him. There’s no one for a sixteen-year-old to hang out with. He’s been staving off boredom by re-reading his old science fiction books, but then the landlord stops by and tells them that people used to say that the house was haunted, but before he finishes his story he rushes off to greet the new tenants of the house next door – tenants that were extremely disappointed when they learned that the house Barney’s staying in was already rented.
They make quite a favorable impression on his parents, who think that Zena, Manny, and Joe, are older and more sophisticated then Barney does; he thinks they may be college students. They’re all in excellent physical shape, but all they seem to want to do is play a board game called Interstellar Pig. It’s a science fiction role-laying board game. Each player is dealt a card with an alien character, you might be an arachnoid nymph from the planet Vavoosh or a species of carnivorous lichen from Mbridlengile, or an octopus-like gas bag, or a water-breathing gill man from Thrilb. Once you have your character you travel from planet to planet until the timer signals the end of the game, collecting cards for laser guns or for hyperspace drive, or a card to boost or lower your intelligence, or to force you to land on a poisonous planet. But the most important card is called the Piggy, and if you don’t have it in your hand at the end of the game, your planet is sucked out of existence and your species exterminated. It’s a cool game, with a very realistic board, by Barney doesn’t understand why his new neighbors are so obsessed with it, that is, until they all take a day trip to a nearby island and he finds a small box containing a small pink object. On it is carved a smiling face with one eye. “The vertical iris, inlaid in bright silver, gave the eye a piercing alertness. Crude as it was, the thing seemed alive. And it was the brutal wrongness of it, the mouth smiling with such placid idiocy, noseless, under the solitary eye, that made the face so repellent.”
Interstellar pig is a deliciously creepy read, like the chill you might get from an ice cube drawn down your sunburned back.
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