“I have the best chance at winning the Star Crystal, so why would I steal it?”

Interplanetary Spy was my gamebook bread and butter as a kid. There was no book series cooler than this, and I couldn’t wait for the next one. I believe I got most of mine at the yearly book fair in elementary school.

Three things made these books stand out to me: awesome pulp sci-fi artwork galore, a palpable sense of immersion, and more puzzles and games than you can shake a lightsaber at.

Be An Interplanetary Spy goes all-out with immersion. The first page of every book requires you to enter a code number in order to access your mission briefing (it’s just the book’s ISBN number, but still a very cool touch).

From there you get your briefing Mission: Impossible style, before being punted across the cosmos to your first destination. Often the trouble begins before you even leave the office! Can’t cut it as an Interplanetary Spy if you forget the keys to your space car, can ya? And every spy worth his salt knows the difference between vaporizing his spy shuttle and blowing it up. What are you, a rookie?

The Star Crystal idiot proofs its mission by ordering you to construct your own disguise so you can blend in with the locals of another planet. If you fail this first test, BAIS may be too advanced for you.

Your mission in The Star Crystal is to escort a stuffed shirt called Tro to the Mobius Express so he can present the titular crystal as a prize to the winner of a convention for pretentious alien artists. Simply getting to the ship is a quest all on its own, but once you arrive, the mission turns into a Columbo-style murder mystery.

Right from the briefing page you can see the sort of dope artwork you’re in for, courtesy of Rich Larson and Steve Fastner. BAIS’s claim to fame is its emphasis on visuals rather than plain text, giving it more of a retro comic book feel than other gamebooks. One casual glance at any page and you’re instantly transported into the story.

Every scene transition makes you feel like you’re there. Traveling to the aquatic section of the Mobius Express treats us to an extablishing shot of the weirdly wobbly-looking star cruiser before segueing to an ominous shot of the waterlock used to enter the aquatic section proper. Shots like this make me think twice about turning to that next page.

I knew it! Nothing works on this ship!

Every volume is bursting with puzzles and games, too, and The Star Crystal is no exception. In fact, this book is host to some of the best in the series. Some are pretty weak, especially early on, but they get trickier the further in you go. There’s one late in the book where a telepathic fish lady shows you a mental image of the tunnel you need to swim through…but it’s from her perspective, and her eyes are on the side of her head, so you have to decipher which tunnel you’re looking at from her point of view!

An early example of this being one of the coolest BAIS volumes is when you first arrive on Teledar in the early chapters, and use a map to navigate the city. It’s an easy maze given the intended age group of this series, but taking the wrong path makes things more exciting as you are stalked by a gang of murderous thieves, and have to refer once again to the map in the previous chapter for a clue that will help you escape. It’s a nice segment that allows you to correct a mistake without going straight to a dead end or breaking immersion. Good use of continuity, too.

Another thing that The Star Crystal has in spades is spectacular bad endings. BAIS is notorious for these as well, but man, you do not want to make a mistake in this one. At best you’ll find yourself in a prison cell with a lovely view of the cosmos while you think about all the stupid things you did to end up there.

At worst, you’ll be devoured by horrible monsters, or twisted into a hideous work of art, or shattered into component atoms! The art really sells how terrible your fate is in every bad ending. Some of this stuff is nightmare fuel. And look at poor Callisto after he’s turned you into an impossible shape. He’s beside himself! I bet Rolo doesn’t feel any remorse for feeding me to a pit full of crites!

The emphasis on artwork vs plain text does make things difficult for the murder mystery approach. On one page you’ll be reading about an important clue to solving said mystery, while the opposite page shows the big reveal you haven’t even reached yet! An easy fix for this could have been done by putting the important reveals in the final pages and separating them with the “cut out and make your own Mobius Express model!” activity in the back of the book. This activity already separates a chapter or two from the bulk of the volume, so why not put the big reveals there instead? That way it’s harder to stumble onto them.

No book is without its flaws, and in spite of its own flaws, The Star Crystal manages to be a fantastic entry in this beloved series. If you’ve never read Be An Interplanetary Spy before, you won’t be disappointed. The art style and setting immersion more than make up for any spots lacking polish.

Time for bed. Uncle Mac out.