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God Game (novel): Difference between revisions
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{{quote|It was Nathan's fault that I became God.
It is, as I would learn, Hell to be God.|Opening lines}}
'''''God Game''''' is a 1986 science fiction novel by the late Rev. [[Andrew M. Greeley]], who is better known for his [[Bishop Blackie Ryan Mysteries|"Bishop Blackie" mysteries]]. It recounts the experiences of a nameless first-person narrator, a Catholic priest who is asked by his nephew Nathan to beta-test an early version of an [[Interactive Fiction]] game called ''Duke and Duchess''. The game isn't very impressive at first, but when lightning strikes his satellite dish during a violent storm, the game's primitive CGA graphics become impossibly high-resolution video of what are apparently ''real people'' -- and the narrator quickly discovers that he is now very much responsible for them and their small, but complete, world called The Land.
The Land is split into two ancient nations who have been enemies from time immemorial -- one led by Duke Lenrau, the other led by Duchess B'Mella. But both leaders have tired of the eternal war, and each finds the other attractive, even if only from a distance. The narrator realizes that the best hope for peace is to pair these two strong personalities up, so he begins to matchmake, discovering how to manipulate events around them even as he directly addresses them to offer advice and guidance. Unfortunately, there are forces and factions within The Land who do not want to see peace, and the narrator quickly learns that he must be vigilant to discover and thwart those working against his plans for duke and duchess and the whole of the world. He soon finds himself caring deeply about the people whose lives are in his hands as he hears their prayers and does his best to find a happy ending that ''sticks''. His closest ally and tool in this is Ranora, an "ilel" -- a combination prophet/jester/bard/fairy in the form of a dancing blonde teenage girl with a panpipe, wearing a peppermint-striped dress. Even with her not-insubstantial help, the narrator finds that being God, even for such a small world of limited focus, is a daunting and emotionally exhausting task, and he dare not rest on his laurels too early. Worse yet for his own sense of reality, some of the characters whose lives he has been manipulating cross the wall between the worlds to visit him, begging for a bigger role in the story or changes in their lot in life -- or crying for help.
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* [[Interactive Fiction]]: The original type of game ''Duke and Duchess'' was intended to be. Instead, it turned into a [[Simulation Game]].
* [[It Only Works Once]]: After successfully and ''permanently'' ensuring peace in The Land, the narrator is never again able to reach across the wall between worlds, no matter how many times he tries playing the game afterwards, even using the save data from the original run.
* [[Leitmotif]]: In-universe, this is one of the things that Ranora as an ilel does -- she can reveal and celebrate the true nature of a person by creating a "theme" for them on her pipe.
* [[Life Imitates Art]]: The narrator comes to realize that the wall between The Land and the "real world" is more like a thick fog, and some of his actions in the game have repercussions on the people and events around him.
* [[Lightning Can Do Anything]]: A lightning bolt striking the narrator's dish antenna turns the game from low-res [[Interactive Fiction]] to something disturbingly real.
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* [[No Name Given]]: The main character/[[Narrator]]. We know he's a Catholic priest, comfortable with (mid-1980s) cutting-edge technology, and has a large extended family -- but we never learn his name.
* [[Player and Protagonist Integration]]: The protagonist priest is thrust into the role of God for a small fantasy world he interfaces with via the video game. As God he is the Adviser to literally dozens of characters, although he tends to focus on eight or ten of them.
* [[Possession (1981 film)|Possession]]: Ranora briefly manifests in the "real world" by possessing the narrator's relative Michelle and calling him on the phone.
* [[Post Modernism]]: The book's direct exploration of the nature of the blurry boundaries between fiction and "reality" -- aided by the suggestion that the unnamed narrator is supposed to be author Greeley, adding yet another blurry level of possible reality -- definitely verge onto postmodern themes.
* [[Punctuation Shaker]]: Lightly applied to some of the few words of The Land's native language that come through the computer interface untranslated, such as women's names.
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* [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe]]: Averted. Everyone speaks (or [[Translation Convention|seems to speak]]) modern idiomatic English.
* [[You Can't Get Ye Flask]]: The natural language parser for the game interface that the narrator uses to do anything more than speak directly to the characters in the game is amazingly sophisticated for 1986 -- but is still prone to this trope at the most frustrating moments. (And sometimes it seems to do it just to annoy the narrator.)
* [[You Have to Believe Me]]: Subverted. The narrator manages to videotape almost everything he sees in the game (albeit without sound), which he shares with the game company and their hired experts afterwards. Additionally, the disk on which he stored the game data is also preserved and subjected to analysis.
{{reflist}}
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