You may have heard of Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series. It's been huge this year, but for those of us who aren’t on the LitRPG (literary role-playing game) fiction train, let me introduce you to his new sci-fi book, Operation Bounce House. I absolutely adored this book: It is topical, hilarious, and a genuine delight.
The second generation of human colonists on a non-Earth planet inadvertently become freedom fighters, and internet-famous, at ground zero of an Earth-based capitalist plot. Their home on New Sonora becomes a virtual battleground, where people from Earth can purchase a mech to go fight the “anti-Earth terrorists.” Except there are no terrorists, just farmers desperately trying to survive and protect their livelihoods. The book takes place over just five days, and Dinniman packs a lot into that short timeline. We pick up with these mid-20-somethings working their farms and living their lives and watch them fight through the end of their world in less than a week.
This is the perfect book for anyone who loves Ready Player One. It takes the interaction between life and video games one step further. The people from Earth know they’re not playing a video game, yet they play and stream it as if they are. It is a chilling potential future that feels just a little too feasible to be comfortable.
On the flip side, it has an almost-hopeful look at the future of AI. The colonists are supported by an AI, Roger, who is entirely too capable but still surprisingly caring toward his charges. Roger is illegal on Earth. As AI advanced it was limited, and while the technology has moved beyond his ability it has been restricted. Dinniman has clearly been paying attention, and thinking about what could possibly come next for us.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It will have you cackling at its razor-edged wit, and two pages later, gut-punched with echoes of our current world.
H Rooker is the Assistant Store Manager at Still North Books and Bar, and a lifelong New Englander.
