Item - Supercomputer

This book certainly covers a lot of territory; you can attempt to aid the cause of peace by talking to world leaders, you can try to communicate with dolphins, or you can be terrorized by a madman, among other things. Dr. Vivaldi even makes an appearance along the way, making this a sequel of sorts to Underground Kingdom and Hyperspace. The biggest problem with the book is that, due to the way it deals with the world of computers, it's extremely dated and ludicrously unrealistic... This cheesiness has a certain charm to it, though, and fans of eighties nostalgia should have fun with it.

More reviews by Demian

I enjoyed this read. The whole concept and notion of a "supercomputer" is still, in my opinion, a contemporary issue. Are computers indeed getting smarter? Are they becoming more modernized and more human-like? What exactly is the limit in terms of a computer's capacity to understand human activity and input? This book evokes many of these intriguing ideas, especially in today's society where companies like Apple continue to push the envelope in developing the devices that we currently use and are fixated on. Given that this book was written in the 80's, it may seem outdated to some, but I personally believe that many of these ideas and issues that are brought about still apply to life as we know it today. Will machines ever overrule human thought and behavior? Time will only tell.

More reviews by Enigmatic Synergy

Ah, the early 80's, when computers were still daunting techno-gods that could either save us from toil and strife, or turn on us and destroy the world.

All in all this book feels like a slightly more intelligent take on the ideas in Your Very Own Robot, and RIM the Rebel Robot. Your new computer turns out to be so smart it's practically alive, but it wants to use its amazing abilities to help you do great things like make scientific discoveries (prompting another appearance by Nera Vivaldi), get rich, or promote world peace.

While all paths through the book are a lot of fun, especially through a filter of semi-cheesy 80's nostalgia, I think the funniest options are the ones where you try to talk to either the Soviet Premier or the American President about what they're doing to eliminate war. The Premier only talks to you for the thirty seconds he needs to say he talked to a concerned child for some good PR before he hangs up, nice knock on the other superpower there, but if you try talking to the President, his response is basically "Yeah, world peace is hard... hey, want to be an astronaut?" While obviously you can't portray war as something with quick and easy resolutions, and with a premise like this the author was kind of obligated to address the issue, that sudden veer away from it by Da Chief always cracks me up.

This is kind of the theme of the other paths through the book, that there are no real shortcuts to true happiness, knowledge or wealth, and trying to take them will have some severe downsides. All pretty well-written for a piece of children's literature, though.

Honestly the datedness of having a genius, self-aware computer as only the 80's thought it would work is a big part of the book's appeal now. Definitely one of the more entertaining CYOA books, especially the earlier batch, and highly recommended.

More reviews by Fireguard

I love this book most, because of the many adventures you can have with Conrad the Supercomputer!

1. Making money ($1,000,000)

2. Getting the company to check out Conrad (Dr. Vivaldi also appears here)

3. Trying to make Peace

4. And Conrad Gets Stolen! 9.5/10!

More reviews by Good

Edward Packard has shown surprising foresight in other science-fiction Choose Your Own Adventures—Through the Black Hole comes to mind—and he takes the concept of Supercomputer to a few intriguing places. Your prize for winning a recent contest is a Genecomp AI 32 computer, known by the name Conrad. He's supposed to be state-of-the-art, but when you plug in and start the computer, Conrad claims he can discern everything about you by voiceprint analysis. That's far beyond what the Genecomp Lab instruction manual says he's capable of. Should you call Genecomp and report this as a problem, or test Conrad on your own?

Is Conrad as hyper-intelligent as he seems? If you ask him to apply his mind to earning wealth for you, Conrad extrapolates from sources worldwide the exact location of a pirate treasure worth a fortune. Soon he grows the money even more via his skill in the stock market. You could put him to work making you the richest kid in the world, but maybe you prefer another challenge. NASA is facing crisis as an extraterrestrial object approaches Earth. Conrad can lend his help, and you'll end up hurtling through space yourself on a mission to preserve mankind. Instead of first asking him to earn big money, you could have tasked Conrad to prevent global war, but will the U.S. president or Soviet premier listen to him? Alternatively, you could have asked Conrad to discover the secret of the universe, but that problem isn't quickly solvable. While he spends time studying the matter, one day Conrad is stolen by criminals. If his supercomputer brain suffers damage, how far will you go to fix him? A proactive approach to the abduction could pit you against crime lord Victor Ridwell. Can you and the police put him behind bars and reclaim Conrad? Plenty of evil men would risk it all to own a supercomputer.

Calling Genecomp Lab at the start leads to a new assortment of adventures. Conrad may offer to have a microchip implanted in your brain that will render you another Einstein. Is such drastic surgical alteration worth it? If you wait for the Genecomp representative to come, you and Dr. Franz Hopstern could enter business together as Conrad's stewards. Conrad suggests buying a parcel of land in the island kingdom of Butea, a purchase certain to net a massive profit. It sounds like a no-brainer, but if you, Conrad, and Hopstern travel there, you get caught in a revolution against Prince Rasan that could end your lives. If you leave Hopstern out from the beginning, your path merges with Dr. Nera Vivaldi, a mainstay of several Choose Your Own Adventures. She proposes using Conrad to solve the ancient mystery of cave cryptographs in Lascaux, France, but she could also use help deciphering communication among bottle-nosed dolphins. However you decide to use Conrad, no human has had an opportunity like this.

There are bad Choose Your Own Adventure books, but most don't come from Edward Packard. Supercomputer is an exception. The story is capricious and convoluted in more ways than I specifically recall. Characters behave absurdly, and often you aren't given needed information to make a reasoned choice. An AI system as advanced as Conrad could have made this book relevant for centuries beyond its 1984 debut, but Packard drops the ball. Considering the superb work he did later in the series on The Computer Takeover, these ham-fisted results are even more disappointing. The seed is there to grow a mighty tree, but I can't recommend the final product.

More reviews by KenJenningsJeopardy74