This
week, we received the news that Joe Dever, a prolific gamebook author
most notably known for his Lone Wolf books, had died. Having grown up
reading Joe's books, and continuing to read and enjoy them to this
day, I'm going to presume to speak for the community of Lone Wolf
fans in saying that this is a death that strikes a personal chord.
The world has lost a number of great artists this year, but we're going to miss Joe Dever in particular. He was our guy.
And
maybe that's because fantasy gamebooks are a pretty niche
area, and the superstars stand out. Or because Joe was extremely
active on social media in recent years, personally interacting with
fans and adding a huge amount of background information on the books
and world he'd created. Maybe it's because he toured extensively to
promote the books, allowing him to meet a broad section of his
readers in person. Maybe it's thanks to his phenomenally generous
gesture of essentially giving away all his work, granting Project Aon
a licence to make online versions of his books available for free.
Whatever the reason, he was a huge part of the gamebook community,
and a familiar face to many of his readers. I think I'm not alone in
feeling great sadness at his death.
I
didn't know Joe well. I met him on two occasions, when I was
interpreting for him at gaming trade shows in France. He struck me as
extremely professional, and knowledgeable about every aspect of
writing and publishing. He'd give us pointers on where we should
display our signs for our stand, how to be more conscious of the
direction of movement of visitors, things like that. He spent a great
deal of time with visitors to the stand, and visibly enjoyed talking
about his books, and the process of creating the world of Magnamund.
For me personally, he was an inspiring example of the work ethic, and
the level of focus, necessary to be a successful fantasy author. In
quieter moments, he patiently answered my questions as well – he
mentioned, for instance, how he developed the Giak language by
placing toothpicks in his mouth, to see what sounds he could
articulate if he had long, sharp teeth. He also told me a story about
how, after his work on the multi-million selling Playstation game
Killzone, Sony sent him an angry letter, accusing him of stealing the
'Helghast' in the game, 'from some fantasy series that some guy wrote
in the 80s...'.
My
own experience with Lone Wolf began when I was ten or eleven years
old. I received 'Flight from the Dark' and 'The Jungle of Horrors' as
Christmas presents one year. I'd never heard of the series before,
and yet the level of detail in the books grabbed my attention at once.
Magnamund was not a patchwork, generic fantasy world; it was a unique
creation, with thousands of years of backstory to take into
consideration. There were no Tolkienesque orcs or elves here; rather,
it was home to Shianti, and Gourgaz, and Nadziranim. Lone Wolf
himself, the psychic warrior monk on a personal mission to restore
the glory of his slaughtered order, was a fascinating protagonist.
The books were unlike any gamebooks, or for that matter any fantasy,
I'd come across before.
Throughout
my teen years I searched out the rest of the books – to the extent
that, when I did my slightly cliché
'backpacker year abroad', I soon began carrying a satchel of Lone
Wolf Grand Master books all over Australia, which I'd been unable to
find in Britain. And this was because adding books to the collection,
and so expanding the adventures of Lone Wolf, carried a special
thrill. Not least in gameplay terms; each book developed Lone Wolf's
abilities, making him more knowledgeable, more skilful, more
powerful. Yet more important than this was the keen sense of
continuity that pervaded the twenty-book arc. A supporting cast of
recurring friends and villains surrounded Lone Wolf – enemies such
as Vonotar the Traitor, and Darklord Gnaag; pals such as Banedon the
magician, and poor, ill-fated Paido the Vakeros. A gamebook is rarely
a lengthy medium, and yet staying with Lone Wolf over the course of
twenty-plus books (a good arm's length on a bookshelf) gave these
characters the opportunity to breathe, and grow. It gave the reader a
chance to really settle into the world of Magnamund. Simply put, it
was easy to become deeply invested in Lone Wolf's world, and in his
friends and foes that peopled it.
I
can only speak with any authority about my own experience with Lone
Wolf. For my part, that initial sense of astonishment has never
completely disappeared, even as I approach the tail end of my
thirties. The extended republication of Flight from the Dark evoked
it again a few years back; so did the release of the newest (and
twenty-ninth) Lone Wolf book, The Storms of Chai, just a few months
ago. These days, I store my character sheets on my hard drive, and I
use a random number generator rather than cheatily hitting zero after
zero on the Random Number Table. But holding a new Lone Wolf book in
my hands still has the power to turn me into an over-excited teenager
once more.
Joe
Dever made a colossal contribution to the realm of fantasy gamebooks
and interactive fiction, and his absence from here on in will be
keenly felt. I mentioned above that Joe was 'our guy'; in truth, it's
more accurate to say that, in sharing the books and the world of
Magnamund with us – in showing us Lone Wolf's heroic vision of
right and wrong – he added a little wonder and nobility to all our
lives.
And
that made us his guys, his people.
(Post
by Paul Gresty)
