Arcade

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Young Adult #5

by Diana G. Gallagher, Todd Cameron Hamilton (Illustrator)

Mind Games

There's a new player on the Promenade: a Ferengi shop-owner, Bokat. His Games Bazaar specializes in hard-to-find virtual reality computer games. He approaches Jake Sisko and Nog with a tempting offer to play a hot new game called the Zhodran Crystal Quest. No non-Zhodran player has ever won this game, but then Jake and Nog have the best scores on all the other games at the Games Bazaar. And Bokat is willing to bet on their ability to win the game, and—as a result—win Bokat a lucrative business deal with the Zhodrans.

But soon, kids all over the station are falling into comas, their minds trapped in an ever-changing game. Suddenly, it's up to Jake to go into the game and rescue them. If he wins, so does the Federation. If he loses, he'll be trapped forever in a deadly game with a very real Borg!

Genres: Star Trek, Science Fiction, Childrens, Star Trek Deep Space Nine

101 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1995

About the author

Diana G. Gallagher was an American author who wrote books for children and young adults. She also wrote the space opera The Alien Dark (1990), but was best known for her tie-in work for television properties including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Charmed, Star Trek and The Secret World of Alex Mack, among others.

She was also a prolific filk creator, winning Pegasus Awards in 1986 and ’94. Gallagher won a Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist in 1988 under the name Diana Gallagher Wu. She sometimes also wrote under the name Diana Burke.

Born in 1946, in Paterson, New Jersey, she lived in Florida with her husband, the writer Martin R. Burke, who predeceased her in 2011. Gallagher was married four times; her third marriage was to author William F. Wu (divorced 1990).

Gallagher died December 2, 2021 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at 75 years of age.

Reviews

[Octavia Cade · Rating 2 out of 5]

The thing about reading adventure stories that are specifically written for kids is that they're often unrealistic by design. There's nothing wrong with that: it gives kids the opportunity to imagine themselves as the hero, succeeding at tasks they'd never hope to attempt in real life. It's the whole suspension of disbelief, and you know what? I get it. Jake Sisko has to enter a virtual game in order to save his friends, fine. Against all scientific sense, their minds are trapped (outside their comatose bodies) in the alien game device. Okay, that's a bit dodgier, but whatever, handwavium. The game has never been solved in two thousand years, but a fourteen year old manages it by being a decent person. I'm rolling my eyes, but sure.

That Jake Sisko will die if he doesn't succeed? That's just high stakes.

That Benjamin Sisko would agree to put his only child in such jeopardy, simply because Jake's good at games? No fucking way. Hell would freeze over first, and that's where my suspension of disbelief hit the iceberg of cold hard Nope and never recovered.

[Alvaro Zinos-Amaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

A satisfying entry in the series. Perhaps most surprising was that the cover accurately depicts one of the scenes!

[nx74defiant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Video games repeatedly appear as a story line in this series with an Arcade on the Station. When his friends are trapped in a game Jake has to go in and save them.

[Scott Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this one. It would have been perfect for kids in the 90s.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Arcade is the fifth novella in a series of twelve young adult Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novellas, and I am, unfortunately, unimpressed by it. Gallagher seems to be a really fantastic writer, as the description of the virtual world which Jake enters is ornately vivid, but the novel did very little to keep me interested. It could be because it is a young adult novella, but considering the fact that I have read many young adult works of literature even somewhat recently that I immensely enjoyed, I really don't think that that is it. The novella simply does not have much content to it. The entire novella is focused on a device known as the Crown of Ultimate Wisdom that takes he or she whom wears it through a virtual reality game, a dangerous game that can technically have fatal consequences if not won. There is not much conflict with another species, no drama, and no rich philosophy to be analyzed. That is not to say that the novella does not have anything valuable to offer as far as a moral is concerned; its moral seems to be similar to that of many children and young adult works of literature that I have read, which is that courage means overcoming and conquering your fear, but it does not mean having no fear at all. It begins to ask the essential question that Star Trek as a whole asks, which is what it means to be human, but it is a philosophical question that it barely begins to tackle. While I like Jake enough as a character on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I prefer him during later seasons as he matures, and this novella takes place early in the series while Jake is still very young, so that could be one reason why I was not too interested in the novella (seeing as how the entire story is from Jake's perspective), but I also believe that Gallagher strays from Jake's character a bit and presents him as slightly out of character, an easy and forgivable mistake to make when writing a character that is not originally yours. I also have fights to pick with both the front cover art and the brief synopsis on the back cover of the novella (neither of which is Gallagher's fault because she did not design the front cover art, and it is very unlikely that she wrote the synopsis on the back cover), as both are misleading. Both, for example (without giving too much away because I don't want to spoil those who have not read the novella), give the reader the impression that a Borg is the primary source of conflict within the story (which is, in fact, why I chose to read it), but that is not true, as it is merely a very small fraction of the story. The synopsis also offers another tidbit of information about the story that is not completely accurate, but I won't give anything else away about the story. I could potentially see Arcade being a fun read for someone whom vehemently enjoys playing video games and also enjoys children's adventure stories, but even though its pace picks up a bit as it gets closer to its end, it does not do very much for me other than leave me ready to move on to a different Star Trek work of literature, one that I might enjoy a lot more than I did this one. I would also recommend reading this series in order because even though this is the only one of this series that I have read, I am thinking that the writers tried to keep continuity closely intact throughout the series because an event from an earlier novella that is a part of the series is mentioned in Arcade, and not having read that novella, I did not have that foreknowledge and was very briefly taken aback and confused.

[André · Rating 2 out of 5]

I believe this was a rather unremarkable read. Don't remember much about this book. And it was small. There are some drawings inside, which is rather nice, and unusual for a Star Trek novel.