Colin's Fantastic Video Adventure

by Kenneth Oppel

Eleven-year-old Colin discovers that the spaceships in his favorite video game are actually controlled by tiny men, who promise to help him in an upcoming contest.

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

I was born in 1967 in Port Alberni, a mill town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia but spent the bulk of my childhood in Victoria, B.C. and on the opposite coast, in Halifax, Nova Scotia...At around twelve I decided I wanted to be a writer (this came after deciding I wanted to be a scientist, and then an architect). I started out writing sci-fi epics (my Star Wars phase) then went on to swords and sorcery tales (my Dungeons and Dragons phase) and then, during the summer holiday when I was fourteen, started on a humorous story about a boy addicted to video games (written, of course, during my video game phase). It turned out to be quite a long story, really a short novel, and I rewrote it the next summer. We had a family friend who knew Roald Dahl - one of my favourite authors - and this friend offered to show Dahl my story. I was paralysed with excitement. I never heard back from Roald Dahl directly, but he read my story, and liked it enough to pass on to his own literary agent. I got a letter from them, saying they wanted to take me on, and try to sell my story. And they did.

Reviews

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

The easiest read ever and it still taught me more about the ethics of cheating and our view of the universe than most other things.

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is Oppel's first published book. A quick entertaining read and another viewpoint on video games. Colin likes the game Meteoroids and plays frequently. One day two pilots from the machine jump out of the fantastic world (inside machines) and are caught by Colin. Together they plot to win the Meteoroids. Not an award winning book but a fun read when bored