The Invasion of the Black Slime and Other Tales of Horror

Which Way Books #10

by R.G. Austin

The reader determines the course of the story of a fight against a mad doctor and strange monsters in an old mining town

Genres: Horror, Gamebooks, Choose Your Own Adventure, Childrens

Paperback

Published January 1, 1983

About the author

Rita Golden Gelman and Nancy Lamb writing together as R.G. Austin

Reviews

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*]

Many thanks to the good people at 'What's the Name of the Book>' https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/185 for help identifying this one. I remembered it from my pre-teen years. In my memory it was a much thicker tome, a 2-in-1 Choose Your Own Adventure type book. In reality, it's slim, but it does branch off into the diverse storylines that I remembered.

From the start, you are presented with three possible pathways: go to the supposedly haunted house which holds a prize of $1,000,000; go to the town where a boy says people are being taken over by an outside force; or go to the mad doctor's house. The three paths remain separate, unless you achieve a particular positive ending that lets you continue to one of the others.

The other thing I remembered about this book is that it was genuinely scary. My memory did not dissapoint: at least for a young reader, the text and the illustrations are excellent horror fare. The three pathways are classic horror: the haunted house, Frankenstein's manor, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

For such a slim CYOA book, I'm a bit baffled by one element: the haunted house scenario includes an extended passage with no choices to make, prefaced by a warning:

The next seventeen pages are different from the rest of the book. There are no choices. If you decide to stay, you must read these pages in one sitting. You may not stop to get a snack or go to the bathroom. You may not talk on the phone or have a conversation with anybody.

So dictatorial! It's not as extensive as it makes it sound: some of those seventeen pages are illustrations, and on several the text doesn't even fill half the page before it tells you to proceed. At the end of all of this, you have a choice of 4 doors to enter with no clues, and inside each of those doors there are 2 choices, and some of these lead to a highly disappointing "win", a page that basically says "you find a checque for $1,000,000, The End."

Despite this, the book feels like it offers a lot of variation. But like most such books of its era, there are never clues to suggest which choice might be good or bad, opting instead for sheer randomness of outcomes.

I doubt anyone's looking to this review for a suggestion on reading or acquiring this book. I don't see any reason for someone to seek it out unless it's as a collector or, like me, to chase a piece of childhood nostalgia.

[Jhanson]

This book is not for the faint of heart, but it is a rewarding read for those who are willing to grapple with big questions. The author does a masterful job of blurring the lines between reality and illusion, and the ending is sure to leave you thinking. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys philosophical fiction.
A beautifully written and mo

[Brian]

This book gave me nightmares. Not the aliens, not the haunted house, but the third plot, of the doctor having turned his 'dead' son into a quasi human, Frankestein monster freak, with a face too hideous to show the world.

[David Clark]

This book gave me nightmares.