I read one of R.L. Stine's Find Your Fate books...it was pretty bad. It was not like Indy at all. skulls falling from mountains, and apes eating people and keeping them hostage . I think that's what the Ape Island one is about... all I remember is that they were not like Indy.
Ape Slaves was pretty bad. R.L. Stine took a hiatus from the series then returned with Ape Slaves. Megan Stine and H. William Stine continued with the next book, Mask of the Elephant. That one wasn't very good either.
I remember I did like some of the earlier books in the series (Horror Island, Mummy's Tomb, Eye of the Fates) but there were a few scenes that bothered me. One of them had Indy flying an airplane and some mention of "your uncle's expert flying skills" or something to that effect, which contradicts the movies. As far as I know, Indy learned to fly after Temple but never really learned to land.
Anyway, I wish I could find some mint conditions of these books with the original covers. Mine are pretty faded and worn out.
Ape Slaves was pretty bad. R.L. Stine took a hiatus from the series then returned with Ape Slaves. Megan Stine and H. William Stine continued with the next book, Mask of the Elephant. That one wasn't very good either.
I remember I did like some of the earlier books in the series (Horror Island, Mummy's Tomb, Eye of the Fates) but there were a few scenes that bothered me. One of them had Indy flying an airplane and some mention of "your uncle's expert flying skills" or something to that effect, which contradicts the movies. As far as I know, Indy learned to fly after Temple but never really learned to land.
Anyway, I wish I could find some mint conditions of these books with the original covers. Mine are pretty faded and worn out.
I see these on Ebay from time to time. Most are in very fine to near mint condition. Be warned some of the sellers feel these are worth a lot of money and have high prices for them.
If they do, I hope they use the original painted covers. There was some pretty good cover art for this series! The couple of books they did reprint of R.L.Stines had new covers with just a small picture of Indy's face framed in a box, and R.L.Stine's name in huge letters and nothing else of interest on the cover. That's why I never bought the reprints.
Location: My home is where my heart and adventure is.
Posts: 819
Yeah,I know right.It was so unfair because all it had on the reprinted covers were a small picture of Indiana Jones and even his name was in smaller letters compared to the big letters that provided the title of the books.On the cover of the originals people can easily see him(right there can't miss him)and his name(in big bold letters).The newer ones people have to practically search to find him and his name.I couldn't see him at first,I had to literally look for him to find him on the cover.
I totally agree with you about the original cover art as well. If it is going to be an "Indy book" it should have more of an Indy theme on the cover than what the newer covers have.
Anyway,I'm sooo happy I read two books that have good cover art(book 1 and 2 of the Indiana Jones Find Your Fate series).
Last edited by AnnieJones : 11-23-2009 at 06:33 PM.
I never heard of the Which Way books.Are they Indiana Jones books?If so,what are they like?
They were great. They often dealt with sorcery and high adventure and sometimes science fiction. There weren't any Indy books. Here's a list of all of them: http://gamebooks.org/wwlist.htm
#9, Creatures of the Dark was always my favourite.
I thought it was about time to resurrect this thread.
It seems to me that the "Find Your Fate" books are undeservedly ill-regarded by fans, mostly because of the problems presented by the "Choose Your Own Adventure" format. There are many contradictory stories in a FYF book; how do these stories fit into the larger Indy canon? (How did Indy escape from the Legion of Death, for example, before getting caught up in the events of Raiders?)
It's not an easy question. The consensus approach thus far, as evidenced by TheRaider.Net's own Indy timeline, is to treat the premise of each FYF book as canon, but stay silent about what happens after the reader is presented with his/her first decision point. I don't find this to be a particularly useful approach, because
it doesn't actually answer any questions; it just responds to "what happened then?" with a big shrug.
it ignores the vast majority of the content of the books. At most, a few pages at the beginning are considered canon, and the rest is worthless. That doesn't seem like it's getting the most value from these books.
Now, Junior suggested an intriguing alternative several years(!) ago:
Quote:
A while back I embarked on a project to rewrite the "Find Your Fate" books, trying to make each one into a single, cohesive story. I took the best parts from all the story branches and tried to put them together.
That certainly gets more value from the books... the problem is that it's a subjective process: reasonable minds can disagree about what constitutes the "best parts" of these stories. Plus, synthesizing elements from the various branches is more of an art than a science; no two Indy fans would create the same story out of any given book.
So (because I'm an OCD Indy nerd and issues like this literally keep me up at night) I would like to propose another solution. While there are many narrative paths in these books, the possibilities aren't infinite. Each path can be evaluated against just a couple of simple criteria, and in most instances a single "best" path can thus be determined. This path's story should then be considered canon.
Seems reasonable, right? But what criteria should be used to evaluate the narrative paths? Well, I would suggest the best path is
the longest path (as measured in number of pages) that
does not thoroughly contradict established Indy canon.
If the longest path ends with Indy getting burned alive in 1934, for example, well that contradicts all of the movies, so it can't be canon and it shouldn't be considered the best path.
I wanna wrap this up before it turns into a Master's thesis, but because this proposal involves determining the longest path in each of the Find Your Fate books, it would be extremely helpful to chart out all of the paths. You guessed it: I've got charts! Here's one for Find Your Fate #1: Indiana Jones and the Curse of Horror Island:
(Each bubble is a page, and ending pages appear as black boxes. Purple bubbles are illustration pages. You can see there are 18 endings, and the longest path ends on page 63.)
I've got graphs for all the other books too, but I'm tired and I don't know if anybody besides me cares anyway
Hopefully you can, (and DO) use them for some kind of class credit in the future! I'm not interested in the "canonicity" but find your work interesting. If nothing else it provides a reason, (as Cloney suggests) to open them up again. I'm interested in checking out the others, I was always a big fan of these books when I was younger. Maybe someone will use it to plot out interactive animated Indy adventures! Nice work...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Icybro
I thought it was about time to resurrect this thread.
It seems to me that the "Find Your Fate" books are undeservedly ill-regarded by fans, mostly because of the problems presented by the "Choose Your Own Adventure" format. There are many contradictory stories in a FYF book; how do these stories fit into the larger Indy canon? (How did Indy escape from the Legion of Death, for example, before getting caught up in the events of Raiders?)
It's not an easy question. The consensus approach thus far, as evidenced by TheRaider.Net's own Indy timeline, is to treat the premise of each FYF book as canon, but stay silent about what happens after the reader is presented with his/her first decision point. I don't find this to be a particularly useful approach, because
it doesn't actually answer any questions; it just responds to "what happened then?" with a big shrug.
it ignores the vast majority of the content of the books. At most, a few pages at the beginning are considered canon, and the rest is worthless. That doesn't seem like it's getting the most value from these books.
Now, Junior suggested an intriguing alternative several years(!) ago:
That certainly gets more value from the books... the problem is that it's a subjective process: reasonable minds can disagree about what constitutes the "best parts" of these stories. Plus, synthesizing elements from the various branches is more of an art than a science; no two Indy fans would create the same story out of any given book.
So (because I'm an OCD Indy nerd and issues like this literally keep me up at night) I would like to propose another solution. While there are many narrative paths in these books, the possibilities aren't infinite. Each path can be evaluated against just a couple of simple criteria, and in most instances a single "best" path can thus be determined. This path's story should then be considered canon.
Seems reasonable, right? But what criteria should be used to evaluate the narrative paths? Well, I would suggest the best path is
the longest path (as measured in number of pages) that
does not thoroughly contradict established Indy canon.
If the longest path ends with Indy getting burned alive in 1934, for example, well that contradicts all of the movies, so it can't be canon and it shouldn't be considered the best path.
I wanna wrap this up before it turns into a Master's thesis, but because this proposal involves determining the longest path in each of the Find Your Fate books, it would be extremely helpful to chart out all of the paths. You guessed it: I've got charts! Here's one for Find Your Fate #1: Indiana Jones and the Curse of Horror Island:
(Each bubble is a page, and ending pages appear as black boxes. Purple bubbles are illustration pages. You can see there are 18 endings, and the longest path ends on page 63.)
I've got graphs for all the other books too, but I'm tired and I don't know if anybody besides me cares anyway
I've done this myself the first time i read each book - its an old trait i have with Choose Your Own/Find your Fate books that started with the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks - in those days it was essential to make a map as you went along, especially in one of the books which you could go round in circles if you didn't go the right way. I'm quite surprised with some of the Young Indy CYO books in that their choices are very limited and ultimately the longest line is pretty short.
Location: Neuchâtel, Switzerland (Canadian from Montreal)
Posts: 7,938
Quote:
Originally Posted by Icybro
I've got graphs for all the other books too, but I'm tired and I don't know if anybody besides me cares anyway
Thoughts?
Nice flowchart, Icybro. Your proposition of which storyline to treat as the right one, is very sound. I like what you've done but noticed that page 118 has no result after it. Is it the end of a path. (I no longer have my copy to check.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rocket Surgeon
I was always a big fan of these books when I was younger. Maybe someone will use it to plot out interactive animated Indy adventures! Nice work...
'Interactive animated Indy adventure'. Now there's an idea...
Re: the books, I'm the opposite of you. After buying the 1st one, "Curse of Horror Island" when it came out back in '84, I found it a bit too childish for someone in their late teens and never bought any more. Down the road, I got rid of the book which is something I regret because now I want them ALL (especially "Ape Slaves of Howling Island" just for the title alone)!
Quote:
Originally Posted by m-3po
I'm quite surprised with some of the Young Indy CYO books in that their choices are very limited and ultimately the longest line is pretty short.
Down the road, I got rid of the book which is something I regret because now I want them ALL (especially "Ape Slaves of Howling Island" just for the title alone)!
I like it! Now I want a copy, too.
I still have all my Fighting Fantasy type books (including a couple of Asterix ones), but never had these Indy versions.
Nice find re: page 118 in the chart, Stoo. I'll have to correct that and post a new version, along with the charts I have for the others in the series.
I have a number of the Young Indy CYOAs, and have been extremely disappointed with them. They don't offer many choices to the reader, and have very few endings... The first one has a grand total of four, if I remember correctly. (Compare that with the FYF books, which usually have about twenty different endings. You can really see the difference in complexity when you compare the charts--oh yes, I have charts for the CYOA books too.) Plus, they're based on the YIJC, so they're all very educational, with a lot of emphasis on history, and not much on adventure.
"Indiana Jones and the Ape Slaves of Howling Island" has to be the worst title in the Indy canon. ("Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" might be second worst )
Lucky you, m-3po. These books rarely get mentioned here at The Raven and are also on my want-list. An opportunity to get them slipped right through my fingers
I've managed to acquire most of them in the last year for minimal cost from Bookmooch http://bookmooch.com/
basically you send people books you don't want and have a wishlist of books you do want that you get sent from other people. All it costs is the postage of sending books out and you pretty much get 3 books for every 2 books you send out. The only downside is that its a waiting game, (patiently waiting for someone to list that book you want can take a lifetime) but when u get one it feels good!
I've got graphs for all the other books too, but I'm tired and I don't know if anybody besides me cares anyway
Thoughts?
I care.
You've taken into account that Genghis Khan's first pages, in theory, narrow canonicity down to the path(s?) taken in Mummy's Crypt with scorpions, right?
You've taken into account that Genghis Khan's first pages, in theory, narrow canonicity down to the path(s?) taken in Mummy's Crypt with scorpions, right?
The canonical path (or "best" path as described above) through Mummy's Crypt does indeed include an encounter with scorpions (on page 28).
As promised, my charts for all the other FYF books can be downloaded here.
Interestingly, Legion of Death appears to have published before it was properly finished. 15 pages (including 4 unique endings) don't appear in any path; they're just inaccessible story fragments. (These pages appear as gray bubbles in the corresponding chart.)
Has anyone here read any of the Find Your Fate books? It took me a while to find them all, but now I've got the complete set.
Some of them are pretty cheesy, and some are pretty good, in my opinion.
I own all of them and I like them. I hope that my kids one day will enjoy them as well. As a kid, I had 5 of them. I acquired the remaining 6 through e-Bay as an adult. It took a while to get Mask of the Elephant, but I finally found it for a decent price.
As you say, some of the books are better than others. To be honest, MOTE really isn't very good as Jones acts out of character and the artwork looks nothing like him. In the book, Jones is wearing a brimmed hat with a white band and which is clearly not a fedora. He has medium length hair which comes down over his ears and he is wearing a short-sleeved shirt. In short, it looks nothing like him. Ape Slaves of Howling Island is also not a very good book in the series. These are te two weakest in the series. If you want another example of why they aren't very good, consider this lne from ASOHE:
"By now the howling sounds like a hundred car alarms all going off at once."
Does that sentence belong in an Indiana Jones story?
Others, however, are quite good for a kids' book. Lost Treasure of Sheba and Curse of Horror Island, are perhaps the best ones. Both of are true to the feel and tone of the movies. It's interesting that R.L. Stine wrote both one of my favorite (Curse) and least favorite (Ape Slaves) in the series.
Cup of the Vampire is a fun one for its darker tone and subject matter. and I enjoyed Dragon of Vengeance as a kid because I found it so difficult to complete successfully. Reading it now, the writing doesn't really hold up to some of the others, but it's fun to see Jones in China and, as I said, it is more difficult to get to a satisfactory ending than it is in the others.
That reminds me of something Tolkien did in The Hobbit - he used the noise of a railway locomotive as a description.
HAHAHA Really? I don't remember that.
Tolkien might be able to get away with it a little more since, if I remember correctly, I think Tolkien starts out directly talking to the reader about Hobbits and such. By doing so, one could argue that he separates the reader from the story a bit and draws him closer to the author (a common trick in children's books). Then, he can use terminology that the reader would know even if the characters would be unaware of it. Still, I wouldn't do it. It's jarring.
Stine has little excuse however given that the reader is supposed to be one of the characters in the book. There are even pictures of the reader/protagonist in the story. How could he know what a car alarm is?
. I think that's what the Ape Island one is about... all I remember is that they were not like Indy.
If it is going to be an "Indy book" it should have more of an Indy theme on the cover than what the newer covers have.
