Games like Dungeons and Dragons and Shadowrun couldn’t exist without the books their universes reside in. Games like Mass Effect and League of Legends spawned novels based off of their characters and worlds. Games like Skyrim and Alan Wake have the player read books while playing to get the full story of what’s going on.

Why shouldn’t a book, then, necessitate playing a game to get its full meaning? Visual novels exist, but they’re games first, a different medium altogether. Harlan Ellison helped adapt his 14-page short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream into a full-length computer game, but that was a transformation, not something contained in the original work.

In my new book Abstract Deficiency Swims Phonetically is The Game of Beauty, a card game I designed that’s equal parts cooperative and competitive. There is a way to win, but regardless of result players work together to build gardens full of trees and flowers from a deck of seeds.

I’ve required games out of readers before. In Foot Notes, and all my symphonic literature, a reader is expected to listen and meditate on the source music before, during, or after reading.

The right way to read Get Lost and Never Come Back is at random.

My books exist for more reasons than to simply be read; they’re colorful.

27 days away.