Polybius by Collin Armstrong
Big thanks to Gallery Books and NetGalley for providing me
with an advanced copy of Collin Armstrong’s thrilling and inventive book Polybius.
For those who may not be aware, Polybius is based on the urban legend of
the mysterious video game that suddenly appeared in Portland, Oregan in the
early 1980s, and is supposedly part of a government mind-control experiment. While
I’m not sure of the origins of this myth, I’ve heard that the arcade game
Polybius may have been like a CIA recruiting tool to see which players excelled
at certain killing skills, while other versions have claimed that Polybius was
a mind-control tool that induced various neurological problems like headaches,
seizures, and blackouts. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, it seems that
the Polybius urban legend may have even influenced the great 1984 film The
Last Starfighter. In Collin Armstrong’s imagination, Polybius takes
on a more destructive and deadly turn that transforms the sleepy seaside town
of Tasker Bay into a raging storm of violence and chaos shortly after the
mysterious arrival of the Polybius cabinet in the town’s local arcade and video
store Home Video World. Polybius has a lot of throwback references
throughout, chief among them the local arcade where kids hang out and shady
business happens in the back, mostly from the shady owner, Mal. Like many new
games that arrive in an arcade, Polybius attracts crowds of players, who
begin exhibiting strange and aggressive behaviors as they jockey for space in
front of the cabinet, staring at the flashing strobes and runic like shapes
that appear on Polybius’s unique and large screen.
I absolutely loved this book and couldn’t put it down. It
was such a fun and exciting read, although it does have plenty of dark parts.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of reference points throughout the book, and
even if you aren’t familiar with the urban legend of Polybius, the book has
plenty of thrills and mystery to engage readers looking for both something
familiar and something unique and inventive. I loved what Armstrong does with
the legend, taking the basic framework of the story about a video game that has
powerful psychological and neurological effects on players, and transforming it
into a story about its impact on an entire town. Even more interesting is how
he develops the idea that Polybius is part of a government program. I
won’t share much more than that, but it is interesting to see how this kind of program
has relevance in today’s world despite the book taking place in the early ‘80s.
In addition to the unique twist on the Polybius urban
legend, Armstrong creates an interesting world of Tasker Bay, which is a
seaside town in Northern California. The chapters are divided into subsections,
and each subsection tells the story from a different characters’ perspective.
The main characters are Andi and her mom Rachel, who both relocated from Silicon
Valley/San Francisco area to Tasker Bay after Rachel left her husband, who is a
kind of freelance engineer. Andi, reluctant to move, is standoffish and doesn’t
want to develop friendships, but works at the arcade, Home Video World.
Rachel, Andi’s mom, is the town’s doctor. There’s also Ro (short for Roman),
who is a classmate of Andi’s, and his dad David, who is the town’s sheriff.
Mal, the owner of Home Video World, is Andi’s boss, and someone who
experiences early exposure to Polybius’s power. As a result, he comes
under suspicion for a mysterious and violent incident early in the book. There
are some other less prominent characters, but Armstrong’s writing and chapter
development create a realistic and full sense of the Tasker Bay community. It’s
not just the background of these characters, but we also learn about the
simmering tensions, jealousies and resentments that underlie the characters’
actions and motivations. I loved how these chapters are developed and created.
In some ways, it reminded me of some Stephen King books that take place in
small towns in Maine. How we learn brief elements of the characters’
backgrounds and qualities adds to the depth of the story and the interactions
and conflicts that arise. In other ways, the story and town reminded me of some
films. On the one hand, I couldn’t help but think of The Fog, John Carpenter’s
moody piece about a coastal California town that experiences terror when a fog
rolls in on the 100th anniversary of a major event. In Polybius,
most of the chaos starts to unravel about a week or so after the arrival of the
game, and this coincides with a major storm that makes leaving the town
difficult. In other ways, the story reminded me of Romero’s The Crazies,
where a town’s drinking water is infected with a chemical agent that makes the
townspeople become violent. The government tries to take over the town, but
struggles against the violence the townspeople are capable of. Polybius
also transforms the townspeople into violent people capable of great destruction,
but it’s not just those who play the game who are “infected”. We see how there
are adjacent individuals who also get swept up in the violence and paranoia as
the town gradually descends into chaos. I also kept thinking of Arthur Miller’s
The Crucible while I read Polybius, as we see how the loss of
control and authority in the town allows long simmering feuds and resentments
to boil over and cause vengeance and vigilantism. The book raises many important
questions about the nature of authority and control in society, especially how
governments and social institutions should address these kinds of threats to
society. The book was cinematic and compelling. I could see this as a movie or
even better as a limited series where we have time to develop some of the
characters and their conflicts even further and get more of the backstory about
how the game’s development came about.
I am so glad that I finally read this book. As soon as I saw
the title, I was interested since I’ve heard about this urban legend, but didn’t
know too much about it. Although Armstrong takes some liberties with the legend,
I loved what he did. It was inventive and creative, and I did not expect the
twists and turns that he took with the Polybius urban legend. I also
loved the references to the 80s. I some reviews that mentioned Stranger Things,
and I could see that with the multi-character story that takes place in a small
town and deals with mysterious government mind control programs. I also wondered if two characters, Whitney
Hines and Greg Streiber, was a Wolfen reference (author Whitley Streiber
and star Gregory Hines). There was even a reference to Bucks County, PA, which
is right around where I live. It seemed like such a random reference in the
book, but I wondered if the author had some connection with Bucks County. I
hope that Collin Armstrong has more books on the way. This was such a fun and
exciting read that deals with such an interesting topic. He took a mysterious urban
legend and transformed it into an inventive and creative story which a cast of
unique characters who populate a realistic world that gradually descends into
chaos. Highly recommended book!
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