RAVE REVIEWS:
"As Adam Pennyman records his thoughts in 'The Catalog of Obsolete Entertainments,' his giddy
blend of video game arcana, gnosticism and other flights of fancy perfectly captures a
specific type of arrested-adolescent prose. [Lucky Wander Boy] is undeniably entertaining
and touches on some serious ideas."
--The New York Times
"Lucky Wander Boy the novel has myriad antecedents: there are echoes of Repo Man, Bruce Bethke's
1983 story 'Cyberpunk,' Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, Ghost World -- just about any geeky
guy/gal story you can think of. But its clearest influence is Frederick Exley's fictionalized memoir
A Fan's Notes, still the funniest, most frightening, and moving account of 'that long malaise,' a writer's
life, ever penned...
"I wonder how much of D. B. Weiss‚s target audience... will have read Fred Exley. I hope a lot of them
have. Probably it doesn't matter,except for this: A Fan's Notes was a touchstone for an earlier
generation. Lucky Wander Boy may just turn out to be the same for another one. It's a lovely, funny, sad book."
--Elizabeth Hand, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction"Every now and then I feel the fear and start to fret that video games will be the death of culture...
And then I read a smart, engaging novellike D.B. Weiss' Lucky Wander Boy and I take a deep breath and
relax. A generation reared on video games will produce some zombies, sure, but it will also engender
poets --bards of a new digital discipline. Weiss is just such a bard... The novel isn't just about a man
whose formative experiences came while trying to get a digital frog safely across a highway. Structurally,
it's a literary representation of a game itself..."The larger truth of "Lucky Wander Boy"
is that anything we do as humans, no matter how apparently evanescent, creates a substrate for
our lives that is worth examining."
--Andrew Leonard, Salon
"Crisply written and particularly funny when addressing the excesses and petty tyrannies of the Internet
business world, Lucky Wander Boy is also remarkably engaging when it lets Adam reflect on
the games of his youth in absurd close readings that are too sincere -- and occasionally too
convincing -- to function only as parody... [Weiss's] ability to translate the layers of meaning
and madness beneath the bleeps and blurs... makes him something of a pioneer."
--Keith Phipps, The Onion
"Weiss is, in fact, an authentic genius, maybe the only one I've seen come down the literary pipeline
since Neal Stephenson. He understandsthe profound effect of interactive culture on
the paradigms of my generation, who saw our first decade through the haze of the arcade
neon... Lucky Wander Boy is the first novel to really
explore this territory in any meaningful way."
--Joshua Ellis, Las Vegas City Life
"I love me some metaphysical conceits in my fiction. The author's done a fine job capturing a certain
kind of thinking that occurs when smart people start reading deeper meaning into their obsessions. Adam's
ruminations on many of the classics (Pac-Man, Microsurgeon, Donkey Kong, Super
Mario Bros., et al.) ring player-true -- which is why it's so glorious and scary when
he goes off the rails with you right beside him. If you played in the days when primitive
graphics and freshly-minuted archetypes made gameplay somehow even more addictive, this
book will cause howls of recognition. Best of all, it's well-written."
--Hello Kitty on Slashdot.org
"Startlingly good."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"The Great American Videogame Novel."
--Joshua Glenn, Boston Globe
"If you're of a certain age, Weiss's novel could be your life..."It's funny stuff, and a fine debut."
--Angela Gunn, Time Out New York
"Reveals Weiss's delightfully cockeyed sense of humor...Lucky Wander Boy is also a love story. Despite
its multiple love interests...the book's greatest romance exists between man and hopelessly
elusive machine."
--Robert Ito, Los Angeles Magazine
"The effect of many of the final pages recalls the harrowing end of DAY OF THE LOCUST and the
very final pages the cold agonies of Stanislaus Lem at his best. D. B. Weiss has written an exciting book."
--Bob Williams, The Compulsive Reader
"Lucky Wander Boy... is High Fidelity for guys who spend more time playing Atari than they do a turntable."
--Playboy
"Both a heartfelt paean to old-school video gaming and an angry, Chuck Palahniuk-style exploration of contemporary anomie, the novel can be slyly postmodernist and surprisingly erudite… Weiss adroitly sketches the claustrophobic confines of Pennyman's monomaniacal mindset."
--Publisher’s Weekly
"Of course, at the core of the book's goofball main character and mad rush of American and Japanese
culture isn't twenty/thirty-something angst, dot-com trauma, or even I'm-so-bored-with-the-U.S.A.
sentiment, but something more distinctly and resoundingly human: the search for identity. And it's
to Weiss‚ credit that he explores this age-old, psychological journey with sharp intelligence,
wry cynicism, and surprising poignancy."
--Andrew Duncan, The Modern Word"What can I say, but 'I wish I written this.'"
--www.dadgum.com"For those interested in a fresh new voice that vocalizes his interests with a slightly twisted sense of
humor and crisply dextrous narrative, Lucky Wander Boy is worth your time."
--Steerpike, Four Fat Chicks"[Lucky Wander Boy] is accessible; [Weiss] succeeds beautifully in translating the video game
experience, making it suitable for arcade junkies and electronic newbies alike. His touch is masterful."
--Andrew Thomas, The Tech (M.I.T.)
"Lucky Wander Boy proves to be smart and entertaining. "
--John Waterman, Daily Mississippian
"Appealing to even the non-video game enthusiast, Lucky Wander Boy is a sharp, fun read that
reminds us how our continuing dialogue with pop culture makes that culture all the
more poignant and entertaining."
--Nicole Diamant, The Hoya (Georgetown University)
"A hip, wry, and knowing boy-meets-videogame love story. D.B. Weiss is a fierce humorist with a vital heart of silicon."
--Adam Davies, author of The Frog King
"Seriously, this is an excellent book. It just draws you in and keeps you reading on and on."
--NuclearGaming.com
"The ending is something so confusingly amazing it has a lasting effect on you. It actually made me tremble for a good ten minutes."
--Playstationpro2.com
"A true gem that everyone who has ever pumped a quarter into an arcade cabinet, or even more so, for anyone who has ever scolded or mocked this 'geek' behavior."
--DVD Empire
"Savvy and whip-smart, written with edgy panache and nary a false step, Lucky Wander Boy is a 21st century's Fan's Notes by way of Philip Dick's Confessions of a Crap Artist, with all their possibilities exploded exponentially. Over and over it takes flight from its own moorings, spinning out across a pop obsessive's private universe into its own northern lights, to the distant voices of lost loves, restless girlfriends and seductive Asian video queens with more exotic pastimes in mind ? a novel not of this moment but the next."
--Steve Erickson, author of Tours of the Black Clock and The Sea Came in at Midnight
"I really enjoyed this book. D.B. Weiss uses classic video games as a form of modern mythology, a template to understand life. His passion for games is evident and I'm happy to report that he represents their essence with surprising eloquence."
--Will Wright, creator of Sim City and The Sims
"D.B. Weiss does for video games what Michael Chabon did for comics in The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: explore the development of a new medium by telling a beautiful story. Adam Pennyman is a present-day Don Quixote; his pursuit of his digital Dulcinea is presented with dazzling intelligence and mordant humor."
--David Benioff, author of The 25th Hour
"Lucky Wander Boy is an entertaining journey into the twisted psyche of the videogame obsessed. D.B. Weiss has captured the strange combination of mania and nostalgia classic games inspire within the collective consciousness of our generation."
--Van Burnham, author of Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age
