The Maze
Game
by Diana Slattery
Deep Listening Publications, Kingston,
NY, 2003
486 pp. Paper, $10.95
ISBN: 1-889471-10-0.
Reviewed by Dene Grigar
Texas Womans University
dgrigar@twu.edu
"What does it mean to move through a maze
of language?" (Glide: An Interactive
Exploration of Visual Language). This
question lies at the center of Diana Slatterys
The Maze Game, the epic tale and
first installment of a trilogy about four
companions growing up in a future civilization
whose members attain immortality. These
four belong to an elite group of young
dancers who retain their mortality and
dedicate their lives to entertaining the
immortals in a game enacted as a dance
on a maze, an act that ultimately results
in their deaths. The noveland
its accompanying electronic work, The
Glide Website, which hosts the Prologue
and Chapter One of the novel as well as
"descriptions of the language, and interactive
playspaces for exploring Glide language"
("The Glide Project")explores
the notion of a visual language, one that
Slattery sees as a natural outgrowth of
evolutionary intellectual progress in
humankind.
It is difficult to talk solely about the
book, so closely knitted are its other
components. But the length of the novel
and the complexity of the world it presents
make it impossible to address the entire
project Slattery undertakes in this 750-word
review. This reviewer encourages those
interested in the conceptual framework
underpinning the novel to visit "The Glide
Project" site (http://www.academy.rpi.edu/glide/).
For those who simply want to read a brilliant
piece of science fiction, the book is
most satisfying on its own. It fully envisions
a world whose inhabitants embody their
own language, philosophies, and ideologies,
yet one carefully crafted by the author
so that readers are easily drawn into
it and need little to comprehend it. The
"Glossary," list of "Characters," and
"Glide Glyphs Core Meanings" provided
at the beginning of the novel aid readers
interested in developing a deeper appreciation
of the book but are not necessary for
enjoying it.
"The Prologue," however, is important
to ones understanding the plot.
From it, we learn about how immortality
was attained (We mapped the human genome
and discovered a way to stave off death
through the "Immunity Virus"), the being
known as Oh-Tbee Outmind who emerged
as the synthesis of all human consciousness
and acts as the provider of all human
needs, the Maze Game that evolved (from
the harvesting of a very potent hallucinogen
that grew on lilies) in response to such
caretaking by Oh-Tbee Outmind, the
development of the Glide language born
from the movement made when the slaves
called "Glides" harvested the lilies,
and finally the creation of the cult surrounding
the "Dance of Death" that provided the
entertainment for the immortals. As we
learn in the book, "The Maze Game that
became the unifying force of Lifer civilization
emerged from the bottom muck of a vast
lily pond" (17).
While the Prologue takes us from the present
time to 2000 into the future, the novel
focuses on that moment in the Glide history
when "cracks in the vast and complex structure
of the Maze Game began to appear" (3).
Holding all of these ideas together in
The Maze Game is the theme of love.
When we meet the four companionsDaede,
the Swash Dancer; TLing, the Glide
Dancer; Angle, the Chrome Dancer; and
MyrrhMyrrh, the Bod Dancethey
are children studying the dance under
the tutelage of the great dancemaster
Wallenda. In their youthful stage, they
pair off into lovers and develop deep
friendships with one other, and it is
these relationshipsboth eros
and agape in nature
that are challenged and provoked in the
game the four strive to play as adults
for the immortals. In this way, the Maze
Game becomes a metaphor for the
torturous journeys we all take as humans
as we risk ourselves on the pyres of love
and the edges of loyalty.
It comes to no surprise that because we
follow the four through their training
and their shifting love affairs and loyalties,
we become immersed in the tension leading
up to their Dance. Like us, they are mortal
and their deaths, inevitable. What is
meant to be different between them and
us is that they turn their deaths into
art, an ultimate sublime act that renders
them heroes in the eyes of their fans.
But, of course, Slattery surprises us
here. Without giving away the story, the
second major theme that emerges in this
novel about Death Dancers is, ironically,
the impetus toward life and living. And
as such the novel ends with a door open
to the next installment.
While fans of science fiction will be
fascinated by Slatterys vision of
the future, others will find her exploration
of language and life important in the
conversation about what it means to be
human, particularly as we engineer our
bodies into posthuman states.