Operation Bounce House

Read Time: 4 Minutes

Let’s get this out of the way first up. If you’re going to grab this expecting more off-the-wall dark absurdity like Dinniman’s best known work, Dungeon Crawler Carl, then you’re going to be disappointed.

If you’re looking for an interesting sci-fi invasion story set in the near future that’s got undertones of contemporary social commentary but not having it rammed down your throat, and a generally easy-going plot, then this might be for you. 

This is more in-your-face cynical. Yes, it’s an invasion type like DCC but one where humans are invading other human worlds. Some base defence built in, but an obvious undertone of social commentary like traditional sci-fi often delivers.

It’s a creepy look at a potential future for the human race, where war is now closer to a pay-to-play game just with real-world consequences for the enemy. Meanwhile kids talk smack about each other’s mothers and stream the action live to their followers.

This one took a while to actually get started. The use of future flashbacks helped set the scene, but it still took a good couple of hours before things started moving and the action ratchets up. Once it did though, it was hard to stop listening.

So humans have expanded into the universe to multiple planets, and the planet we’re on in this case is New Sonara. It took generation ships over 300 years to reach, and we’re now 70 years post arrival.

The settlers had initial trouble early on thanks to a disease brought on by the planet that wiped out their first generation of children born. Thanks to some gene modifications they can now survive and reproduce there.

The rhetoric coming from Earth now paints the settlers as sub-human because of the gene mods they had to help them survive, now it seems they want to wipe them out in some flimsy excuse that they’re all terrorists. In this case, they’re calling it Operation Bounce House.

I think it shows one of the main issues with generation ships; not that by the time you get there technology has advanced 300 years and the next generation ships are ten times faster and already there or whatever, but while you’re travelling, those left behind continue to evolve in their own way, and new prejudices form and opinions change until you no longer see yourself as the same race.

The cast of characters aren’t as well defined as say many in the DCC universe, not even the mains. There just feels like a shallowness to them, no real depth or background to latch onto. 

The future flashbacks are from after the event where personal recordings are being analysed to go over the events leading up to and during Operation Bounce House. It helps drip-feed some background and fill in gaps without being a direct info-dump.

I get a hint of a feeling it’s been written with maybe a movie script in mind. The plot is fairly straightforward, the bad guys obviously bad, I can even picture how these video recording would look. I may be wrong, of course, but it’s the general feeling I get.

The narration by Travis Baldree was, as always, well done. Production was good with no obvious errors or retakes. Jeff Hays makes a very occasional appearance like a guest voice. Possibly some contractual obligation to include Hays, I don’t know, but I’m sure Baldree would have been fine doing the whole thing. Not that he’s bad, he is in fact one of my preferred narrators, just I don’t see his small inclusion adding anything.

Ultimately, if you’re looking for another DCC-style book from Dinniman you’re out of luck. The same humour isn’t really there, or at least way more subdued than the absurd levels of DCC. The stakes while similar but the delivery is wildly different.

As a one-and-done it’s not a bad story, but also not one I’d rush back to unlike others of Dinniman’s that I have relistened to countless times.

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