Invitation to the Game

In 6th grade I remember reading this book "Invitation to the Game" and discussing it in the "advanced placement" class that I had been in since 4th grade or so. That year, we read several science fiction novels and went to the Kennedy Space Center -- we were all about space and the "final" frontier.

I didn't think how...odd it was, space, until I was riding the A train and the advertisements there are showing this Discovery Channel program about space travel and they've titled it, "When we left Earth" and then it makes me think how...amazing. How...out of this world (literally) the concept that we decided through some efforts and years of being discontent with where we were to leave the place designated for us and venture out.

Anyways. Last night, citing boredom and after I finished my first-ever graphic novel (more on that later) I decided to watch several episodes of Lost. I know. I'm behind. I don't have a TV and the only shows I watched were Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty. I remember reading a review and someone was speculating that they were all dead and it was some middle world between Heaven and Hell. Looking at this, though, I thought about this book that I read back in middle school, and how...it reminded me so much of it.

So this book. It's about some kids who graduate either from college or high school. It's set about 150 years in the future so robots are doing most of the work, and so there's little work for humans to do. Kids graduate from school and are automatically entered into the unemployment bucket, and must live in a welfare area. This is the status of most, not a few, people. While here, and living a pretty meaningless existence, they receive an invitation to "The Game". I should also mention that despite being on welfare and without jobs, they were the brightest kids in their class (although, I suppose then, it is only relative, right?). They go to this room where they sit with glasses on that project this world where their only efforts are to survive. Each session it gets harder and harder. If the player should hurt themselves or die, they wake up. Each person is placed in this game according to their worth, where their separate uses can combine. After a while, I forget what event happens that should have sparked the end of the "Game" for that session, but they don't wake up. It isn't until they try to look for recognizable constellations that they realize they're on another planet, in another world. And now they must start all over, using the skills, I guess you could call them, they recognized they had during the simulation.

I dunno. All of this reminded me of Lost. Starting all over, another world/realm/