The Worm in Paradise

Silicon Dreams is a trilogy of interactive fiction games developed by Level 9 Computing during the 1980s. The first game was Snowball, released during 1983, followed a year later by Return to Eden, and then by The Worm in Paradise during 1985. The next year they were vended together as the first, second and last of the Silicon Dreams. Early advertisements gave it the title of Silicon Dream, but it was pluralised later. As most Level 9 games, the trilogy used an interpreted language termed A-code and was usable in all major types of home computer of the time, on either diskette or cassette. Level 9 self-published each game separately, but the combination was published by Telecomsoft, which sold it in the United States with the tradename Firebird and in Europe with the tradename Rainbird. The trilogy is set in a not too-distant future when humans have started colonising space. For the first two instalments the player has the role of Kim Kimberly, an undercover agent, whose goal in Snowball is to save the colonist's spacecraft from crashing into a star, and in Return to Eden to stop the defence system at the destination planet of Eden from destroying the craft. In The Worm in Paradise, the player, with the role of an unnamed citizen of Eden, must travel around the city of Enoch, learn its secrets, earn money and save the planet.

Set a century after the events of Return to Eden, The Worm in Paradise is the third and concluding game in the Silicon Dreams trilogy.

The second game in Level 9's science fiction trilogy dealing with the colonisation of the planet Eden.

You play as a xenohistorian on an expedition. You've been dropped (more literally than you planned) by a dropship over the ground of the Ancients. Your equipment was scattered and the dropship crashed. Now it's just you, your wits, and the Ancients to help you find a way home.

Lieutenant Huchess came to, an hour or so ago. That was around the time Runoma, blazing orange-hot so near this, its second planet, fell below the distant, jagged crag line. Ensign Covegn died not long after -- Sandra Marie Covegn, both legs crushed under the weight of the pod's torn hatch. Night came quickly, bringing with it cool and howling winds that whistle through desert rocks and carry other, more dangerous sounds.

This is where I end and you begin. That, at least, is what I want to think. I don’t know you. Perhaps one day I will. But this Implementation-rather, its copies-are my seeds blowing to the wind. The palm-parsers, their oak gears whirring, will be pressed into hands long after I finish this. Hands like yours. A metatextual work of interactive fiction by Anya Johanna DeNiro.

Manhattan, May, 1954. The last few years, you've settled into a routine. You work at the bank, you go home, you occasionally have dinner with your mother. It is all acceptably ordinary. One day a strange creature crosses your path, and disrupts the schedule entirely. A work of interactive fiction by Emily Short.

Welcome to Dryzandia, convict 76954. Oh, you're a human? We don't get many of your kind around here, and when we do they don't last for long. Escape? To where? There's nothing out there but barren wasteland and a saurian civilisation that'll eat you alive. But... every so often one of you alien inmates gets selected for some government programme or something. I don't know what they do there, but it can't be worse than this place... Can it?

Someplace on Venus a secret weapon is being built that threatens Earth with total destruction. You and your comrade must penetrate the Xavian base and save the world -- before it's too late!

Final Exam takes place in the near future after an AI revolution has led to the establishment of a new sort of government. You are seeking a job within this government: your performance in the “final exam” determines the outcome. You wake up on the day of your exam to find that your world has unexpectedly changed. You leave your room to seek answers, and find the Administration Centre deserted... A game written by Jack Whitham for the 21st Annual Interactive Fiction Competition.

It is night on this side of the planet. Settled areas are lit: a jagged crescent in the tropics, lining the inland sea. The bright splatter along the top of the curve is Tanhua, as bright from space as New York. The north continent is darker, sprinkled finely with small lights, where the failing climate makes it hard to survive a winter. And the northernmost point, almost lost on the slope of Mt. Cordia, is the original Aleheart Colony, where the first settlers from Earth landed. It is your destination as well. A piece of interactive fiction written by Emily Short.

A short piece of Interactive Fiction written by Jon Ingold.

You've just arrived at home from your nightly visit to the science and invention section of the local public library, where you spend each night dreaming your dreamy dreams of one day inventing a time travel machine. Tonight, for some reason, you're especially fatigued, and can't wait to get inside and go right to bed. Seems like a good plan, but somehow you have a premonition it's not going to be that easy... A piece of interactive fiction written by J. Robinson Wheeler.