Being a planet colonizer is a pretty thankless gig. You’re born on the other side of the galaxy on a new planet, and everyone on Earth is waiting for you to make the planet hospitable. All you’ve got are a bunch of old agricultural robots, a very stern management bot named Roger, your sister, your girlfriend and a farm. Oh, and one more thing. You’re about to become live-fire target practice as a massive corporation tries to “evict” colonizers from the planet. Matt Dinniman’s sharp, funny and fast-moving Operation Bounce House is a hair-raising intergalactic invasion that never forgets the humans at its core.
Oliver Lewis is pretty proud of his farm. If it were up to him, he’d live a rancher’s life, marry his girlfriend and play the occasional show with his band. It’s what the colonists were promised: New Sonora will be yours, and Earth will be for Earthers. But Apex Industries, the giant corporation that funded New Sonora’s colonization, wants the planet back. So who will do the dirty work and rid New Sonora of Oliver and the other settlers? Gamers. Bored Earthers buy the right to exterminate settlers through their screen, piloting fighting robots built and air-dropped to New Sonora on Apex ships. They even give it a fun name: Operation Bounce House. Oliver and his fellow colonists are soon in the middle of a war zone, with nothing but one another and whatever weapons or tools are lying around to defend their livelihood. Let’s hope it’s enough.
It’s easy to latch on to the “defend the homestead” nature of Operation Bounce House. The action sequences are lively and explosive, as is the gusto with which Dinniman (Dungeon Crawler Carl) approaches an otherwise silly concept. He wastes no time finding humor throughout, like giving the mech invaders vulgar (and realistic) gamer names and finding new ways for Roger to scold everyone. However, this is also a story about xenophobia and human connection that feels prophetic for 2025 and beyond. I found myself thinking about movies like Red Dawn and WarGames when I read this book, and there’s a scrappy parallel between the protagonists of those movies and Dinniman’s novel. Operation Bounce House, like those films, expertly weaves action and technology with strong commentary: Humanity loved is humanity saved. Grab a pitchfork; it’s time to fight for it.