An Adventure into Deep Space
This is the forth Fighting Fantasy book and the first set in a science-fiction setting. While not the only science-fiction adventure that was released, they did tend to be few and far between (the next one is Space Assassin, book 12, though there is a horror one, but that doesn't count). I must admit that this book was one of the harder ones, and I never managed to finish it when I was a teenager, and this time I had to resort to searching up hints on the internet to finish it.
Starship Traveller is somewhat more complicated than the others as it has three sets of combat rules: one for starships, one for phasers, and one for hand to hand. It is also a book in which you don't necessarily play one character, but rather play the captain of a spaceship, and as such you have a number of other characters under your control. In all intents and purposes, your character is the captain and everybody else pretty much follows your orders.
I noted that some have suggested that in designing this book Steve Jackson leaned towards the Traveller roleplaying game, an RPG that is set in the distant future using an interstellar background. However, other than the name and the setting, there is no indication in this book that it is the Traveller universe. In fact, pretty much all of the book is set in a parallel universe, from which escape is your goal.
What this book reminded me of though was Star Trek. In fact the book seems to be a 'choose your own Star Trek adventure with dice'. Having been sitting down recently watching all of the Deep Space Nine episodes I could not help but overlay all of the characters in Deep Space Nine with the major characters of this book, and as such whenever they mentioned the science officer I would think of Dax, and whenever they mentioned the security chief, I would think of Odo. Unfortunately the security chief in this book does not have Odo's shapeshifting powers.
This book runs more like Citadel of Chaos than the other books in that your travels could take you anywhere, it really comes down to which system or planet you chose to visit. If you go one path you could miss some very important information. However, the really tricky aspect of this book is that you must locate some co-ordinates, and you do not realise it until the end of the book that the path you took is the incorrect path. However, I can tell you this, the two co-ordinates that you need are both found closer to the end of the adventure than the beginning. One can be found at the end of a maze, the other by following the children as opposed to the adults.
