https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3776692.html

Frankly, it's not very good. It's a story of astronauts exploring Iapetus, Saturn's third largest moon, while at the same time engaging in a complex fantasy role-playing game in which two of them who are not married in real life are married in the game. I was unable to suspend my disbelief that this activity, with its inevitable potential for fatal distraction, would be permitted, let alone encouraged, by the management of any space mission; and on top of that, the modalities of the space mission seemed pretty implausible in places. Also the characters themselves are rather cardboardy. I guess voters of 1981 were interested in D&D, which was then approaching its peak (certainly that was the time that I was playing it most myself), and Anderson of course was always a popular figure among fandom. But this is one of the less robust winners of both awards. Good stuff has been and will be written about games in an sfnal context, but this ain't it. ( )