Better Than Life — Grant Naylor

THE GAMES THE THING --

Life just couldn't have been better--or maybe it couldn't have gotten worse. Aboard the massive starship Red Dwarf, life was barely happening at all. Holly, the ship's computer, had gone from super genius to so dumb that even a talking Toaster could hold its own with him. And, the only surviving human aboard, David Lister -- along with the holographic Arnold Rimmer, Cat, the best-groomed entity in the universe, and the cleaning robot Kryten--was trapped in a game called "Better Than Life." It was a game in which your own mind created a world for you right out of your fondest dreams or deepest nightmares. And no one had ever been able to escape from the game once they started playing!

At one time Holly could have easily saved them. But right now Holly couldn't even keep Red Dwarf from colliding with a runaway planet. So it looked as if Lister might be stuck in the game till he died or until Red Dwarf was destroyed. Unless, of course, the cheap little Toaster and the cleaning robot could find the way back to reality without killing everyone in the process....