Knight Books, £1.99, ISBN 0-340-37238-9
Sci-fi, 1984

In The Exploding Suns, Captain Polaris from the Network of Worlds need a hero. That will be you, naturally, the hotshot galactic agent who have vanquished evil aliens, monster clowns, and more without breaking a sweat.

This time around, you and your faithful robot companion 2-Tor will be sent to the ominous-sounding Space Sector X-7793A, where apparently the suns have been disappearing from sight. Yes, suns are vanishing. Let’s not worry too much about the actual science here, let’s instead go with the flow because hello, this is not exactly Encyclopedia Britannica here but rather a Star Challenge gamebook.

And it’s a pretty average Star Challenge gamebook, offering familiar fare of evil aliens wanting to take over the galaxy and other standard tropes. This campaign is also quite odd in that the more dramatic good endings are not the Space Ace endings. Instead, the two more mundane good ones are. Not that it matters. The Exploding Suns has an intriguing title, but the actual campaign is quite average.