fungi. They are composed of masses of single-celled organisms who "cannot lie", which Barney uses to his advantage. He transforms into a lichen during combat and asks the neighboring lichen if it has ever seen the end of a game of Interstellar Pig. It denies this, and Barney concludes that no alien race has ever seen the ending - so the "timer" controlled by the Piggy might not even exist. In essence, the game would continue forever, allowing the Piggy to travel from species to species. IRSC The Interstellar Relative Sapience Code is a number assigned to species determining their intelligence in the game. Barney has an IRSC of 93.7. The lower the IRSC, the higher the intelligence of the race. However, whether or not this applies outside the game is unclear; Barney exhibits superior critical thinking skills when fighting the aliens, even though they have lower IRSCs. Related works The sequel to this book, Parasite Pig, was published 18 years later, in 2002. The story picks up only a few months after the end of Interstellar Pig. A fictional film adaptation was referred to in the end of The Duplicate, another book by William Sleator. A fictional computer game is mentioned in chapter 2 of The Boy Who Reversed Himself, also by William Sleator. The mechanics of the "prototype" board game described in the novel are detailed enough to have inspired several fan-made games. External links 1984 American novels Fictional games Novels by William Sleator 1984 science fiction novels Children's science fiction novels Bantam Books books