Trivia / Let's Go Play at the Adams'

• Creator Breakdown: Johnson, a recovering alcoholic, resumed drinking heavily during the course of writing. The alcohol abuse contributed to his sudden early death. His widow swore that he only started drinking again because the book's dark material so deeply impacted his mental health.
• One-Book Author: Johnson did have some other stuff in the works, but he Died During Production.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: One of the reasons the book faded into obscurity was because the original publisher destroyed and recycled the printing plates (something only done when the publisher feels the book will never sell even one more copy; essentially it means that the only way to print more copies is by recreating the plates, word by word, from an existent copy of the book). Reprinting was also complicated due to the (literal) death of the author, which left the idea of who actually owned the reprint rights up in the air. Over the next 45 years, the book's reputation for being a well-written, genuinely shocking horror novel grew, while the price for the few remaining physical copies could be anywhere between $50 and $500. Xeroxed copies and later illicit ebooks and PDFs quietly circulated amongst fans. Only in 2019 did Valancourt Press, a imprint specializing in noteworthy out-of-print genre fiction, finally obtain the rights to make the book available again.
  • Anyone wanting to read the unauthorized sequel Game's End is out of luck, as Barry Schneebeli's website (where he posted it) has gone under and the Wayback Machine did not back up the files for the book.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Johnson planned to continue his career as a novelist, but the disappointing reception of Let's Go Play at the Adams' and the resumption of his drinking problem resulted in writer's block. From the little information we have, he never got more than a few chapters into any other work, and he died two years later.
  • Barry Schneebeli allegedly had the blessing of Johnson's widow to publish Game's End as a companion to Let's Go Play at the Adams', but the aforementioned confusion over rights issues prevented this.
• Word of God: Johnson stated in one of his rare interviews that the book was really about the troubled intergenerational politics of the late 60s and early 70s. If you squint, you can juuuust see it.

---