How Amis's search for the meaning of arcade games seeped into his novels

A recent article on The Millions has hauled Martin Amis’s marvellously titled 1982 book Invasion of the Space Invaders from near-total obscurity into the media limelight and public consciousness.

Thanks to my own predilections and far too much time spent in libraries, Invasion of the Space Invaders happens to be a book I know extremely well. In fact, it was one of the great personal “discoveries” of my brief academic career, and a significant influence in convincing me that my own first book (about video games, natch) was worth writing.

I interviewed Amis himself in January 2010, at his house in London; my own book had just come out, and he graciously allowed me to thrust a copy into his hands, complete with the confession that his Space Invaders had helped inspire me to write it. That