Masters of Doom by David Kushner

From The Week of August 27, 2012 Genius presents itself in many forms. It resides in the tactical brilliance of a general, the mathematical wizardry of a savant, the emotional acuity of a politician and the masterful memory of an historian. From the business world to the academic, from high finance to everyday life, its expression benefits us all, oftentimes in ways we neither witness nor appreciate. But then, once in a great while, genius emerges from the tumultuous activity of a few billion souls, manifesting and demanding with its power that, in ways large and small, we recognize its glory. For it has brought into the world something new, something bold and something beautiful. Mr. Kushner captures just such an event with this fascinating biography of two very different geniuses.

Born in different years, in different states, and to different lives, no one could have foreseen the bonds of trust and ambition that would weld John Carmack and John Romero into the creators of the most revolutionary gaming franchise of the 20th century. Products of broken homes and blunted dreams, they came of age in the shadow of the Cold War of the 1980s, not the technological revolutions of the 1990s. They were told, by their world and their parents, to seek out conventional lives in the arms of customary industry, to make successes of themselves in the boring fields of the tried and the true. But the two Johns were not ordinary men living ordinary lives. Driven by a heady mixture of talent and determination, they rejected the old to welcome in the new, to flood themselves with its glories and its limitations, to find in its code a stage upon which they could perform.

After years of struggle, of sleepless nights and restless weekends, of toiling for the man and his masters, of striving to overcome the restrictions of technology and ignorance, they would break through, publishing in December of 1993, Doom, the first in a series of games that have transformed the PC industry. Combining a relentlessly hellish aesthetic with startling advancements in gameplay, Doom would go on to spawn numerous, successful sequels as well as comic books, novels,films and board games. But while their fortunes rose, their affection for one another waned until an end to their successful partnership in the late 1990s sent the two Johns on very different paths: one into the arms of fame and gaming and the other into mathematics and rocketry. But though their years of collaboration may be few, their legacy will live on for decades to come.

Masters of Doom is a lively history of the rise of the modern, technological world as seen through the eyes of two men whose creations helped create it. Mr. Kushner, an American journalist, takes the reader on a whirlwind tour across the southern United States, following John Carmack (coding wunderkind) and John Romero (gaming visionary) as the winds of fortune blew them together, as their complementary talents interlinked, and as their powerful thirst for success drove them to change the world. The author maps out the history here wonderfully well, describing the dominant gaming cultures of the late 1980s and early 1990s, cultures that would be radically restructured by the happy disruption of ID software's revolutionary products. But he is easily at his best when capturing the two Johns, detailing extensively the similarities that helped forge their partnership and the differences that destroyed it.

Mr. Kushner does not ask the reader to root for Carmack or Romero even though it would have been easy for him to do so. He does not pass judgement on their foibles or their failings even though they are powerful and legion. He remains pleasingly agnostic concerning the major themes that emerge from his work: pride and power, genius and revolution, betrayal and hubris. Like the extent to which the two Johns overturned the paradigm, all of this is left for the reader to sort through, concluding as he sees fit. This is a rare and welcome gift. For many such experts seek to pontificate more than present. There is none of that here.

Masters of Doom shimmers with personalities and blood, with cultural subversion and libertarian economics. It is an irrepressible ride through a time that may never come again, more's the pity. For it is difficult to imagine more change resulting from the efforts of a handful of societal rejects. We would be so lucky to have history repeat itself in the years to come... (4/5 Stars)