The rules are simple: Win, you live. Lose, you die.
Matthew Reilly's first novel, originally published in 1996 and republished in 2000, Contest tells the story of radiologist Stephen Swain, who is chosen to be Earth's representative in the Presidian, a contest where different species fight to the death, and the latest of which takes place in the New York Public Library.
Contest contains examples of:
- Action Survivor: Stephen Swain is a doctor with no training in hand-to-hand combat, and yet he becomes the survivor and winner of Contest.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Contest has much more sci-fi elements (to the point of including aliens) and a lot less emphasis on the military than Reilly's later novels.
- Elevator Escape: Played with three times: Double Subverted when the contest starts when an alien (Reese) almost breaks through the doors after they closed, but they still escape after shutting the doors again. Subverted properly, when the next alien they try to escape from (Karanadon) this way pulls them back up by the cables. Invoked and subverted by Bellos so he could trap them by going through the ceiling hatch.
- Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Selexin is horrified when he learns that Swain genuinely didn't know about the Presidian.
- Portal Cut: When Swain and his daughter Holly get teleported into the library, the phone Stephen was holding has its wire cut by the edge of the teleportation field, leaving him holding a detached handset. Swain later takes advantage of this to kill one of the hoods by using the "Initialise" keyword to activate the teleporter in Selexin's hat, cutting the hood cleanly in half.
- Screw the Rules, They Broke Them First!: Selexin demonstrates a minor example of this when he assists Swain in escaping Bellos and his hoods; technically the Guides shouldn't help the actual combatants, but since Bellos broke the rules by bringing his hoods along for the contest when he should be fighting with only his own weapons, Selexin is more willing to compromise on the matter.
- Shown Their Work: Contest takes place in the New York Public Library, and even includes a map of it at the beginning of the book.
- Though the original edition made a few errors as Reilly was largely guessing at the library's layout (officially it was set in a Fictional Counterpart called the New York State Library). Under the circumstances he got it remarkably close, and the updated edition currently out fixes any mistakes (mostly inserting hallways between rooms). On the other hand, all Australian editions retain the original layout, with recent printings including a note from the author about the changes in the American edition.
