Jaron Lee Knuth
Författare till After Life
Om författaren
Foto taget av: Amazon Author Page
Verk av Jaron Lee Knuth
Taggad
Allmänna fakta
- Födelsedag
- 1978
- Kön
- male
- Nationalitet
- USA
- Land (för karta)
- USA
- Födelseort
- Wisconsin, USA
- Kort biografi
- Jaron Lee Knuth (1978-present) lives in a small town in western Wisconsin. He is a writer, comic book artist, media analyst, and electronic musician.
Medlemmar
Recensioner
Statistik
- Verk
- 9
- Medlemmar
- 74
- Popularitet
- #238,154
- Betyg
- 3.2
- Recensioner
- 5
- ISBN
- 13
In a future over populated world, humankind has retreated to superstructure towers scattered across all landmasses, whose inhabitants spend most of their lives in virtual worlds courtesy of one man's invention, the NextWorld. A linked global internet government of servers and domains hosting everything from parties and education to games and jobs. A small real world presence is still required - ablutions and feeding the nutritious paste required for the bodies nanomachines to do their thing. Our hero Kave, has only one friend, and apart from an absent but politically connected father, no family either. He spends nearly all of his free time gaming. The friend Xen was a chance encounter who's just happened to stick around, and is very much into an omnipresent spirituality expression, which is very odd in the technological freedom of the NextWorld. But anyway, Kave and Xen get a chance to try out a beta demo of the forthcoming next release of Kave's all time favourite game. Xen isn't really into gaming but agrees to give it a shot. Kave is wow'd by the textual detail that they've gone into and the realism that they've given the NPCs. He finds it very odd to game with a group, but quickly realises this is the way to earn more experience very rapidly, and eventually hooks up with a few other odd souls. The game resets once a night logging the players out, and re-setting the various problems and NPC positions. The next day Kave is straight back in, but finds his group unable to logout! they are trapped within an increasingly violent game, meanwhile of course their physical bodies are suffering. They know they only have to survive for a short duration until the government will come and rescue them - however one of their group admits to hacking into the game, and so won't be rescued. This gives them extra incentive to try and find the way out - although Kave is still quite unsure about the worthwhile dynamics of gaming as a group.
Lots of good analogy, and ethical commentary - how real is an online presence, is it a sacrifice etc. Nothing over the top, mostly just a lot of fun - and I don't FPS games at all. I don't buy the AI explanation given for the cause, but it just about makes coherent sense, so I can live with it. I'm really unsure what ground the sequel has to cover though, unless it's looking a completely different domain than the gaming one.… (mer)