Book Cluster: Books with Computer Games That Blur the Lines
Recent reads from the library:
- The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, from almost 10 years ago but probably will be nominated for 2014 Hugos b/c of translation by Ken Liu. A friend (welcome to step forward) says the science is bad, but it didn't jar me any more than FTL hand-waving usually does. Ranges from China during the Cultural Revolution (with a close-up of the bad effect on scientists) to near-future with a nano-engineer and a cop with good people-instincts (if not people-skills) looking into scientists who've killed themselves recently, and possible relations to a VR game. Loving descriptions of the game sequences, but the history parts were more engaging (but sometimes horrifying) to me. Sad when a student tells a professor he's going into engineering because it's too easy to make (fatal) political mistakes in scientific theory. Also, aliens?
- Deep State by Walter Jon Williams, also from a few years ago: A mixed-media (LARP and online interwoven; embedded-reality?) game company exec lets her company get drawn into a CIA? mission in Turkey shortly after they wrap up a James Bond media event there. She's a bit annoyingly oblivious to some of the local intricacies (ethnicities, religion, etc.), and angsty in other parts, but there are some cool hackery parts to the story (if also a bit hand-wavey). Some back story that was probably explained in a previous book or will be explained in a later one.
- The Restoration Game by Ken MacLeod, also from a few years ago: I liked this one the best, overall. Spies, counter-spies, games within games, family history, and old history in "Krassnia" (I was thinking more or less Ukraine, but reviews suggest Georgia). The heroine is someone who talked her way into being an admin for a games company (I was thinking sysadmin, from her foray into a translation for one of the games, but it was actually a secretarial position), and now begins to wonder just how much of her life has been maneuvered by her mother, her grandmother, or several suspected fathers (her mother's been reticent on her father's identity). Political arguments at parties, heroics, ... aliens?