Five best friends in a high school computer club get sucked into an underground hacker's game run by a mysterious A.I. that thinks it's God; as the Game pits them against each other, it offers the ultimate promise--win and learn the meaning of life or die.

With his astonishing future vision, Howard V. Hendrix has emerged as one of the new masters of science fiction, drawing extraordinary praise for his debut novel, Lightpaths, and its follow-up, Standing Wave. Now Hendrix meshes virtual reality, deep-space exploration, and human nature in a novel starkly breathtaking in its portrayal of the quest for meaning against a backdrop of scientific and spiritual chaos. Spanning the first part of the twenty-first...

Seventeen-year-old Sofi battles behind the scenes of Earth's Fantasy Fighting arena helping her younger brother, Shilo, but when a bomb destroys part of the arena, she dreams Shilo survives on the forbidden ice-planet. Sofi battles behind the scenes of Earth's Fantasy Fighting arena helping her younger brother, Shilo. When a bomb destroys part of the arena, she dreams Shilo survives on the forbidden ice-planet. Miguel is from Earth, but his career...

"A 1980s cultural assessment of the fantastical future of online behavior continues the story that began in the internationally best-selling futuristic novel, Ready Player One, that inspired a blockbuster Steven Spielberg film"-- Days after winning control of OASIS, the immersive virtual reality environment in which most of humanity chooses to live, Wade Watts discovers a world-changing technological advancement and draws the attention of a merciless...

When his own high-tech start up turns into a Fortune 500 computer gaming group, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa family who has amassed an illegal fortune, finds the line between fantasy and reality becoming blurred when a virtual war for dominance is triggered.

"When strange things start happening in Jess Flynn's hometown of Swickley, the high-school junior suspects reality isn't as it seems and seeks to uncover the truth about her family, her friends, and her town"-- 1998. Jess Flynn is just trying to get through her junior year without drama. Between a new crush on her childhood best friend, overprotective parents cramping her social life, and her younger sister's worsening health, the only constant is...

Staggering under the grief and financial burden left by his recently deceased wife, crime-scene photographer Michael Kapinsky enters a virtual world called Second Life to participate in a new kind of group therapy, but once there, his persona, Chas Chesnokov, uncovers a series of killings and a financial scam that is netting a murderer millions of dollars.

"Eliza McKay is an Extractionist: an expert in the virtual reality space where people's minds are uploaded as digital personas. When rich or important people get stuck in the Swim for reasons that are sleazy, illegal, or merely unlucky--it's McKay's job to quietly extract them. And McKay's job just got a lot more dangerous. After McKay repels an attack on her Swim persona, hired thugs break into her house to try to hack her cybernetic implants directly....