This Is Not a Game

✍ Scribed by Williams, Walter Jon

• Publisher: Orbit
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: en-GB
• Weight: 205 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780316003155

✦ Synopsis

THIS IS NOT A GAME is a novel built around the coolest phenomenon in the world. That phenomenon is known as the Alternate Reality Game, or ARG. It's big, and it's getting bigger. It's immersive and massively interactive, and it's spreading through the Internet at the speed of light. To the player, the Alternate Reality Game has no boundaries. You can be standing in a parking lot, or a shopping center. A pay phone near you will ring, and on the other end will be someone demanding information. You'd better have the information handy. ARGs combine video, text adventure, radio plays, audio, animation, improvisational theater, graphics, and story into an immersive experience. Now, one of science fiction's most acclaimed writers, Walter Jon Williams, brings this extraordinary phenomenon to life in a pulse-pounding thriller. This is not a game. This is a novel that will blow your mind.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Williams (The Rift) weaves intriguing questions about games, gamers and their relationships with real life into this well-paced near-future thriller. Game designer Dagmar specializes in creating alternate reality games that muddle the line between fantasy and reality. Trapped in riot-torn Jakarta, she reaches out to the gamer community for help. Once back in Los Angeles, Dagmar is caught up in a web of murders and financial manipulation that she begins to blend into her latest game, using the community of players to solve clues and sift through large amounts of data. The line between real life and the game blurs as the action builds to a satisfying and thoughtful conclusion. Though the technology talk occasionally becomes intrusive, it's convincingly written; the characters are realistic and absorbing, and the story deeply compelling. (Mar.)
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Review

"Interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams." --- George R.R. Martin

"A spectacular far-future space opera." --- Locus on The Sundering

"This series is great fun to read, one of the most entertaining space operas in many years." --- SF Site on The Sundering

"[Williams'] meticulous inner eye creates a landscape so rich in concrete and metaphysical imagery that it alone is practically worth the price of admission." --- Scifi.com on City of Fire