About the Book
Four decades ago, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa family,
fled to a wild and lonely mountainous corner of British Columbia to
avoid the draft. Smuggling backpack loads of high-grade marijuana across the border into Northern Idaho, he quickly amassed an enormous and
illegal fortune. With plenty of time and money to burn, he became
addicted to an online fantasy game in which opposing factions battle for power and treasure in a vast cyber realm. Like many serious gamers, he
began routinely purchasing viral gold pieces and other desirables from
Chinese gold farmers — young professional players in Asia who accumulated virtual weapons and armor to sell to busy American and European buyers.
For Richard, the game was the perfect opportunity to launder
his aging hundred dollar bills and begin his own high-tech start up — a
venture that has morphed into a Fortune 500 computer gaming group,
Corporation 9592, with its own super successful online role-playing
game, T’Rain. But the line between fantasy and reality becomes
dangerously blurred when a young gold farmer accidently triggers a
virtual war for dominance — and Richard is caught at the center.
In this edgy, 21st century tale, Neal Stephenson, one of the most
ambitious and prophetic writers of our time, returns to the terrain of
his cyberpunk masterpieces Snow Crash and Crpytonomicon, leading readers through the looking glass and into the dark heart of imagination.
