In the 2030s, the game "Thousand Tales" began playing the human world. These are the stories of intelligent AIs, brain-uploaded immortals, and ordinary players caught up in the start of a new society. Meet a costume designer who refuses to be a victim of censorship in a divided America; an AI who pushes the limits of what game characters can do without a robot army; and a cheerful trickster confronted with his past sins. When the usually upbeat virtual world doesn't solve everybody's real-world problems, what can they do to be happy and productive?
This collection is a set of side-stories in a much larger setting, and doesn't cover the main plot! New readers may want to start with "Virtual Horizon" or the free story collection "Thousand Tales: Extra Lives" to learn more about this strange future frontier. The setting is one of "hard SF" applying real technology to the near future, with elements of the "LitRPG/GameLit" genre about the world of gaming.
Genre: Science Fiction
This collection is a set of side-stories in a much larger setting, and doesn't cover the main plot! New readers may want to start with "Virtual Horizon" or the free story collection "Thousand Tales: Extra Lives" to learn more about this strange future frontier. The setting is one of "hard SF" applying real technology to the near future, with elements of the "LitRPG/GameLit" genre about the world of gaming.
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for Kris Schnee's Minus World