Download or read book Ready Player One written by Ernest Cline and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. “Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.”—USA Today • “As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates.”—Entertainment Weekly A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready? In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself. Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Village Voice • Chicago Sun-Times • iO9 • The AV Club “Delightful . . . the grown-up’s Harry Potter.”—HuffPost “An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart.”—CNN “A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader.”—Boston Globe “Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that’s both hilarious and compassionate.”—NPR “[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”—iO9

Download or read book Ender s Game written by Orson Scott Card and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging, collectible, miniature hardcover of the Orson Scott Card classic and worldwide bestselling novel, Ender's Game, makes an excellent gift for anyone's science fiction library. "Ender's Game is an affecting novel."--New York Times Book Review Once again, Earth is under attack. An alien species is poised for a final assault. The survival of humanity depends on a military genius who can defeat the aliens. But who? Ender Wiggin. Brilliant. Ruthless. Cunning. A tactical and strategic master. And a child. Recruited for military training by the world government, Ender's childhood ends the moment he enters his new home: Battle School. Among the elite recruits Ender proves himself to be a genius among geniuses. He excels in simulated war games. But is the pressure and loneliness taking its toll on Ender? Simulations are one thing. How will Ender perform in real combat conditions? After all, Battle School is just a game. Isn't it? THE ENDER UNIVERSE Ender series Ender's Game / Ender in Exile / Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide / Children of the Mind Ender's Shadow series Ender's Shadow / Shadow of the Hegemon / Shadow Puppets / Shadow of the Giant / Shadows in Flight Children of the Fleet The First Formic War (with Aaron Johnston) Earth Unaware / Earth Afire / Earth Awakens The Second Formic War (with Aaron Johnston) The Swarm /The Hive Ender novellas A War of Gifts /First Meetings

Download or read book Armada written by Ernest Cline and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Ready Player One, a rollicking alien invasion thriller that embraces and subverts science-fiction conventions as only Ernest Cline could. Zack Lightman has never much cared for reality. He vastly prefers the countless science-fiction movies, books, and videogames he's spent his life consuming. And too often, he catches himself wishing that some fantastic, impossible, world-altering event could arrive to whisk him off on a grand spacefaring adventure. So when he sees the flying saucer, he's sure his years of escapism have finally tipped over into madness. Especially because the alien ship he's staring at is straight out of his favorite videogame, a flight simulator callled Armada--in which gamers just happen to be protecting Earth from alien invaders. As impossible as it seems, what Zack's seeing is all too real. And it's just the first in a blur of revlations that will force him to question everything he thought he knew about Earth's history, its future, even his own life--and to play the hero for real, with humanity's life in the balance. But even through the terror and exhilaration, he can't help thinking: Doesn't something about this scenario feel a little bit like...well...fiction? At once reinventing and paying homage to science-fiction classics as only Ernest Cline can, Armada is a rollicking, surprising thriller, a coming-of-age adventure, and an alien invasion tale like nothing you've ever read before.

Download or read book Ready Player Two written by Ernest Cline and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The thrilling sequel to the beloved worldwide bestseller Ready Player One, the near-future adventure that inspired the blockbuster Steven Spielberg film. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST • “The game is on again. . . . A great mix of exciting fantasy and threatening fact.”—The Wall Street Journal AN UNEXPECTED QUEST. TWO WORLDS AT STAKE. ARE YOU READY? Days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday’s contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday’s vaults, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous—and addictive—than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle, and a new quest—a last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who’ll kill millions to get what he wants. Wade’s life and the future of the OASIS are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance. Lovingly nostalgic and wildly original as only Ernest Cline could conceive it, Ready Player Two takes us on another imaginative, fun, action-packed adventure through his beloved virtual universe, and jolts us thrillingly into the future once again.

Download or read book Solarversia written by MR Toby Downton and published by Toby Downton. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's the 29th February 2020 and Nova Negrahnu cannot wait to start playing Solarversia, a year-long game based in a virtual world that's modelled on the real world solar system. Given three lives, three vehicles, and told to master the Science of Solarversia to stand a chance of winning, players compete against 100 million people for the 10m grand prize, and a place in the history books. Solarversia starts three months before Nova's A-levels, the life-changing exams that could see her win a place at Nottingham, the university that Charlie attends, the second-year student she falls for on an open-day visit. As she strains to balance her addiction to the game with her mounting schoolwork, Nova's world is unexpectedly turned upside down when the Holy Order, a mysterious cult-like organisation sets its sights on the game and Spiralwerks, its creator. Told from three different perspectives - Nova the gamer, Artica Kronkite, the CEO of Spiralwerks, and Casey Brown, a newly-initiated member of the Holy Order - Solarversia is a game that author Toby Downton hopes to make for real, to launch in 2020, so that people can actually play it. From the initial press release: The world of virtual reality is about to fundamentally reshape the way in which we live, work and play. The Oculus Rift - the much-lauded and potentially transformational VR headset, which broke crowdfunding records in 2012, and was recently acquired by Facebook for $2 billion - is scheduled to launch in early 2016. While its most obvious impact will hit the world's 700 million plus gamers, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes the potential VR impact to be far more profound: "Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face - just by putting on goggles in your home." The relatively new genre of litRPG, or virtual reality inspired science fiction centred around the gaming industry, is booming, with Ernest Cline's bestseller Ready Player One already in production for a major movie adaptation with Spielberg directing. Downton is emerging as a driving force in the VR revolution. His novel Solaversia is just the first step in his thrillingly ambitious multi-platform story-telling experience that will explore the relationships between artificial intelligence, technology and the human spirit. Downton has incorporated his tech-company - Spiralwerks - in the real world, developing Solarversia as a commercially available game, ready to storm the games market in 2020. Accompanying the publication of Solarversia is the Golden Ticket promotion, which will enable readers to win one of a hundred specially reserved places within the Player's Grid, through a series of innovative competitions."

Download or read book You written by Austin Grossman and published by Mulholland Books. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Russell joins Black Arts games, brainchild of two visionary designers who were once his closest friends, he reunites with an eccentric crew of nerds hacking the frontiers of both technology and entertainment. In part, he's finally given up chasing the conventional path that has always seemed just out of reach. But mostly, he needs to know what happened to Simon, his strangest and most gifted friend, who died under mysterious circumstances soon after Black Arts' breakout hit. As the company's revolutionary next-gen game is threatened by a software glitch, Russell finds himself in a race to save his job, Black Arts' legacy, and the people he has grown to care about. The deeper Russell digs, the more dangerous the glitch appears -- and soon, Russell comes to realize there's much more is at stake than just one software company's bottom line.

Download or read book Not Your Mary Sue written by Rebecca Frost and published by Aesthetic Press. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A not so classic girl meets boy story begins when a televangelist’s adult daughter, Marcy, journeys to a secluded island resort where she awakens a captive of a handsome, charming, notorious serial killer who requests she pen his autobiography explaining all of his intentions and crimes in detail. She finds herself horrified that she is intrigued by him and maybe even...infatuated by him. He has more control than she realizes as he slowly begins to brainwash her just as the autobiography is completed. Once she is rescued and he is arrested, Marcy begins to pull her life back together only for her captor to escape and her brother becomes a new suspect in a murder. Author Rebecca Frost is a True Crime author. This is her first fiction novel.

Download or read book The Elusive Shift written by Jon Peterson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the early Dungeons & Dragons community grappled with the nature of role-playing games, theorizing a new game genre. When Dungeon & Dragons made its debut in the mid-1970s, followed shortly thereafter by other, similar tabletop games, it sparked a renaissance in game design and critical thinking about games. D&D is now popularly considered to be the first role-playing game. But in the original rules, the term "role-playing" is nowhere to be found; D&D was marketed as a war game. In The Elusive Shift, Jon Peterson describes how players and scholars in the D&D community began to apply the term to D&D and similar games--and by doing so, established a new genre of games.

Download or read book Reacher Killing Floor Movie Tie In written by Lee Child and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-12-28 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE FIRST NOVEL IN LEE CHILD'S #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING JACK REACHER SERIES—NOW AN ORIGINAL SERIES ON PRIME VIDEO! “From its jolting opening scene to its fiery final confrontation, Killing Floor is irresistible.”—People Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is a drifter. He’s just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he’s arrested for murder. Not much of a welcome. All Reacher knows is that he didn’t kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn’t stand a chance of convincing anyone. Not in Margrave, Georgia. Not a chance in hell.

Download or read book The Stand Movie Tie in Edition written by Stephen King and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tie-in edition of the nine-part CBS All Access series starring Whoopi Goldberg, Alexander Skarsgard, and James Marsden. When a man escapes from a biological testing facility, he sets in motion a deadly domino effect, spreading a mutated strain of the flu that will wipe out 99 percent of humanity within a few weeks. The survivors who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge--Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious "Dark Man," who delights in chaos and violence. As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them--and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.

Download or read book The Importance of Being Ernest written by Ernest Cline and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2014-08-22 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Familiar and resonant, Cline's collection takes readers into a private landscape of science fiction, pop culture, and pornography. Ernest Cline is a geek, novelist, poet, and screenwriter based in Austin, Texas. In addition to winning poetry slams, Cline is known for screenwriting "Fanboys," released in 2009. He also recently sold the film rights to his latest book, "Armada."

Download or read book SLAY written by Brittney Morris and published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019! “Gripping and timely.” —People “The YA debut we’re most excited for this year.” —Entertainment Weekly “A book that knocks you off your feet while dropping the kind of knowledge that’ll keep you down for the count. Prepare to BE slain.” —Nic Stone, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin and Odd One Out Ready Player One meets The Hate U Give in this dynamite debut novel that follows a fierce teen game developer as she battles a real-life troll intent on ruining the Black Panther–inspired video game she created and the safe community it represents for Black gamers. By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the “downfall of the Black man.” But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for “anti-white discrimination.” Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?

Download or read book The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril written by Paul Malmont and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-06-05 with total page 7 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in the colorful world of the 1930s and peopled with writers H.P. Lovecraft, L. Ron Hubbard, Lester Dent, and Walter Gibson, this swashbuckling literary thriller propels the characters into a genuine pulp adventure in which they try to thwart a madman intent on creating a new global empire.

Download or read book Into the Wild written by Jon Krakauer and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. This is the unforgettable story of how Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die. "It may be nonfiction, but Into the Wild is a mystery of the highest order." —Entertainment Weekly McCandess had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Not long after, he was dead. Into the Wild is the mesmerizing, heartbreaking tale of an enigmatic young man who goes missing in the wild and whose story captured the world’s attention. Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild. Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless. When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding—and not an ounce of sentimentality. Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.

Download or read book MARVEL s Avengers Infinity War Thanos written by Barry Lyga and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new original novel by bestselling author Barry Lyga, learn the origins of the most feared force in the universe, and see how Thanos became the Titan consumed by his quest for power. Time Reality. Space. Mind. Soul. Power. Born on a doomed world and made an outcast for his physical deviancy and intimidating intellect, Thanos believes he sees something everyone else chooses to ignore: a way to save his home and the people of Titan for generations to come. But what he perceives as genius, they see as madness. Now exiled from his home world, Thanos is determined to find the means to return to Titan and implement his plan. His journey through the galaxy is a desperate race to save everything. Thanos will be successful-no matter how many billions have to die to bring balance to the universe. Learn the origins of the most formidable foe the Avengers, Doctor Strange, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and Black Panther have ever faced-a foe whom even a group of remarkable people, pulled together to fight the battles nobody else could, failed to stop.

Download or read book The Art and Making of Pacific Rim Uprising written by Daniel Wallace and published by . This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embargoed until 22nd March 2018 Explore the epic art of Pacific Rim Uprising, the highly anticipated follow-up to the 2013 monster hit. The Art and Making of Pacific Rim Uprising explores the epic art of the anticipated 2013 follow up, monster hit. It takes readers behind the scenes, into the heart of the epic battle between Kaiju and Jaegers. Showcasing the brilliant concept art behind the film, this book will be the ultimate exploration of one of the most anticipated films of 2018. Pacific Rim Uprising stars John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Scott Eastwood (The Fate of the Furious).

Download or read book Capitalist Realism written by Mark Fisher and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-25 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the ways in which capitalism has presented itself as the only realistic political-economic system.