Reamde

Description

In 1972, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, fled to the mountains of British Columbia to avoid the draft. A skilled hunting guide, he eventually amassed a fortune by smuggling marijuana across the border between Canada and Idaho. Parlaying his wealth into an empire, Richard developed a remote resort in which he lives; he also created T'Rain, a multibillion-dollar, massively multiplayer online role-playing game with millions of fans around the world. But T'Rain's success has also made it a target. Hackers have struck gold, unleashing REAMDE, a virus that encrypts all of a player's electronic files and holds them for ransom. They have also unwittingly triggered a deadly war beyond the boundaries of the game's virtual universe - and Richard is at ground zero. Racing around the globe from the Pacific Northwest to China to the wilds of northern Idaho, Reamde traverses worlds virtual and real. Filled with unexpected twists and turns in which unforgettable villains and unlikely heroes face off in a battle for survival, it is a brilliant refraction of the twenty-first century, from the global war on terror to social media, computer hackers to mobsters, entrepreneurs to religious fundamentalists.

Neal Stephenson is the author of eight novels, including the cult successes Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. He has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award six times, winning with Quicksilver. Four of his last five novels have been number one New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Seattle.

Fantastic * Sunday Times * Like Stephenson's most critically acclaimed novel, Cryptonomicon, Reamde combines meticulous observation of the stranger socio-economic effects wrought by technology with rousing fusillade adventure... Outrageously entertaining... a joyride * Guardian * Sometimes when you're reading Neal Stephenson, he doesn't just seem like one of the best novelists writing in English right now; he seems like the only one * Time *