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Death Dream
Cyber World is destined to be the ultimate adult playground. Using virtual reality, players can fly jet fighters in combat, take part in the gunfight at OK Corral, or walk on the moon. These simulations are indistinguishable from reality and have a pulse-pounding - often terrifying - immediacy. Dan Santori has been hired by ParaReality, Inc. to make sure Cyber World opens on schedule. But the people who test the simulations have begun to die, and Dan soon realizes that he and his family might be the next victims in a violent game.
Like Michael Crichton, Ben Bova is a master at turning a fascinating bit of science into a rousing read. Now, with "Death Dream," he extrapolates from today's headlines of virtual reality theme parks to produce a commanding and riveting novel of suspense.
Like Michael Crichton, Ben Bova is a master at turning a fascinating bit of science into a rousing read. Now, with "Death Dream," he extrapolates from today's headlines of virtual reality theme parks to produce a commanding and riveting novel of suspense.
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First published March 1, 1994
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About the author
Ben Bova
715 books1,040 followersBen Bova was born on November 8, 1932 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1953, while attending Temple University, he married Rosa Cucinotta, they had a son and a daughter. He would later divorce Rosa in 1974. In that same year he married Barbara Berson Rose.
Bova was an avid fencer and organized Avco Everett's fencing club. He was an environmentalist, but rejected Luddism.
Bova was a technical writer for Project Vanguard and later for Avco Everett in the 1960s when they did research in lasers and fluid dynamics. It was there that he met Arthur R. Kantrowitz later of the Foresight Institute.
In 1971 he became editor of Analog Science Fiction after John W. Campbell's death. After leaving Analog, he went on to edit Omni during 1978-1982.
In 1974 he wrote the screenplay for an episode of the children's science fiction television series Land of the Lost entitled "The Search".
Bova was the science advisor for the failed television series The Starlost, leaving in disgust after the airing of the first episode. His novel The Starcrossed was loosely based on his experiences and featured a thinly veiled characterization of his friend and colleague Harlan Ellison. He dedicated the novel to "Cordwainer Bird", the pen name Harlan Ellison uses when he does not want to be associated with a television or film project.
Bova was the President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past President of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
Bova went back to school in the 1980s, earning an M.A. in communications in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1996.
Bova has drawn on these meetings and experiences to create fact and fiction writings rich with references to spaceflight, lasers, artificial hearts, nanotechnology, environmentalism, fencing and martial arts, photography and artists.
Bova was the author of over a hundred and fifteen books, non-fiction as well as science fiction. In 2000, he was the Author Guest of Honor at the 58th World Science Fiction Convention (Chicon 2000).
Hollywood has started to take an interest in Bova's works once again, in addition to his wealth of knowledge about science and what the future may look like. In 2007, he was hired as a consultant by both Stuber/Parent Productions to provide insight into what the world is to look like in the near future for their upcoming film "Repossession Mambo" (released as "Repo Men") starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker and by Silver Pictures in which he provided consulting services on the feature adaptation of Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon".
http://us.macmillan.com/author/benbova
Bova was an avid fencer and organized Avco Everett's fencing club. He was an environmentalist, but rejected Luddism.
Bova was a technical writer for Project Vanguard and later for Avco Everett in the 1960s when they did research in lasers and fluid dynamics. It was there that he met Arthur R. Kantrowitz later of the Foresight Institute.
In 1971 he became editor of Analog Science Fiction after John W. Campbell's death. After leaving Analog, he went on to edit Omni during 1978-1982.
In 1974 he wrote the screenplay for an episode of the children's science fiction television series Land of the Lost entitled "The Search".
Bova was the science advisor for the failed television series The Starlost, leaving in disgust after the airing of the first episode. His novel The Starcrossed was loosely based on his experiences and featured a thinly veiled characterization of his friend and colleague Harlan Ellison. He dedicated the novel to "Cordwainer Bird", the pen name Harlan Ellison uses when he does not want to be associated with a television or film project.
Bova was the President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past President of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
Bova went back to school in the 1980s, earning an M.A. in communications in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1996.
Bova has drawn on these meetings and experiences to create fact and fiction writings rich with references to spaceflight, lasers, artificial hearts, nanotechnology, environmentalism, fencing and martial arts, photography and artists.
Bova was the author of over a hundred and fifteen books, non-fiction as well as science fiction. In 2000, he was the Author Guest of Honor at the 58th World Science Fiction Convention (Chicon 2000).
Hollywood has started to take an interest in Bova's works once again, in addition to his wealth of knowledge about science and what the future may look like. In 2007, he was hired as a consultant by both Stuber/Parent Productions to provide insight into what the world is to look like in the near future for their upcoming film "Repossession Mambo" (released as "Repo Men") starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker and by Silver Pictures in which he provided consulting services on the feature adaptation of Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon".
http://us.macmillan.com/author/benbova
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 16, 2014
This book is creepy. Just creepy. At its core is the subject of pedophilia. That's right. The very famous Ben Bova wrote a book in which one of the characters is actively trying to get to -- sexually -- one of his employees' 12 year old daughter. It's hidden in a virtual reality world. No, not hidden. It's out in the open. Frankly, I got halfway through the book before stopping because it IS interesting, but ultimately I was too grossed out to continue. Oh, and incest. Nice, huh? Definitely not recommended.
March 9, 2017
The book is about virtual reality. The protagonist, Dan Santorini is hired to work at a company called parareality. At Dan's old job, the Air Force base, someone dies while using the simulation he designed. Another strange occurance in the virtual reality technology is that Dan's daughter keeps seeing his boss, Kyle Muncrief, in the simulations. Dan is troubled by the death in his simulation and also being told that he was only hired at parareality to make his old coworker, Jace, happy. His old boss calls him, and asks him to help figure out what went wrong with the simulation. Dan heads back to his old job to try and investigate the death.
I think this book is fairly realistic in its perception of virtual realities potential for good and for harmful purposes. I like how the book goes into detail in the character's backgrounds to help the reader understand them, and help the reader to sympathize with the villians of the story. Though the book does make me feel a little uncomfortable by the detail it goes into the sex scenes of the book. This book is sort of like a horror story. It shows how scary the power of virtual reality is.
I think this book is fairly realistic in its perception of virtual realities potential for good and for harmful purposes. I like how the book goes into detail in the character's backgrounds to help the reader understand them, and help the reader to sympathize with the villians of the story. Though the book does make me feel a little uncomfortable by the detail it goes into the sex scenes of the book. This book is sort of like a horror story. It shows how scary the power of virtual reality is.
April 14, 2024
First, no matter what you read in reviews of this book, Ben Bova isn’t writing in defense of pedophilia. Parts of this made me sick and filled me with a white-hot anger that forced me to remind myself that it’s only a book. I’m way ahead of myself. Let me make this make sense.
Dan and Susan Santorini have just moved to Florida after years in Ohio where Dan worked as a civilian employee of the air force designing flight simulators. His new job is with a company known as Parareality. It plans to open Cyber World, a Virtual Reality park in which you can play baseball surrounded by the all-time greats of the game, you can walk on the moon, you can even enter the human body in a fantastic voyage of your own that lets you alter the body’s parts and pieces. You’ll ease into a helmet and gloves, and the reality will come to you. Dan’s new job is to help his long-time friend Jason make the games as real as possible.
Angela is the couple’s 12-year-old daughter. She cried for four days upon learning that she had to leave Ohio for Florida, and on her first day at a new school, she meets her dad’s boss, Kyle. Alas for Angela, Kyle falls for her in a hard, unhealthy way. At her new school, there are no textbooks. Parareality booths enable kids to travel back to any number of scenarios in history or learn biology by swimming with oceans teaming with life. Kyle finds ways to insert himself into the games Angela plays online, and soon she’s calling him “Uncle Kyle.”
Meanwhile, back in Dayton, a flight simulator seems to have gone rogue somehow. It’s capable of creating scenarios so real that pilots in training experience real emotional changes as they fly it. Two men die of strokes suffered after their time in the simulator before the head of the project declares it unsafe and asks Dan to come back to see why it seems to be killing those who fly it.
I see this as a sober warning on Bova’s part to point out to us all that as these Virtual Reality and Augmentative Reality tools become more commonplace, pedophiles will embrace them as grooming tools if they can. So well does Bova write these scenes that lots of people can’t finish the book and others decry the pedophilia. If you read this, remind yourself you’re reading a fiction book, not participating in a horrific reality designed to enrage and sicken those of us who oppose pedophilia in all its forms. Take Bova’s warnings to heart and realize that your kids and grandkids are potential victims if VR and AR tools reach the levels of sophistication Bova describes.
Some of this is quaint in its outdatedness. He writes of the use of telephone modems and software loaded onto CDs. But he gets enough right that you’ll enjoy it—mostly. Kyle’s efforts to groom Angela are gut tightening and rage inducing. I can’t give this five stars because of those scenes, but I’m comfortable with a four-star rating. I’m glad I finished the book.
This is, in summation a great combination of science fiction and suspense-filled thriller. That’s a good combination to read.
Dan and Susan Santorini have just moved to Florida after years in Ohio where Dan worked as a civilian employee of the air force designing flight simulators. His new job is with a company known as Parareality. It plans to open Cyber World, a Virtual Reality park in which you can play baseball surrounded by the all-time greats of the game, you can walk on the moon, you can even enter the human body in a fantastic voyage of your own that lets you alter the body’s parts and pieces. You’ll ease into a helmet and gloves, and the reality will come to you. Dan’s new job is to help his long-time friend Jason make the games as real as possible.
Angela is the couple’s 12-year-old daughter. She cried for four days upon learning that she had to leave Ohio for Florida, and on her first day at a new school, she meets her dad’s boss, Kyle. Alas for Angela, Kyle falls for her in a hard, unhealthy way. At her new school, there are no textbooks. Parareality booths enable kids to travel back to any number of scenarios in history or learn biology by swimming with oceans teaming with life. Kyle finds ways to insert himself into the games Angela plays online, and soon she’s calling him “Uncle Kyle.”
Meanwhile, back in Dayton, a flight simulator seems to have gone rogue somehow. It’s capable of creating scenarios so real that pilots in training experience real emotional changes as they fly it. Two men die of strokes suffered after their time in the simulator before the head of the project declares it unsafe and asks Dan to come back to see why it seems to be killing those who fly it.
I see this as a sober warning on Bova’s part to point out to us all that as these Virtual Reality and Augmentative Reality tools become more commonplace, pedophiles will embrace them as grooming tools if they can. So well does Bova write these scenes that lots of people can’t finish the book and others decry the pedophilia. If you read this, remind yourself you’re reading a fiction book, not participating in a horrific reality designed to enrage and sicken those of us who oppose pedophilia in all its forms. Take Bova’s warnings to heart and realize that your kids and grandkids are potential victims if VR and AR tools reach the levels of sophistication Bova describes.
Some of this is quaint in its outdatedness. He writes of the use of telephone modems and software loaded onto CDs. But he gets enough right that you’ll enjoy it—mostly. Kyle’s efforts to groom Angela are gut tightening and rage inducing. I can’t give this five stars because of those scenes, but I’m comfortable with a four-star rating. I’m glad I finished the book.
This is, in summation a great combination of science fiction and suspense-filled thriller. That’s a good combination to read.
November 23, 2018
Sogno mortale è un thriller fantascientifico senza infamia e senza lode; si lascia leggere nonostante sia farcito di troppe inesattezze e buchi nella trama per essere memorabile. L'idea un killer che agisce tramite la realtà virtuale è carina ma realizzata in maniera approssimativa, affogata per di più in un mare di sottotrame poco interessanti. È il primo romanzo di Bova che leggo, mi è parso una sorta di Crichton (molto) minore.
August 17, 2017
I couldn't handle the abuse in this book and only made it about 110 pages in.
September 29, 2023
Interesting story and ideas, but it took long to get to the point and left quite a bit of loose ends.
December 13, 2024
Two storylines within the same novel and involving the same technology seemed unnecessary, but Bova a decent job of tying everything together with an ending you won't see coming.
March 6, 2025
LONG read. Predictable and a lot of tech vocab.
October 23, 2016
Virtual reality techology in integral to this story that moves along at a good pace ramping up to a thrilling conclusion.
Kyle Muncrief is the owner of ParaReality a company working on a VR project to rival, really surpass, disney world and the like. His top design man is Jace Lowrey, who he lured away from the Air Force a year ago. Now he has hired Jace's hardware man, Dan Santorini. Dan and family have moved from Dayton, Ohio and the Wright-Patterson AF base to Florida and ParaReality.
Kyle is secret pedophile and is using ParaReality and Jace to secretly create a VR simulation so that Kyle can regain his lost sister. To do this Kyle has funded a school with free VR booths connected to the mainframes at ParaReality. They use the reactions of Dan's daughter Angela. Vickie Kessel in the business manager for ParaReality, is not totally in on this secret but knows that Kyle is using Angela.
ParaReality does have a deadline and the investors are getting antsy. Kyle needs more capital, but doesn't want to sell any part of the company. Vickie has lined up a man from Washington to infuse some capital into the company. Quentin Smith has a hard deadline of February first. Adding to already hectic workload of meeting the April opening of CyberWorld.
Back at Wright-Patterson a test pilot had a stroke and died while running the simulator that Jace and Dan built. Doc Appleton appeals to Dan to come back and take a look at it. Before Dan can come back Frank Martinez insists on doing the same simulation.
Bova does a fine job of giving us fleshed out characters with understandable motivations. Making good use of back stories and letting us see into the heads of multiple characters.
Kyle Muncrief is the owner of ParaReality a company working on a VR project to rival, really surpass, disney world and the like. His top design man is Jace Lowrey, who he lured away from the Air Force a year ago. Now he has hired Jace's hardware man, Dan Santorini. Dan and family have moved from Dayton, Ohio and the Wright-Patterson AF base to Florida and ParaReality.
Kyle is secret pedophile and is using ParaReality and Jace to secretly create a VR simulation so that Kyle can regain his lost sister. To do this Kyle has funded a school with free VR booths connected to the mainframes at ParaReality. They use the reactions of Dan's daughter Angela. Vickie Kessel in the business manager for ParaReality, is not totally in on this secret but knows that Kyle is using Angela.
ParaReality does have a deadline and the investors are getting antsy. Kyle needs more capital, but doesn't want to sell any part of the company. Vickie has lined up a man from Washington to infuse some capital into the company. Quentin Smith has a hard deadline of February first. Adding to already hectic workload of meeting the April opening of CyberWorld.
Back at Wright-Patterson a test pilot had a stroke and died while running the simulator that Jace and Dan built. Doc Appleton appeals to Dan to come back and take a look at it. Before Dan can come back Frank Martinez insists on doing the same simulation.
Bova does a fine job of giving us fleshed out characters with understandable motivations. Making good use of back stories and letting us see into the heads of multiple characters.
October 30, 2012
This book is horrifying from the very beginning, in the exact same sense that Lost Boys is horrifying. You know something bad will happen to a child and you, as a reader, are powerless to prevent it. You can only watch with mounting dread as events move closer and closer to their appointed end.
Also, it involved Virtual Reality, which is always cool.
The technology was a bit dated. Bova apparently made some guesses about the future and got some right and some wrong. But that was easy enough to overlook.
The book's real flaw was that much of the characters' back story was given through info dumps. Somebody would react and all of the sudden the story would pause for a 5 page summary of what the character's background and motivations are. It didn't ruin the story but it seemed awkward, each time it happened.
Also, it involved Virtual Reality, which is always cool.
The technology was a bit dated. Bova apparently made some guesses about the future and got some right and some wrong. But that was easy enough to overlook.
The book's real flaw was that much of the characters' back story was given through info dumps. Somebody would react and all of the sudden the story would pause for a 5 page summary of what the character's background and motivations are. It didn't ruin the story but it seemed awkward, each time it happened.
August 3, 2016
Bova explores some subtleties in the region in between the physical and emotional cognitive domains. Wrapped by a nice story, he addresses the fundamental problems in theorising and formulating the human mind, and how the physical senses could be manipulated. If not some unnecessary and lengthy explanations and dramatisations, this could have been a masterpiece. Also the make of a pedophile fantasising his teenage sister is too rhetoric for a science fiction. By the way, as he always does, Bova combines politics, science, metaphysics and human behaviour in a single piece of work.
January 3, 2017
Another GREAT story from a GREAT Author. Ben Bova spins tales with the best of them.
In this story we see an eccentric genius take virtual reality too far and his friend is called in to determine what went wrong when a flight simulation kills a pilot.
Soon we are deep into the mind of the genius and what he has planned does not look good.
Thrilling conclusion of this "Westworld" type environment, without the androids, just your mind.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Author, and book
In this story we see an eccentric genius take virtual reality too far and his friend is called in to determine what went wrong when a flight simulation kills a pilot.
Soon we are deep into the mind of the genius and what he has planned does not look good.
Thrilling conclusion of this "Westworld" type environment, without the androids, just your mind.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Author, and book
January 11, 2017
It was a decent book but I felt it went on a bit long. I enjoyed the story and the writing style. It's a title that's been sitting on my shelf for since I bought it back in 1995. Despite the technology being dated, it was an enjoyable story. I would read more by this author.
The funny thing is, I could have sworn I had read other stories by this author. I didn't realize I'd been staring at his name for years, thanks to Analog. :D
The funny thing is, I could have sworn I had read other stories by this author. I didn't realize I'd been staring at his name for years, thanks to Analog. :D
March 1, 2009
This is a story about a computer programmer who gets employed by a virtual reality software company, only to find that one of the executives is using the virtual reality device to ensnare his under-aged daughter for unspeakable acts.
A novella stretched out to novel length. Kind of disturbing and unfortunately in the realm of possibility.
A novella stretched out to novel length. Kind of disturbing and unfortunately in the realm of possibility.
May 18, 2014
L'avevo letto più di una volta tantissimo tempo fa, e ne conservavo un bellissimo ricordo.
Purtroppo questa rilettura in lingua originale mi ha parecchio deluso; la storia rimane molto interessante, ma purtroppo lo stile è... non so bene come definirlo, forse più da libro d'azione che di fantascienza, insomma, ed è un peccato.
Purtroppo questa rilettura in lingua originale mi ha parecchio deluso; la storia rimane molto interessante, ma purtroppo lo stile è... non so bene come definirlo, forse più da libro d'azione che di fantascienza, insomma, ed è un peccato.
April 8, 2015
A break away from the usual Bova planetary tales of which I've grown very tired. This story revolves around the world of virtual reality. Lots of intrigue and dirty dealing within the managing company, involving the government and a pedophile. Flat characters, story dragged a bit in the middle. However the final 50 pages were pathetic, and the final final 15 were ridiculous.
April 1, 2016
On one hand this was a very imaginative book, and I enjoyed the sci fi/mystery aspect of it.
On the other, I found the "one guy is obsessed with his cold mother" and another guy is "in love with his sister because they were abused" so tired.
On the other, I found the "one guy is obsessed with his cold mother" and another guy is "in love with his sister because they were abused" so tired.
August 4, 2014
Ben Bova is usually fantastic. I found this one to be predictable with simplistic and two dimensional characters.
January 1, 2015
Excellent book, excellent writing, characters and story. One of the better books I read in 2014. Recommend highly.
October 1, 2015
wow, what a skewed view of VR! still, not bad.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews