Virtual relationships and real-life murder. In an exclusive, expensive, and often bizarre branch of cyberspace, anonymous people live out their anonymous fantasies. But when Insomnimania members begin dying, hi-tech fantasy morphs into real-life nightmare. Searching for a killer, Marianne Hedison explores dark recesses of technology and shadowy depths of her own imagination.
About the new edition: Times have finally caught up with Terminal Games. We wrote the book under the pseudonym Cole Perriman, and it was first published by Bantam in 1994. Terminal Games sold well, got translated into German, Portuguese, Japanese, Italian, and Romanian, was taught in courses about literature and contemporary culture at several leading universities, and was optioned by a major studio for a movie that didn't get off the ground.
Here's the original book again, with its 90s-era technology intact. See for yourself how well Cole Perriman's Terminal Games prophesied today's infoworld.
Not a bad book but a little dated now. Revolving around users of a network in which users adopt "alters" and playact virtual lives, one of these alters starts re-enacting virtual murders that turn out to be exact copies of real life murders.
While it was probably very edgy when it was published, reading it now, with the widespread use of internet forums, apps and smart devices, some of the actions performed by the characters on their computers with only a mouse and a keyboard are baffling.
but the concept behind the murder mystery itself is intriguing.