• Books Read

    Snow Crash

    Snow Crash (audio) by Neal Stephenson Published: 1992 Narrator: Jonathon Davis Hiro Protagonist, a sword-wielding hacker, and Y.T., a 15-year-old skateboarding courier, struggle to stop the spread of Snow Crash, a digitally and visually transmitted…ancient herpes…from space. This book is a staple in geek culture. People just love it, and in a way I can see why. The technology described in Snow Crash was way ahead of its time. It was published before the first graphical web browser was even invented and managed to describe what would eventually become Google Earth. It also features an internationally networked virtual environment accessed through the use of a headset, a trope that is…

  • Books Read

    Ready Player One

    Ready Player One (audio) by Ernest Cline Published: 2011 Narration: Wil Wheaton The story takes place 30 years from now, in a somewhat generic dystopia. Wade Watts lives in a trailer stack with his hateful aunt. Life sucks, so he spends most of his time logged in to the OASIS – a virtual reality world that started life as a MMO game and is now used for everything from schooling to business transactions. The man who created the OASIS, James Halliday, left in his will 240 billion dollars to anyone who could find his hidden easter egg. He was obsessed with the 80s, so the easter egg hunters study all…