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. But she soon becomes a suspect in a homicide investigation as a tenacious detective struggles to find the reality behind a murderous virtual clown called Auggie. They find that the final piece of its puzzle lies in the depths of human consciousness.
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 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. At that time, New York publishers were just discovering fax machines. Most people didn't use email, and "Internet" wasn't yet a household word. There was no Google, Facebook, The Sims, Twitter, Amazon, WiFi, texting, or ... well, you get the picture.
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.—Wim Coleman & Pat Perrin