Last Days of the Internet Provide
Stage for Heroism
Released on = August 3, 2004, 6:05 am
Press Release Author = biffmitchell.com
Press Release Summary = Even as the virtual universe shakes out
its last death rattle, it becomes just as much a stage as the real
world for heroism and reaffirmation of human spirit. Biff Mitchell’s
latest novel shows how virtual reality imitates the real world –
both for good and for bad.
Press Release Body = “The Internet is doomed,” said
author Biff Mitchell, speaking about his latest novel, The War Bug.
“It’s being destroyed bit-by-bit with “premium”
price tags, spam, spyware and pop-ups. And these are just the beginning
of things to come.”
The War Bug is set 200 years in the future, when the Internet is
divided into giant online city states owned by powerful corporate
entities. The city states go to war, using weapons-grade viruses called WarWare, but they overdo it and bring a vast online universe
spreading across the Earth and into space to the brink of destruction.
“The idea came from a course I took years ago at Ziff Davis
University,” said Mitchell. “It was a course on building
online communities. The focus was on turning the Internet into a
bunch of cash cow communities, as though the entire Web was
pointless unless you could squeeze a dollar out of it. I’m
not against people having online businesses and making a living
at it, but I took the cash cow viewpoint to the extreme in The War
Bug and created a world in which big business gobbles up
everything in its path and everybody else feeds on the crumbs. Pretty
much like the
real world.”
“In the book, there’s two worlds – the online
world and the real world,” said Mitchell. “Both are
prison-like. Step out of line in the real world and you risk
becoming “included” (having your mind altered to make
a happy consumer). Step out of line in the virtual world and you
become excluded (your access to the Net denied), maybe even deleted.”
“In the center of this, Abner Hayes, a ‘virtual code
geneticist’, has illegally given sentience to his virtual
wife, Claire, and daughter, Cassie, who are kidnapped by the corporate
moguls, or Powers, because they believe his virtual family contains
the key to immortality in the real world. Abner has only hours to
find them before the entire Internet crashes and they’re lost
forever.”
He has one ally, the computer virus that caused the city states
to go to war in the first place. “But even though the virus
has been programmed to destroy everything in its path,” said
Mitchell, “it has a keen sense of humor and it genuinely likes
Abner. End of the world or not, there has to be a few laughs. If
any of our SETI transmissions get through to an alien civilization,
I hope it’s just one signal – a signal carrying laughter.”
“And, of course, there has to be heroism,” said Mitchell.
“Someone has to rise to the occasion and do The Deed. Even
though he’s online, Abner risks his life in the real world
to save his family. Being online 200 years in the future means having
your mind and body wired directly into an experience so real that
if it crashes, it fries your brain. But Abner risks everything to
travel through suicidal game worlds, carnivorous virtual landscapes,
and wireless transmission lines spanning Earth, Mars and Jupiter
– all the time dodging deadly cyber traps and murderous viral
attacks. His body may be lying on a lounge chair in the real world,
but in cyberspace, he’s Flash Gordon and Superman rolled into
one. He’s a hero.”
“I think the kind of responsible behavior that virtual pets
were supposed to breed in children would have worked better if the
pets had been able to bite when they weren’t fed or petted,”
said Mitchell. “That’s how it is in The War Bug. If
you don’t take your online life seriously, it bites you.”
“Which makes it a shame,” said Mitchell. “Virtual
environments would make wonderful training grounds for things like
ethics and responsible behavior. Imagine a program in which you
go into a world that’s so real you can taste it. You see a
raggedy old woman drop her change purse on the sidewalk and hobble
away. You pick it up and look
inside. There’s forty bucks in it. You can give it back to
the old woman or use it to play virtual games or eat virtual ice
cream for the rest of the day. You choose the ice cream. Immediately,
you shift to a program in which you have to live the old
woman’s life for the next few days as she starves to death
because she has no money for food. That’s the kind of online
environment that might actually breed a better human being.”
“The more likely scenario,” said Mitchell, “is
that you’ll get a virtual zap in the neck for choosing the
wrong brand of sneakers. In the end, the folks with the most money
will be able to pay for developing the most popular Internet applications
and those applications will be designed to generate profit, not
better people. At least, that seems to be the way it’s going
now.”
“But who knows?” said Mitchell. “The Internet
is a big place. There’s a lot of potential out there in the
bandwidth. There’s the Open Source programmers struggling
to create quality programs and offer them free. Maybe they’ll
save the day. Or maybe
peer-to-peer networks, with thousands of members creating and exchanging
and growing their own content freely will rule the day. Who knows?”
“In the end,” said Mitchell. “What’s really
important is how each of us works through whatever world we live
in and the kind of person each of us becomes in spite of it. In
that respect, I have a little more faith in people. That’s
why I ended the book on a upbeat note. Cassie has always wanted
to swim but been denied because of the so-called Reality Laws of
the online world. At the end of the book, she gets her
wish:
It was just like she’d dreamed it would be. It was the awareness
of weightlessness. It was the sense of something with texture forming
around all the parts of her but yielding with a long cool massage
as she moved through it. She somersaulted and dove
into it, then glided up and broke through the surface with a splash
like a dolphin. She had no idea how this had come about, where the
water had come from, or how she accessed the program for it, if
indeed it were a program. She knew only that the
glistening spray from her splash fascinated her as she settled in
the water and watched it descend all around her in slow motion.
She lay for hours, floating, feeling the coolness on her back, and
she turned and felt herself sink before she thrust her body through
the clear blue wetness of her dream come true.”
“There’s a lot of potential in the bandwidth,”
said Mitchell, “a lot of possible routes other than the one
leading to The War Bug. But that seems to be the one we’re
taking.”
The War Bug is available directly from Double Dragon Publishing
or from Amazon.com,
Fictionwise, and EPIC. The author’s web site at biffmitchell.com
lists other sellers, and offers background information on the novel
along with interviews and reviews.
Biff Mitchell is the author of the world’s first laundromance,
Heavy Load (Jacobyte Books, Australia). His second novel, Team Player
(originally published by Jacobyte Books but soon to be re-released
by Double Dragon), is a spoof on the IT industry based largely on
his own work experience. He has two novellas published as Dollar
Downloads by Echelon Press (US). His book of short stories (Clearings),
a single short story (Still Life with Muse and Sax), and a book
of poems (Gawdawful Poems) are available as free downloads from
his web site and as free downloads for PDAs from Memoware.com.
Web Site = http://www.biffmitchell.com
Contact Details = Biff Mitchell
biff@biffmitchell.com
921 College Hill Road
Fredericton, NB, E3B 4Z3
Canada
506-460-1628
506-460-1626 (fax)
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