A great cyber punk story! The cyber science behind it is fascinating and believable...fast-paced plot twists will keep you guessing... I recommend this book to science fiction and cyber punk fans... a quality read! ~ B. Coleman
Virtual Reality? There's nothing virtual about it.
In Lee Baldwin's epic cyberpunk fantasy novel, Halcyon Dreamworlds, you'll be swept into a breathless otherworldly unreality, a place of romance, intrigue, untold riches... and death. Perfect for readers who love Dust TV.
For victimized, luckless Logan Fischer, the police find her dear uncle dead at home, with a strange, spidery techno-cap on his head. But when she visits his Arizona singlewide, she awakens his elaborate widescreen computer simulation, her first portal into the world's richest MMORPG ** - the immersive party universe known as Halcyon Dreamworlds.
When she descends into that entrancing world, Logan meets the avatar of Beatrice Verkrag, one of Park Avenue's billionaire teens. Seduced by the ultra-real computer simulation piped directly into her brain, Logan for the first time falls in love with a girl.
If you can experience heavenly sex, if this computerized world can leave you dead without a mark, this is your life.
When Logan visits Beatrice's Park Avenue apartment, she meets the teen's father, David Verkrag, one of the most callous of the ultra-rich, who wants to become the world's first trilionaire. With the modifications he's made to the subdural brain signals from the Dreamworlds spider cap, he's on course to deprive ordinary people of their greatest wealth - their property. Verkrag's scheme is literally a plot subdue the mind of every game player, and eventually to own the world.
But Logan's uncle was a former software engineer with Halcyon Dreamworlds, and was aware of the enormous threat the party world could become. He designed an intelligent machine that would upon his death activate one of Dreamworlds' avatars, DarkEternity. The uncle gave this sophisticated AI a single mission... to make the world safe for Logan Fischer.
This is a spellbinding tale of many levels, illusions, and characters. It's similar on some levels with immersive new realities from such as Mark Goodwin, William Gibson, and Imogen Hermes Gowar.
Entranced by her lovely friends and beautiful homes, the first desire Logan feels is this: If she had the power, she would give everything she has to take her avatar's place in this lurid fantasy. Forever.
But with that comes a stark relization: To get things and want things means you become a thing. When Logan realizes David Verkrag's wicked scheme, she’s ready to give everything she has to protect the people of the world’s most debt-ridden nation from further ruin at the hands of they hyper-rich elite. Will this wish lead to her ruin at his whim?
The story is rich, wry, and at times comedic as it exposes the utterly mindless drives of those for whom wealth is a scorecard against the world.
Be sure to follow Lee Baldwin for his stunning sequel to Halcyon Dreamworlds - The Hidden Perils of Suicide - due out in 2019.
What readers say about Lee Baldwin's Halcyon Dreamworlds A thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking story. Fast-paced and complex, Halcyon Dreamworlds is believable science fiction, raising questions about technology that are relevant and challenging. Logan Fischer, with a past she'd like to forget, is swept away into the glittering, decadent sexuality of the simulations, until her one trusted friend and family member is found dead at the neurological bridge into a virtual world. ~ Amazon Author Marian Thorpe
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