This Is Not a Game: A Novel [Hardcover]

I've been reading Walter Jon Williams since he wrote Hardwired and Voice Of The Whirlwind. But I have not found his recent work as good as the books he wrote all those years ago. For example, I thought that Implied Spaces was a weak book. I was pleasantly surprised by This Is Not A Game, which I found to be Williams' best book in some time.

The book is written in a three act form. The first part of the book is fascinating and sets the context for the moral issues that arise later in the book. Reading this book it seemed to me that Williams was "doing" an impression of William Gibson, picking up on some of the themes that Gibson has touched on. I enjoyed this, especially because Gibson hasn't been doing Gibson much these days (sadly his Spook Country was one of his weakest books). Nor do I see anything wrong with one artist being influenced by another.

This Is Not A Game is set in the relatively near future. One of the things I enjoyed about this book is its technological speculation. I am a computer scientist and I found most of the speculation reasonable. There was some suspension of disbelief required when it comes to the ability of software to "learn", but I didn't find that this detracted from my enjoyment of the story.

One way I judge a book is whether I'm still thinking about it after I've finished reading it. I keep thinking of bits and pieces of This Is Not A Game.

I like Williams' work, and both "Aristoi" and "Metropolitan" are favorites. "Game" is a couple of steps below those. The first (and best) segment, in which a Dagmar, game producer is forced to rely upon strangers on the Internet for help escaping a collapsed state, is tense and tightly-plotted. The second, longer segment, which tells the story of Dagmar's game and a few real-life murders that may or may not be attached to the game's events, works less well.

Part of the problem may be that Williams simply doesn't have anywhere to go: he introduces only four characters of any consequence, and one of them is the narrator, so any mysteries will be solved after the second murder. That limited scope is a feature of the work in general: although we're told about 3 million people playing the game, there can't be more than six or seven people named in the book. Williams keeps only a very narrow window open on the action. Because of this, the book flies by, but there aren't any surprises for the alert reader.

A couple of moments in the novel that don't amount to much--the inept Israeli security company, the kung-fu Muslims who save Dagmar--gave me the impression that this book might have been trimmed down from something longer. If that's the case, it's too bad; a little more flesh on the bones of this story might have made the second half of the novel feel less inexorable.

This Is Not a Game (2008) is a standalone SF novel. It is set in the near future within Jakarta and Los Angeles.

In this novel, Dagmar Shaw is the executive producer of Great Big Idea, an alternate reality game company. She stages fictional conspiracies that involve thousands of players. She developed her interest in games at Caltech, where she played roleplaying games with Charlie, Austin and BJ. She married BJ for nine months, but then remarried and moved to England.

Charlie Ruff is the owner of AvN Soft, a software company that produces various forms of computer agents. He also owns the Great Big Idea game company.

Austin Katanyan is a venture capitalist. Charlie had helped him start his own business, which has been a huge success.

Boris Jan Bustretski is a customer service representative. BJ had been a partner with Charlie in the AvN Soft startup, but they had gone broke and Charlie kicked him out of the company. Now he is poor and bored.

In this story, Dagmar has just completed a game in India and is flying to Jakarta to catch a connecting flight to Bali. Her plane is late getting to Jakarta and she misses her connection. She gets tickets for another flight the following day and looks for a place to stay. The American hotels are full, so she takes a room at the Royal Jakarta.

Indonesia is suffering from a currency collapse. The government has fallen and the military intends to take over again. Many citizens have lost their jobs as well as their savings. People are rioting in the streets.

Dagmar informs Charlie of her situation. Other countries are planning to evacuate their citizens, but all American naval forces are committed to the Persian Gulf. So Americans in Indonesia have no way to leave.

Charlie hires a mercenary company to get Dagmar out of Jakarta. All the local security firms are already busy, so he hires an Israeli group. They will have to get their resources to Southeast Asia before Dagmar can be rescued.

Meanwhile, Dagmar appeals to her fans on Our Reality Network. She explains the situation and lets them start planning a rescue. The ARG fans get her out while the mercenaries are still trying to get their equipment in order.

When she gets back to Los Angeles, Charlie presents her with a new task. Dagmar uses her experiences in Jakarta to create a new scenario. Then someone murders Austin and Dagmar uses the ARG fans to discover the killer.

This tale also leads Dagmar to distrust Charlie and to hire BJ as a consultant. There are other murders and the ARG fans keep providing information on the real life crimes. Although Dagmar's rescue was TINAG -- see the title -- some fans are beginning to confuse reality with the game.

BTW, the chapter titles can be a little irritating. All start with "This is not...". Just keep on reading and eventually you can ignore the titles.

This novel drew my interest from the first page. It is mostly about Dagmar developing a healthy dose of suspicion in her culturally naive mind. Read and enjoy!

Highly recommended for Williams fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of roleplaying games, realworld murders, and smart women.

-Arthur W. Jordin

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