Press Start To Play is an anthology of short stories about our relationships with video games, with stories selected by Daniel H. Wilson (Robopocolypse) and John Joseph Adams (The Mad Scientist's Guide To World Domination), with a forward written by Ernest Kline (Ready Player One, Armada).
The stories range from the comedic to the horrific; the retro to the modern; the norm to the downright bizarre and not one story is the same as another.
Covering genres such as role playing games, virtual reality, artificial intellifence, text adventures and more, all of these stories will appeal to your inner geek in at least one way or another, brushing past typical dorktastic references from 80s scifi onwards, making sure to keep your nerdgasms in full flow.
Some stories are more traditionally written than others, too. Some are written like the loop in a piece of code; other's, like the progressive journey through a text based adventure running from a floppy disc, where as some are good old fashioned stories with relatable characters. Being short stories, you may think they'd scrimp on their structural integrity, but I found all of the compositions to either leave me succesfully crying out for more, or suitably satisfied at their conclusion.
The stories in this compendium appeal to me as a lover of innovative, interesting writing styles, as well as to my inner geek. Some are short and punchy, but some are detailed and descriptive enough to have even possibly evolved into a novel in their own right.
If you're in anyway a geek or gamer, I would recomend this book highly, as a support of genuinely brilliant story telling, writing and a homage to all things geek and gaming. An excellent read.
No comments:
Post a Comment