Virtual Reality Books

To the author's credit he has atleast shown the way to a VM design, even if the design has some problems. If a good enough programmer gets his or her hands on this book, they can build on it and take it to the next level with some effort. The book is not meant to teach C or C++ and that is not the intent of the book either. Consider the code accompanying the book as the first iteration of a VM that needs to be refined further.

This book is more about "actual" machine emulation. The so call virtual machine in the book is awfully close to a real machine. The idea of building a virtual machine is to have an higher lever of abstraction. Virtual machines are usually designed with a specific kind of programming language in mind. Virtual machines are designed so language designers can build their language on top of a higher level of abstraction. What's the point of building a VM that looks like x86?

I skim through the book, and didn't find any information that could be useful for the VM I was building. It talks a lot about how a real machine works and how to simulate it in software. The C/C++ code in the book is not that bad, but I guess we should expect a bit more from someone who wrote a book with C/C++ in the title. There are plenty of bad examples in the book that may mislead novice C++ developers.

It reads like the personal diaries of Bill Blunden as he endeavors to build the HEC virtual machine. The best aspect of this book is that Mr. Blunden has done a decent amount of investigations into the process of building a VM. He describes all of the components of his VM with abundant detail and clear writing. The HEC VM is more of a toy than a commercial VM, but its design is informative. Mr. Blunden also gets credit for included error handling in his code. Too many other books skip error handling "to save space". This book also happens to be one of the only VM books I've found that is not about the Java VM (which is a stack machine as opposed to a register machine like HEC).

Unfortunately there are several problems with the book. The biggest problem is confusion about its target audience. In many places the book appears to be written for totally inexperienced developers while at other times it assumes a decent amount of existing knowledge. For example, the book describes that disk access is slower than RAM access, what a debugger does, provides lots of details and code examples of simple data structures like dynamic arrays, etc. At the same time the book assumes good working knowledge of the C, C++, and Java languages, an understanding of file I/O, and other concepts. How many developers know C/C++ and Java but don't know what a debugger is for?

The next problem with the book is the actual code. It has many security problems such as unsafe strcpy and scanf usage, too many unnecessary preprocessor macros (created for unconditional code blocks that are only used once), and strange C style C++ code (classes that are passed their own data members).

The final issue is the book's personal diary style. Some people may enjoy this, but I did not. The book is filled with little sections labeled "Rant" where Mr. Blunden goes off on something. In a strange section about the future of computers he comes up with this: "Imagine how a government could use this kind of tool to repress its citizens by instituting behavior modification on a national scale." And what does this have to do with building a VM? If I wanted a novel I'd buy one (or write one in an Amazon review :)

If you are a C/C++ developer and want details about building a VM, this book gets very slow and you will end up skipping 30 to 60 percent. If you are an inexperienced developer, however, the example code may be over your head. In the end, I'd say this book is best suited for new developers (or even non-developers) who want background information about computers and virtual machines, but don't care about using the example code. The book would be a 3 to 3.5 star for someone like that.

I was very dissappointed that this book does not really cover anything more than basic topics that one could get (better and more thoroughly) from a standard computer textbook.

Examples: 1) no discussion of how garbage collection works and tradeoffs [just a list], 2) no discussion about alternatives for coding the main instruction execution loop, 3) no discussion of how to implement a VM that is object aware [the subjects in chapter 8 talk about how to simulate objects in HEC - not at all the same thing], 4) no practical discussion on how to implement threading, locking, simultaneous access, etc. 5) no discussion about how to implement a VM with exception handling [again, there is talk about simulating it with HEC - again, not the same thing].

The discussion of multitasking exemplifies my problems with this book. Here are some quotes: "The bottom line is that I really didn't feel like I had a good way to implement multitasking at the virtual machine level. ... The only decision that seemed to make sense was to abandon simulated multitasking and design the HEC virtual machine to execute as a single-threaded task."

And with that, multithreading is dispatched without any help to the serious VM implementor. Similar dissmissive comments can be found regarding GUI, garbage collection, and stack machines.

I'm sorry, but I do not consider "it was too hard, so I decided not to," to be a valid excuse for an author.

Basically, the book is a discussion of a toy project invented by the author: the HEC. Unfortunately, the HEC is strictly 1980's technology.

Under no circumstance should you purchase this book to learn Java or the Java VM more thoroughly.

A vanity book that no decent publisher should print.
Material about the stated subject is so outdated to be laughable.
Otherwise filled with totally irrelevant, ill-informed, pretentious material. Mostly useless code listings.

The planet of New Kashubia is a ball of heavy metals in orbit about a pulsar that bakes the planet's surface with deadly radiation. The people are the poorest in the universe, having to import carbon, oxygen and even dirt. They live in tunnels drilled into the layer of gold because it is the LEAST dangerous metal to their health, giving birth is a crime and they go around naked because they can't afford clothes. You would think being inserted into a smart tank that will feed you, take care of you and allow you to do almost anything you want in virtual reality would be a good thing when compared to being sent to the hydroponic vats.
And it was a good thing...till you and your tank had to face REAL combat.

Best book in my collection I just hope there will be a sequel coming out soon. the ending leaves you wonting more and then you find out that your not going to get it. Can't ask for a better cover.

A KASZUBIAN with Polish ancestry - parents - Ellis Island at a tender age in the very early 1900's; I am the youngest of 10 siblings, 5 girls/5 boys, expanded to continuing generations. I spent two spectacular weeks in Poland, including Warsaw and Cracow hosted by Poland friends met in Manhattan NYC - my first trip 1999 and the first sibling to do so. I am drawn to anything written by those who care enough about Poland and its heritage(s), struggles no matter the classification of media.

Frankowski's books got my attention due to the Kashubian & Poland connection. I read the author's sci-fi series but allow only two stars for the author's vivid imagination; his Polish name even though I am not sure of his ancestry and where his heart lies... and less stars due to the negatives for his presentation of the story(ies) with obvious outlandish chauvinism (resolved bachelor or not), his blatant and insulting unsuitable comedy of the Polish people, and his spite, bigotry, prejudice and discrimination throughout the whole series of his sci-fi pundits... his books do not "Stand Tall" in the science fiction category of reads. Readers look more for James Luceno; Kevin Anderson; Kathy Tyers; Vonda McIntyre; Matthew Woodring Stover; Kathryn Rusch, and so many more who deserve readers attention.

To readers interested in Poland's history - novels, etc. I strongly refer you to fiction and non-fiction translated classics by authors including Henry Sienkiewicz (classic "Quo Vadis"), plus his trilogy including "With Fire and Sword", trilogy made into theater movies in recent years, and don't miss Sienkiewicz's other novels; Nobel winner writer/poet Czeslaw Milosz (whom I had the humbling experience and honor to personally meet in Manhattan); author W.S. Kuniczak ("The Thousand Hour Day"); Norman Davies' "God's Playground - A History of Poland Volume I and II"; "The Way of My Cross" by Father Jerzy Popieluszko, the Polish priest who was brutally murdered for participation in the 1990's revolution led by Lech Walesa, and the shipyard workers; and I cannot fail to mention Nobel Laureate - Poetess Wislawa Szymborska. And don't stop there... and I cannot forget Massachusetts USA author - Polish Suzanne Strempek Shea and her novels such as "Lily of the Valley", and her own biography of her fight with cancer... there are many Polish authors and writings of people to admire for courage and talents, including patriots Kosciuszko (Foundation in Manhattan NYC), and Casimir Pulaski; classic composer Chopin; intellectualist Copernicus; and histories of the Jagellonian influences, with further reference to Poland's nobility.

The aforesaid are deeper in intellectual content vs. the sci-fi of Leo Frankowski. Outstanding are writers who call attention to beautiful country of Poland, its heartwarming people, rich culture, history and amazing architecture, but especially the strength through so many centuries of living through conquering factions. Frankowski is not one those writers; again, his imagination is lively but his "honor" to the people of Poland is more than ill.

This is the first book I have read from Leo Frankowski. The only reason I came across it is that due to some genealogical research I recently found out I am 25% Kashubian and so have become somewhat obsessed with finding anything pertaining to that particular region/ethnic group. My opinion of the book is if you are a high school male interested in military sci-fi, and can fantasize about making love to a tank (literally), you probably think it's great.

The part that bothered me the most is that the book's core plot actually had some potential, but was very poorly written. It should have taken place in an entirely different setting. Mr. Frankowski thinks it is important to perpetuate racial stereotypes and conflicts, even hundreds of years into the future. In fact, the whole book is based on the Wealthy Nations Group giving each minority its own planet. Well, after all those people are given their own planet, who the heck is left in the Wealthy Nations Group?? He never does explain. The Japanese, who are one of the wealthiest nations in the world is not part of the group, although they apparently live on Earth. The American Blacks are given a planet by the name of Soul City (puh-lease Mr. Frankowski, this is pitiful!), but he never explains what happens to the African Blacks, or any of the Hispanic or Native Indian cultures. However, we do know that the Chinese, Kashubians, Croats, and Serbs are all given their own planets.

But then the rules get even more confusing. He states that even if a person is one-sixteenth Kashubian that they have to go to New Kashubia, which results in both blacks and Chinese ending up on New Kashubia because someone in their background is Kashubian. So, why could they not go to the Black or Chinese planet?? They apparently have a higher percentage of those ethnic groups in their background. And if you are required to move with only one-sixteenth of a minority bloodline in you, well, as I said before, very few people would be left on Earth.

This is definitely a male fantasy book. The only thing I found to fantasize about, as a female, was the picture of Mickolai on the cover. If all male Kashubians looked that way, I'd speed up my planned trip to Kaszuby. Heck, I'd even spend the time to learn the Kashubian dialect! But, alas, the picture is probably only indicative of how Kashubians look in Frankowski's Dream World.

New Kashubia is a planet of almost pure wealth. When its star went nova, the lighter elements were blown away leaving a complete planet of molten metal--which then cooled in neat layers. New Kashubia is a miner's delight, an industrialist's best dream, and the worst possible nightmare for any colonists unlucky enough to be sent there. With no oxygen, no hydrogen, no organic chemicals, essentially nothing to support life, the Kashubian population is condemned to slowly starve--while living in their gold-lined caves. When they discover that the industrialists left a vast array of military equipment, the Kashubians see a ray of hope--they can become mercenaries, exchanging their equipment and soldiers for the organics they require. Of course, without enough volunteers, it is tempting to resort to stripping the prisons--hence tank operator Mickolai.

The warring clans of the former Yugoslavia form ideal targets for mercenaries. The Kashubians sell their services to all sides and prepare for a friendly time with plenty of shooting and no casualties. Unfortunately for their plans, the Serbians discover that the divisions they paid for are severely undermanned and take over the largely automated tanks themselves. As a result, the hoped-for cake walk turns into real battle.

Author Leo Frankowski follows the tradition of Robert Heinlein more than that of David Drake with a personal adventure and coming of age story--yet he certainly doesn't neglect the battles. Frankowski's descriptions of the future tanks is a reasonable extrapolation from modern trends, which makes his story more compelling and interesting.

I did think that Mickolai's relationship with Kasia went a little too easily and the romantic conflict between the tank, the boy, and the girl could have been more fully developed, but this is a small quibble. A BOY AND HIS TANK is fun light reading.

The book gets a "4 star" rating since most of the book was full of cyberdreams and filler junk just to past the time with Lila, Bruce, Tom, and Jessica. Personally, there was too much of this; these guys should have been part of Elizabeth's story. Yes, Tom and Jessica joined in in a few exerpts mainly because their stories sucked. ("My story sucks so I decided to join yours.")

The Tom and Elizabeth storyline was average, but not completely realistic. The only reason I gave the book the 4th star is because of William. He's the villian you love to hate: charming, humorous, and misleading. You never know what to expect from him...except "Deadly Terror." He's back, and all the you had to do was ask.

Elizabeth's cyberdreams were pretty good (the only storyline in which I was interested in following since the others were boring). Poor Elizabeth. Being haunted by not only with the horrible memories of what William White did to her (and her friends) but also having to live with the constant remainder that she "killed" him (of course she thinks up until the end that he's dead because of her). Following her story gave the reader an understanding of the terror Elizabeth feels from this man. Imagine: a man she once loved turned psychotic, stalked her for months with freaky love sonnets, white roses, and decapated and "blood" stained Barbie dolls, then tried to kill her twice (and her friends). That's something that someone can't quite get over. Is it any wonder why she was terrified when she saw him in her cyberdreams, approaching her with his trademark white rose?

All in all, a good read. Comes recommended, but hopefully, you won't be bored with everyone elses cyberdreams.

I thought this book was pretty good. It is very intriging. all of the cyber dreams were very interesting and the whole plot was excellent. I am looking forward to read Part 2. But this is not a horror story. i am quite scared of horror stories so i thought this would be scary but its not. so no matter what type of book fan you areyou can still read the book because of its interesting and informative presentaion.

This book is definetly good it's more interesting to read than the second one but I really enjoy this book more..

Elizabeth and Tom Watts (her boyfriend) seem to be having trouble in their relationship. Elizabeth ex-boyfriend William White who Elizabeth thought died in a Car Accident really didn't. William White and Elizabeth were really in love until one day Elizabeth finds out that he is a racist and was involve in an attack of her bestfriend Nina and her boyfriend Ryan. Elizabeth expose the news all over campus. But when William White returns is he looking for a second chance or revenge?? This book will leave you amaze!

Although I find Elizabeth a little over dramatic about William White dying and all, I think the suspense and the fantasy cyber dreams in the book are just great! :) IT WILL KEEP U READING!

In true soap opera style,an evil killer(William White..such a sicko..ew)returns from the so-called dead,to stalk Elizabeth again!!(With all the killers that have been after these twins,they really deserve counselling).But like ALL Sweet valley-uni books,especially the suspenses,it is totally gripping and page-turning.

I believed that this book was about robotics. Although not in-depth enough for this techie, this is one of the only general introductions to Software Bots or Agents that I have seen. If you want a fair introduction to the genesis of Bots this book will serve you, however you will not find pseudo code; math; or even modern coverage of bot technology. Overall the book leaves me ambivalent.

How to become a journalist? A cynic's answer could be: Collect some anecdotes about a theme, ask some questions to people who might know something about it, and wrap the information in an overdose of words. Leonard has taken the cynics' answers seriously. The theme chosen by Leonard is Bots, and the resulting piece of journalism is called "Bots, the origins of new species". It is easy to read (if the layout would allow it), not wholly uninformative, and with no technicalities or complex arguments at all. If you can stand the verbiage, you won't even get annoyed. In short, Leonard's work would fully deserve it's three stars for the average book, if only the title were correct.

The subtitle of the book clearly suggests that Leonard tries to deal with Bots in a way that resembles the way Darwin treated living species. This is either a lie, or a sign of irreversible stupidity. At the very best Leonard stands to Darwin as gossip stands to science. Besides an extremely elementary, and implicit, classification of Bots he does nothing that even remotely resembles the work of a zoologist, let alone Darwin. Leonards' work is anecdotal, not scientific.

The title shows a clear disregard for the buyer/reader. Hence, two stars.

a bit padded - if only there were no word 'journalism', and no such style - but an easily readable introduction to the phenomenon of bots in MUDs and Usenet & such, suitable (only) for the uninitiated. it would have to be more complex to be of serious intellectual interest, and much has happened since that is not in this 1997 book. still, there are many uninitiated out there, and it serves a purpose for those who think the computer age is defined by the replacement of the typewriter by the word processor, and calculation, calculation.

It's well-written and treats the subject with respect, even if at times it is a bit lacking in technical details. A good overview of "computer programs which can travel".

So, the latest round in the ongoing battle between retentive techies who prize books for their superior incomprehensibility and pared-down utilitarianism.

If you're the kind of reader who enjoys a good read and wants to learn about a technical subject in language which is not technical and doesn't assume prior knowledge, then you're going to enjoy Andrew Leonard's Bots a great deal. It's well-written, flows beautifully, and for this relatively inexpert reader, put a lot of technical details in perspective.

If you're looking for highly technical, jargon-choked how-to manual on bot programming, then this isn't the book for you. But you should know that already, unless your reading skills are hopelessly deficient. Which, come to think of it, is probably the case for many technogeeks.

A somewhat underwhelming and slow novel. A female agent is taking a break for her job, mostly for psychological reasons, after her husband has been killed in an operation goes wrong.

She goes to a town in England where a crazed gunman ran wild, and starts exploring virtual reality situations through sophisticated and probably illegal software that replicates violent situations and training.

Somewhat pointless end, too.

The novel started out with a very strong and intriguing beginning, but by the second half it was getting really tedious with the protagonist's repeated virtual experiences and a loss of direction to the story. I can't list all the disappointments that came out of the end of the novel -- they would be spoilers -- but whatever the author was trying to accomplish in the limp ending was certainly lost on me.

By the time I got two thirds of the way through, I had devised three or four potential endings in my mind and was looking forward to the author's take. WHAT A LETDOWN. I now feel embarrassed that I invested all this time just to witness a complete and total LACK of anything even resembling an ending. With about 20 pages to go, I realized something was fishy. I should have seen it coming. The first half of the book gives absolutely NO CLUE whatsoever what the point of the book is.

I was disappointed with the blatant anti-gun message. Now that I know the author is English, it makes sense, but hey, America is the crime capital of the world? And simply because of the "abundance" of guns? And that the main character was "poisoned" by her father because he was a gun fan?

I'm sure the other reviewers are right, I'm just too unsophisticated to "get it." However, for the American audience, this book completely tanked. I picked it up for one dollar at our local convenience store. Sure, it didn't cost much, but the time invested reading it could have been used a lot better.

This is a rather frustrating book -- generally well written, filled with interesting ideas, but sometimes inconsistent and sometimes simply unbelievable. Teresa Simmons and her husband are trained FBI field agents in what seems to be our present, except that both were trained with the help of an extremely sophisticated virtual reality system that put them into various roles in a wide range of historically-based "killer" scenarios. Through repeated insertions into each scenario, they had to learn to react appropriately and to survive the situation. (The process seems extremely wasteful of personnel, not to mention impossibly expensive.) Anyway, her husband is killed in the line of duty in a small Texas town and Teresa, trying to cope with her loss, discovers a similar mass killing took place at the same time on the same day in a small town in the south of England. So, naturally, she goes off to Sussex to look around. (Huh?) Then she begins patronizing the local virtual reality provider and discovers a whole new kind of "shareware" virtual experience. (If she's so well trained and informed, why had she never heard of this before?) The overlap between the incidents in Texas and England become more pronounced and Teresa's virtual experiences become more complicated, until everything comes to a head in a scenario within a scenario . . . sort of. The problem is, Priest assumes that a woman experiencing a man's role in virtual reality -- including sexual activity -- won't react any differently than she had as her own self. This seems extremely unlikely. And he has a very shaky grasp of what West Texas is like, even though he was previously married to Texan author Lisa Tuttle. And nothing is ever really resolved. It's like he was three-quarters of the way through writing and re-writing the book, and just stopped.

I picked this up by chance at a bookstore, never heard of the author prior. I was about 50 pages in when I recalled I had originally found it in the SF section. Where was the science fiction part of the story? This was starting out as just a good novel, cleanly written, with a great eye for insignificant detail that helps flesh out the tale. Having read SF throughout most of my reading career, I know most of it is plot driven with characters and settings just used to push along the nifty story. This book takes its time (luxuriates?) developing the main character, Teresa Simons, a real woman who adapts within character to the unfolding events. Its done so well I assumed the author was a woman. (He's not). She has grown up in England, the daughter of a career US military man,becomes an FBI agent, and one day loses her husband in a random spree massacre.

This is the kind of SF I need now and then, maybe the best kind; where the whole story isn't techy, there is just one added element/theme to a time that could otherwise be today, ExEx. (Extreme Experience, virtual reality on steroids.) The story takes a very pleasant ramble through Teresa's' life, and from time to time she does an ExEx scenario, first for FBI training and later through a commercial provider. The iterative process she goes through to improve her performance is the most interesting of the whole book. I want this in my life for home, work and social situations. It's like the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray, where he is trapped into relieving the same day over and over again, until he eventually he gets it right. How cool would that be??
The rich, lush detail of the novel echoes the supposed detail Teresa finds in the hyper-real VR scenarios. Eventually the plot becomes complicated as she enters an ExEx scenario during which she enters an ExEx scenario....and so on. It's like looking into two mirrors reflecting each other.

There were a couple of loose ends that didn't hit me until a few days after finishing. What happened to Nick and Amy, the folks who run the hotel? They just disappear from one page to the next after they sell their stories. Also, what is up with the execs from GunHo corp? They make a big splashy extrance and then they too exit stage right. I'm sure its all in here, I'm just too used to obvious plot points. Oh well, I'll pay more attention when I read it again.

So here's the question you'll have to solve: Does the whole story take place inside an ExEx, or does she only choose at the end to avoid "real" reality without her dead husband by staying permanently in a scenario?

Many books compell me to race through them to see what happens next. This made me keep coming back to enjoy spending a little more time with Teresa.

This book, like Bill's earlier one, deals mostly with detailing of models (geometry) only. It does not discuss materials in depth, or lighting, Global Illumination etc. So a large part of what makes scenes photrealistic is not touched upon. More importantly, his geometry detailing techniques will no doubt add a couple of zillion polygons. No discussion on that either- no scheme is presented to keep a count of polygons, or keep them within sensible limits.
Without proper lighting and materials, Bill does not really produce photorealistic results.
The description of imaginary worlds and creatures is unimaginative and tedious.
The underlying principles are noteworthy, but could be summarised in one page- which i think Bill *has* done: it's there somewhere on the net.

Granted the term "photorealism" is perhaps a bit overused -- but characterizes well what Bill's artistic objectives are. This one of the books which I felt was most important in my moving solidly into the intermediate level of learning, and I still refer back to it from time to time.

In my experience, there are actually very few books on the market which really concentrate on surfacing knowledge, srategies, and techniques. Bill obviously used LightWave at that time, but he tries hard to keep things general -- and for the most part succeeds. Although some very useful modeling approaches are presented, they are directed specifically at making primarily image-mapped surfacing easier or more effective. It is primarily a surfacing book.

This book is, along with "Toolkit", a very useful addition to any serious 3D student's library and is my favorite among Bill's which I have read. I hope Bill reads this and is motivated to really dig into LightWave 6.x's excellent surfacing implementation and write a book on that, and there is really no good book out there at present on procedural surfacing -- probably because there you have to get program-specific.

Per a previous writer's reference to Jeremy Birn's book -- yes, it is excellent -- a must have, but covers different ground than this book. Another example of a must have for relative beginners (though I wouldn't recommend it until you have reached some level of competency with a decent 3D program) that will if studied thoroughly and applied in practice take you well beyond beginner.

hello,

i found some of the techniques to be useful for small scenes, but not at all useful for big 'architectural renderings' where clutter and chaos do not mesh well with architectural presentations. the organic modeling techniques were generally good for beginners.

however, i found the writing to be terrible, bill fleming spent half the pages describing these 'imaginary' creatures that were extremely painful to read through. i thought the book would be much better if bill had focused on the techniques rather than wasting page after page on the imaginary narrative of these little creatures.

i was interested in bill's other book on photorealism, but after reading this book, i am not so sure. although bill fleming spent alot time and effort in creating this book, the illustrations were in my opinion was fantasy-realistic, the imaginationary creatures used for the illustration were so 'un-believable' that perhaps the title might be changed to 'fantasy creatures toolkit'

sorry about the harsh criticism, but in my opinion, a poorly written book.

What a waste of money. It's barely worth the paper it is written on.

I bought this book and was very dissapointed. The things Mr. Fleming calls photorealistic look like they all are made from the same type of plastic. I cannot call this photorealistic

I am not a 3D artists, but I like to keep up on technologies. I found this to be a very good book for casual readers. The author did a good job introducing terms and techniques used in 3D rendering. I would recommend it highly to people who are wanting to learn a little bit about the art. I enjoyed the fact that the book was not simply a tutorial for one particular graphics product.

If you are a casual reader who is interested in learning how they make 3D worlds...this would be a good book to read.

(BTW, the very first sentence of the book is wrong. Three 3D graphics field did not start in 1985...but in ancient times. Euclid wrote about optics, and others were interested in the field before him.)

I bought this book six years ago and was appalled to see a copy with a new cover in a bookshop around here containing the same materials I saw six years ago.

And yes all those crappy plasticky textures which are the hallmark of a Bill Fleming 3D image is still there. After almost a decade not a single pixel changed.

Pity the would-be digital artist who will be so naive as to fall into this trap of Fleming constantly reheating yesteryear's leftovers.

This is the Digital Age. Use your search engine. There are newer, younger, more talented and savvy artists appearing on print every month.

This guys books are bad. You always have to guess at what he's trying to tell you. Thumbs Down!!! Just look at that cover!

Once again Bill gives us a bunch of pages of his creepy versions of copyrighted characters.

A very large let down as it consisted of more rehashed material like Bill's previous books. Very little here that has not been already printed in various magazine articles, and more of Bill's trademarked
derivitives of others works.

Save your money.

Besher's ideas are interesting. Take Johnny Mnemonic or Snowcrash and add in a great deal of Buddhist spirituality and a bit of Chinese medicine.

However, the writing is absolutely, Bulwer-Lytton contest awful.

Some examples: "His hands caressed the globes of her derriere," "Their feet touched, and they smiled," "His finger traced the slippery third rail of her shaven..." well, you get the idea.

Besher has no ear for dialog, and the prose is what you would expect from a senior high school student in the first week of creative writing.

Mr. Besher, you have a lot of promise. Please, take a year to practice writing with a good teacher. Your stories will benefit greatly, and your readers will be able to experience your ideas more clearly and pleasantly.

For readers who would like similar stories, but with better writing, check out Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson or almost anything from William Gibson.

I found this book in a used bookstore in Seattle, now I'm looking for Besher's other novels. An incredible story, with an East-West future angle, so many different elements: it's metaphysical, funny, a thriller, with far-out ideas I've never seen anywhere else before. What a writer!

This is without a doubt one of the worst books I have ever read.

trust me ... don't waste your time.

This novel is a first one for Alexander Besher, one in which he explores a lot of new ideas, using cyber-punk (or cyber-noir or cyber-fantasy), as the delivery system. Now, I have books that have forced me to look at the universe in different ways. The Hitchhiker series and the Illuminatus! trilogy (which I think did some brain damage) are great examples.
This is not a great example. The plot-idea is that part of the VR world is in danger of crashing and taking a lot of people with it (including the main character's son). But the book seems to start off slowly, some parts don't seem to make sense or click into place till you're halfway thru and tons of the novel seems to be tencho-babble. In fact, some parts seem to be just plain made up on the spot. I know reviewers sometimes say that, but in this case I mean it. It has sci-fi stuff and, yes, Japanese businessmen and gangsters and VR and drugs and space stations - I'm sure William Gibson would be very proud. But I happen to NOT like Mr. Gibson's style (and his work at least had some logic to it).
Add Chi and zombies and a main character who can do anything (and get the girls) and it seems more like the wishful thinking of a 90's geek high on Jolt or no-doze.
What scares me is he wrote a series of this books!

Lines like, "he said with flawless, but slightly accented english" plague this book. The story is interesting, but there is almost no character development. The writing itself is below par.

I am quite surprised by the mean-spirited reviews of this book. Perhaps the individuals writing them consider themselves "gods" in cyberspace, which causes me to wonder, if they know so much, why did they buy the book in the first place?

Published in 1998, the book is certainly outdated by the phenomenal advances in interactive multi-media technology, but I never-the-less consider it a superb introduction to new possibilities.

For me, although I have some exposure to technology, this book was an eye-opener. Initially I wondered why people would spend so much time in cyberspace "avatar-acting" but then I had two "aha" experiences from the book that easily earn it five stars:

1) In a similar vein to the early work in "cyber-cafe's" where interactive audio-visual was put into gathering places for Hispanics and for Negros (and perhaps whites and Asians also, but these are the two I remember), avatars break down barriers to sincere interaction. Of course they open paths for deception as well, but the key point here is that if in cyberspace no one knows you are ugly, you can focus on substance.

2) The second "aha" experience occured when I turned this book upside down and asked myself, if we can create avatars that are imaginary, can we go the other way? Can we feed real-time real-world information into a "serious" game and go to the next level, where the public can literally "be" the President, "see" all intelligence about anything that is available to Google, and experiment with alternative behaviors, policies and investment options?

I spend a lot of time reading (#66 over-all, #1 for non-fiction about global issues) and this book was a real pleasure to read, and an extremely valuable catalyst to my thinking. Dated or not, I recommend it very highly.

The book provided little insight or information about these virtual worlds, and completely failed to enlighten the reader as to the technology which made these worlds interesting. It provided an basic overview of the worlds, a brief history, and how to manuever around in them, however this failed to give any substance to the writting.

As the author notes in the forward, this was his first attempt at writting, and it clearly shows as entire text was written at an elementary school level. This made the reading uninteresting as well as uninformative.

For those uninitiated with the Internet, virtual worlds, or any other form technology, this might serve as a good spring board. However, if the (to be) reader is looking for anything more than a general overview, I would recommend finding a different source from which to learn.

Really, a hopelessly outdated book even at the time it was published. Mr. Damer fails to consider the online gaming community and how it is the GAMING COMMUNITY which will enable the Internet to truly become a 3D universe. A quick look at Mr. Damer's web site (www.Damer.com) also reveals how Mr. Damer just doesn't "get it"...he is still attempting to push the concept of "avatars" through his "company." Maybe Bruce should load up a copy of Counterstrike or Unreal Tournament and see what the future of "avatars" and the Internet will really be in the near future.

Bruce Damer's book is the perfect starting point for anyone wishing to take those first steps into virtual worlds. Readers can scour the text, getting a sense of what these computer spaces look like and how they function. AVATARS will give you courage and certainly peak your interest. Once you are online, the book is an excellent guide to how to maneuver, communicate and build in the various worlds.

AVATARS is an excellent how-to introduction to virtual worlds. However, it is an even better now-what discussion of the impact of virtual communication. Damer introduces questions of the place of computer communication within more traditional channels. He reassures readers that life can be enhanced through online interaction; however, he also cautions that family and friends can't be hugged through the computer.

AVATARS is an enthusiastic, informative and balanced introduction to virtual words. An excellent place to jump in with at least one foot

With all due respect to Mr. Damer, this book is basically an introduction to what Avatars and Virtual Communities are. Mr. Damer provides a guided tour of several online communities. One or more of thewe worlds no longer exist. This is another example of web-time and how difficult it is to publish a book with a technology topic. I found the book very basic. Visit his web site to learn all you need to know and be introduced to the awesome online worlds. . . and save some money.

A very good book that provides a solid foundation in a clear and easily readable format. If you're after a quick "HCI fix" or are trying to satisfy a course requirement where usability is seen as a niche then look elsewhere. If you want a good understanding of HCI and have a desire to make things more usable then this is a worthwhile read.

I used this book when teaching senior undergraduates HCI. Admittedly, it is quite dense, which made some of the reading assignments a bit of a bear for the students. The thoroughness, however, is a large part of what I liked about it. I only used minimal supplemental materials, and I found that using this book, students got not only an in depth history and theoretical underpinning of this important field, but they also got some insight into emerging related fields, like ubiquitous and mobile computing. I was very pleased with the rigor applied to the lessons, something very necessary as we in the field demonstrate there is real "science" and "theory" behind what we do.

Let me begin by saying that years back I won an international award for something or other to do with contributions to ergonomics - the design of a computer system in fact. I looked at this book as a possible text for an undergraduate course I teach. This is a good book, despite the reviews, if you have the time the read it. It is thorough at the theoretical end and pretty damn thorough at that. If you want to know the history of HCI, recent and possible developments, this is a good book - but it is just too long for most undergrads and this is the main problem. Most undergrads believe that HCI is just pure waffle and in many cases that is unarguable - it takes the likes of Jef Raskin to restore some intellectual credibility to the area.

One the major strikes against this book, and it isn't alone, is the lack of connection with actual software packages in common usage and the alleged 'software engineering' skills they require. For too long HCI books have operated at a distance from actual 'multimedia' software or else have assumed that everyone has a bespoke lab of geniuses under their arms when a novel tool is required. This book, despite the calibre of the authors, does nothing to challenge the "grandstanding" that defines most HCI. Over tweny years ago, when I worked on expert systems, there was a creeping scepticism about their practical value - a solution in search of a problem. I would have liked this book to have done more to convince me that this epithet is not applicable to HCI. I hope the next edition expresses that reassurance.

I'm a CS student with 7 years of IT experience. This book is compulsory for my course so I have no choice but to read it. I would rate this book among worst IT books ever. Although, some ideas suppose to be useful, but the language and lack of illustrations make them dull and unclear. Moreover, it has unreasonable complicity to describe a simple idea or situation, definitely confusing readers. It's kind of funny that one of the main purpose of this book is to teach you to design a good and understandable interface, but in opposite, it has a quite bad interface itself.

I am currently studying CS at university and one of my classes in HCI. All I can say about this book is that even the tutor for the class hated this book - as did all the students - so much so that the next semesters' book is going to be something else.