Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Second Life: The Official Guide

by Michael Rymaszewski

Second Life: The Official Guide is the perfect book for anyone interested in Linden Lab?s fascinating Second Life metaverse. This book explores in detail every aspect of Second Life?s rich and multilayered virtual world, explains how it works, and offers a wealth of information and practical advice for all Second Life residents.? The first part of the book, ?Getting a Second Life,? acquaints... (more)

Being Virtual: Who You Really Are Online

Being Virtual: Who You Really Are Online

by Davey Winder

Thanks to the Internet, it has never been so easy to become the person of your wildest dreams. Immersive 3D worlds such as Second Life and THERE.com provide an escape route from the ordinary, into a virtual world where you have the power to mould your life in any way you please. Forget about walking, wheelchair users can fly. Pensioners wipe away the pains of age, discovering youthful exuberance and making young... (more)

Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human

Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human

by Tom Boellstorff

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all... (more)

Hack Ai Buster 1

by Tatsuya Hamazaki

Log On to AI Buster, This Year's Most Exciting Novel! In the epic prequel to .hack, the avatar Albireo is a solo adventurer in The World, the most advanced online fantasy game ever created. When he comes across Lycoris, a strange little girl in a dungeon, Albireo wonders if she's simply nothing more than a bug in the system. As the two journey further into The World, Albireo watches Lycoris turn all of the rules... (more)

Hack ai Buster 2 (.Hack AI Buster)

by Tatsuya Hamazaki

"An instantly discernable and absorbing cyber-reality accessible to anyone with a sense of wonder."-Dave Halverson, Play Magazine Log on to the Continuing Adventures of .hack//AI buster! Your favorite .hack characters are gathered in this mind-blowing collection of stories that delves into the character's real-world personalities and their in-game avatars--and examines the far reaches of The World...and beyond!... (more)

Maul

by Tricia Sullivan

In a mall like any other, two gangs of teenaged girls are about to embark on an orgy of shopping and designer violence. In the battleground of cool, they'll fight for their lives to prove that "image is everything." And in another place, within a sealed room, a lone man fights an equally desperate war against a new virus and the scientists who have developed it. If anyone gets out alive, it will be a small... (more)

Networked Virtual Environments: Design and Implementation

Networked Virtual Environments: Design and Implementation

by Sandeep Singhal

Represents seminal work on networked virtual environments, offering a comprehensive examination of net-VEs. Covers the underlying technologies and provides a detailed roadmap for designing and building interactive 3D virtual environments. DLC: Interactive multimedia.

A Point of Honor

by Dorothy J. Heydt

Sir Mary de Courey is the doughtiest knight in the virtual reality land of Chivalry. But when, in the real world, her plane crashes and her car is driven off the road, she finds herself in more trouble than single combat can solve. Someone appears to want to retrieve the mysterious manor that she won from an anonymous knight, and is willing to kill her to get it back. Now she must travel through the world of... (more)

Second Lives: A Journey Through Virtual Worlds

Second Lives: A Journey Through Virtual Worlds

by Tim Guest

We’ve always dreamed of perfect places: Eden, heaven, Utopia. Imagine gambling without loss, love without heartbreak, sex without exposure, experience without risk. Welcome to the fascinating world of online virtual reality, the land of invented places and populations that is entered and inhabited every week by nearly fifty million people worldwide. Each participant creates a virtual body, works at virtual jobs,... (more)

The Serpents of Arakesh (Karazan Quartet)

The Serpents of Arakesh (Karazan Quartet)

by V.M. Jones

Twelve-year-old orphan Adam Equinox is an unlikely hero - a lonely, misunderstood underacheiver who gets into fights, and whose spelling has to be seen to be believed. One day Adam enters the Quest Golden Opportunity Competition, with the ultimate prize of working with the reclusive software genius Quentin Quested, test-driving his latest top-secret breakthrough in computer game technology. Adam is unbelievably... (more)

Technology & Spirituality: How the Information Revolution Affects Our Spiritual Lives (Skylight Illuminations)

Technology & Spirituality: How the Information Revolution Affects Our Spiritual Lives (Skylight Illuminations)

by Stephen K. Spyker

Every day, new technologies affect your life at home, at work and at play. But how often do you pause to consider how your computer, mp3 player, cell phone, or PDA influence your spiritual life--your beliefs, your faith, your fundamental understanding of God? With wit and verve, Stephen Spyker leads you on a lively journey through the many ways technology impacts how we think about faith and how we ... (more)

The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds (Ex Machina: Law, Technology, and Society)

The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds (Ex Machina: Law, Technology, and Society)

by Jack Balkin, Beth Noveck

The State of Play presents an essential first step in understanding how new digital worlds will change the future of our universe. Millions of people around the world inhabit virtual words: multiplayer online games where characters live, love, buy, trade, cheat, steal, and have every possible kind of adventure. Far more complicated and sophisticated than early video games, people now spend countless hours in... (more)

Akiba: A Gnostic Novel

by p.m.

In the 1980s, p.m.'s book bolo bolo became an indispensable guide to new autonomous projects, a manual for applied utopias on a human scale, stressing cultural diversity, freedom of movement, ecological sustainability, and a relaxed attitude towards work themes which remain essential in his new novel, Akiba . When a tiny detail on a coin disappears for a moment, Marco Vilini, a Swiss insurance-fraud... (more)

The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy

by Terry Pratchett

.hack: Legend of the Twilight (.hack//Legend of the Twilight)

.hack: Legend of the Twilight (.hack//Legend of the Twilight)

by Rei Idumi, Tatsuya Hamazaki

The bestselling multimedia manga in The World is here! Welcome to The World, the most advanced online game ever created. Fourteen-year-old twins Rena and Shugo are two middle-school students who enter The World as level-one game characters - and now they are ready to take on anything...or so they think. When Shugo's character dies, he is transported to another level where he is entrusted to bear the Twilight... (more)

Second Lives

by Tim Guest

Every day, millions of people abandon reality for virtual worlds — building houses, making and selling works of art, getting married. On ebay, people sell virtual clothes and rent virtual cars. Tim Guest takes us into the bizarre culture of virtual lives.

Torchwood

Another Life

by Peter Anghelides

High-profile new Doctor Who-inspired drama created by Russell T. Davies. The 21st century is when it all changes, and you've got to be ready. Separate from the government; outside the police, beyond the United Nations; Torchwood sets its own rules. A team of investigators, using alien technology to solve crime - both alien and human. This new British sci-fi crime thriller, created by Russell T. Davies, sees them... (more)

Bridge trilogy: Book 2

Idoru

by William Gibson

The New York Times bestselling author takes readers to 21st-century Tokyo after the millennial quake--where something violently new is about to erupt...

Ghost In The Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface (Ghost in the Shell)

Ghost In The Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface (Ghost in the Shell)

by Masamune Shirow

March 6, 2035. Motoko Aramaki is a hyper-advanced cyborg, a counter-terrorist net security expert heading the investigative department of the giant multi-national, Poseidon Industrial. Partly transcending the physical world and existing in a virtual world of networks, Motoko is a fusion of multiple entities and identities, deploying remotely controlled prosthetic humanoid surrogates around the globe to solve... (more)

DIASPORA

by Greg Egan

The boldest and most wildly speculative writer of our time, Greg Egan has envisioned a quantum Brave New World -- a masterful saga of a time when not only human life, but fleshly reality itself, will be nothing but a memory... It is the thirtieth century.The "world" has evolved into a vast network of probes, satellites, and servers knitting the solar system into one scape from the outer planets to the sun. ... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: virtual worlds

by Michael Rymaszewski

by Davey Winder

by Tom Boellstorff

by Tatsuya Hamazaki

by Tatsuya Hamazaki

by Tricia Sullivan

by Sandeep Singhal

by Dorothy J. Heydt

by Tim Guest

by V.M. Jones

by Stephen K. Spyker

by Jack Balkin, Beth Noveck

by p.m.

by Terry Pratchett

by Rei Idumi, Tatsuya Hamazaki

by Tim Guest

by Peter Anghelides

by William Gibson

by Masamune Shirow

by Greg Egan