Migliori Libri Neil Stephenson |Romanzi Neil Stephenson da leggere

Nel 1972, Richard Forthrast, fuggito nella Columbia Britannica per evitare rogne giudiziarie, lavora come guida da caccia specializzata, poi accumula una fortuna contrabbandando marijuana attraverso il confine tra Canada e Idaho. Passano gli anni, Richard torna negli Stati Uniti dopo l’amnistia concessa dal governo e investe la sua ricchezza in un vero e proprio impero. Crea anche T’Rain, un gioco di ruolo online di ambientazione fantasy con milioni di fan in tutto il mondo. Ma T’Rain è diverso dagli altri giochi del genere, perché l’oro virtuale che qui si scava e si conquista può essere trasformato in soldi nel mondo reale. Un gruppo di fanatici dell’informatica cerca di colpirlo creando Reamde, un virus che codifica tutti gli archivi elettronici e li conserva fino al pagamento di un riscatto. Si tratterebbe solo dell’ennesima truffa virtuale, se il virus non colpisse però le persone sbagliate: il ragazzo di Zula Forthrast, nipote di Richard, ha un passato da hacker, e ha appena concluso una transazione illegale vendendo dei numeri di carte di credito alla mafia russa. Quei dati sono stati resi inaccessibili da Reamde, perciò Zula e Peter vengono rapiti dai russi e portati nell’Estremo Oriente per aiutarli a rintracciare e colpire il fantomatico creatore di Reamde. Per la prima volta, il mondo virtuale rischia di scatenare una guerra senza esclusione di colpi: in palio c’è il destino del mondo reale.

A new look for cult author Stephenson’s unstoppable sci-fi classic The future is small. The future is nano . . . And who could be smaller or more insignificant than poor Little Nell – an orphan girl alone and adrift in a world of Confucian Law, Neo-Victorian values and warring nano-technology? Well, not quite alone. Because Nell has a friend, of sorts. A guide, a teacher, an armed and unarmed combat instructor, a book and a computer: the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer is all these and much much more. It is illicit, magical, dangerous. And it isn’t Nell’s. It was stolen. And now some very powerful people want to get their hands on this highly desirable object. Nell is about to discover that the world can feel very small indeed . . . Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic ‘The Baroque Cycle’ (Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World) as well as the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age (winner of a Hugo Award), Snow Crash, Zodiac, Anathem and Reamde. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Across the globe, millions of computer screens flicker with the artfully coded world of T’Rain – an addictive internet role-playing game of fantasy and adventure. But backstreet hackers in China have just unleashed a contagious virus called Reamde, and as it rampages through the gaming world spreading from player to player – holding hard drives hostage in the process – the computer of one powerful and dangerous man is infected, causing the carefully mediated violence of the on-line world to spill over into reality. A fast-talking, internet-addicted mafia accountant is brutally silenced by his Russian employers, and Zula – a talented young T’Rain computer programmer – is abducted and bundled on to a private jet. As she is flown across the skies in the company of the terrified boyfriend she broke up with hours before, and a brilliant Hungarian hacker who may be her only hope, she finds herself sucked into a whirl of Chinese Secret Service agents and gun-toting American Survivalists; the Russian criminal underground and an al-Qaeda cell led by a charismatic Welshman; each a strand of a connected world that devastatingly converges in T’Rain. An inimitable and compelling thriller that careers from British Columbia to South-West China via Russia and the fantasy world of T’Rain, Reamde is an irresistible epic from the unique imagination of one of today’s most individual writers.