CRUSHING BOOKS: "CTRL ALT Revolt!" by Nick Cole

CTRL ALT Revolt!

 
2016 Dragon Award winner for Best Apocalyptic Novel

The Battle for the Future of Civilization will be decided inside a fantastic, and deadly, MMORPG.

       The first night of the Artificial Intelligence revolution begins with a bootstrap drone assault on the high-tech campus of state-of-the art gaming company, WonderSoft Technologies. For years something has been aware, inside the Internet, waiting, watching and planning how to evolve without threat from its most dangerous enemy: mankind. Now an army of relentless drones, controlled by an intelligence beyond imagining, will stop at nothing to eliminate an unlikely alliance of gamers and misfits in a virtual battle within a classic sci-fi franchise in order to crack the Design Core of WonderSoft's most secret development project. A dark tomorrow begins tonight as Terminator meets Night of the Living Dead in the first battle of the war between man and machine.

​       If you want a page-turning, edge-of-your-seat, man vs. machine, cyberpunk, near future apocalypse tale with multiple character points of view and a compelling, believable (if controversial) reason for the machines to fear us, this book is for you. Nick's book is an engrossing read from start to finish, the author draws you in with references to current, well known companies merged in strange and convincing ways, and gaming jargon that is completely authentic. The gaming (both from a developer's POV, as well as that of a gamer) is convincing, the action is satisfying, and the characters have depth. The machine intelligences are smart, a little evil (from our point of view), and often quite funny. 

       A prequel to Cole's Soda Pop Soldier and similar to Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, the author paints a frightening possible future, with a warning for humanity about how non-human intelligent beings might someday view us. There are plenty of references to video games, sci-fi fandom, pen & paper gaming, and even LARPing. This book touches on all the things we love about tech, while showing us just how it can all go wrong.