Book details of 'Terminal Games: A Cyber-Thriller'

Title	Terminal Games: A Cyber-Thriller
Author(s)	Cole Perriman, Coleman William
ISBN	0553572431
Language	English
Published	August 1995
Publisher	Bantam Books

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The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'Terminal Games: A Cyber-Thriller':

Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
First off, Cole Perriman is said to be the pseudonym of another writer. I rather suspect that it is the pseudonym of at least two other writers, since that is the easiest explanation of the rather dichotomous writing involved here. In some places there is a very nice feel for technology, some other passages demonstrate the usual flights of, well, fantasy. The terminal games of the title revolve around an online service called Insomnimania. The description of the technology fits an expansion of MUD (multi-user domain) gaming: basically conversation between online users. The addition of cartoon "virtual reality" is well within acceptable limits, and the "bots" (automated response programs) are credible as well. The online conversations are reasonably characteristic of what goes on in MUDs and IRC (Internet Relay Chat), although all the users seem to be B1FF clones. Everything is upper case, most of the conversation is trivial, and it is hard to accept construction like "REEEEEEEL WURLD" as the kind of timesaving abbreviation convention that professional businesspeople would use. I'm pleased to see that at least one writer realizes that computer crackers and phone phreaks do not come in the same package. The business model for Insomnimania doesn't quite work. There is no mention of networks: everybody is direct dial, even those (many) from across the country. The two asocial nerds who run the place are unlikely to be the types to provide a level of service necessary to keep such a tony (and well heeled) clientele online. There also doesn't appear to be any reason for the business hours shutdown of the service: this harks back to the early days of CompuServe and the Source (remember them?) when hobbyist systems ran on the unused time of business systems. The psychology of the plot is a bit better. Real time chat, in whatever guise, is extremely popular as a recreation. The denizens of Insomnimania seem to be remarkably polite; there doesn't appear to be any flaming, spamming, or loud activity by determinedly obnoxious newbies; but I've seen similar levels of interaction on many different systems and technologies. The plot makes much of an affect "pulling" users increasingly "into" the virtual world. I'm not quite as comfortable with that. The book speaks of users "hearing" conversations typed online: I have, myself, auditory memories of dialogues that were only typed, but I suspect that the phenomenon has more to do with memory encoding than personality disorder. The big surprise twist ending is a) not to hard to figure in advance and b) a little too far out. There is also a laughable description of a virus "zoo" in the book. Whether the writer(s) know it or not, zoo is actually the term used to describe a collection of sample computer viruses. A real zoo, though, is simply a pile of disks, or a directory full of files. There is absolutely no need whatsoever to keep viruses "alive" on running computers. In fact, a collection of obsolete computers *couldn't* keep viruses alive, since very few of those old machines had any viruses written for them. (Oh, and one more thing. If you do keep a virus zoo, it isn't necessary to keep feeding the little beasts accounting programs to keep them alive. They don't "consume" code.) copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997
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