Extrait :
It’s not every science fiction writer who gets to see his predictions come true the very week his book is released. But that’s the strange case with me, the Egyptian people-power revolution, and my new book Deep State.
Deep State is a sequel to This Is Not a Game, which was a near-future thriller based on alternate reality games. ARGs, for those who haven’t encountered them, are an Internet art form, utilizing every medium the online world has developed for delivering content: video, text, audio files, graphics, comix, improvisational theater, puzzles, and story are all used to create an immersive experience.
Unlike a normal online game, which ends when you log out, an ARG will pursue you into real life. You’ll start to get phone calls from fictional characters, or emails, or faxes. You’ll be encouraged to network with perfect strangers in order to solve incredibly intricate puzzles and challenges. You may even be asked to go out into the real world and accomplish missions.
The way that the fictional elements of the ARG creep into reality inspired me to write This Is Not a Game, which is a near-future thriller in which real-life conspiracies glide into an online game, and techniques devised for solving puzzles in online games are used to solve real-life mysteries.
In TINAG, my protagonist Dagmar employed game techniques to real life more or less accidentally. For the sequel, I decided she would employ these techniques very deliberately, with an intention to produce a real-world result.
Consider what players of ARGs learn to do in the course of the game. They use and break ciphers; they find messages hidden in computer code or sandwiched between Photoshop layers; they solve intricate puzzles. They do detailed research, find hidden motivations and meanings, learn to sort truth from fancy. They form ad hoc groups to solve problems online and in the field.
