Reconfigure is a new cyberpunk sci-fi novel from Ian "Epredator" Hughes, and it's the story of some lines of code gone horribly wrong (or maybe horribly right):
Roisin Kincade is a young, talented, full stack techie. Her mind is full of thoughts, ideas, film quotes and analogies... We have all done it, typed the wrong thing into the wrong window, deleted the wrong file, messaged the wrong person. This time she typed a Linux command in the wrong place. She missed the terminal window and managed to Tweet the World instead... A world of Fractal Iterations, Quantum Computing and strange side effects opened up. It appeared to offer a programming interface to everything around her.
Ian, as longtime readers know, is a metaverse pioneer from way back in the day, an IT Specialist an IBM who helped drive Big Blue's adoption of Second Life. Ian -- whose SL avatar, as you may have guessed, looks like the Predator, tells me Second Life and virtual worlds were a big inspiration for his novel:
"The inspiration is that feeling of building and moving virtual objects around, locking objects together, combining objects and cam’ing around to get a better view," Ian tells me. "We have all said at some point we would love to be able to do that in real life. So that comes from a long term one of wondering what we could do, if we could control the World as we do Second Life.
"I was also exploring some animation techniques, using Inverse Kinematics in Unity3d for a virtual environment. Rather than pre-canned animations they ebb and flow with the environment and things around them influence them. You can puppet them by moving objects and the body flows with the other object. It is the same feeling, the other way around, when SL controls you with a pose ball or someone puppets you for an interview. I did a few of those where my avatar was in someone else’s hands whilst I talked and shared ideas with a group. Once again, what happens if that occurs in real life?"
Reconfigure's heroine is also inspired by Second Life: "The perspective of Roisin as a programmer and techie dealing with hard tech problems but with a gamers mind is a kindred free spirit and innovator like many fellow SL residents. The follow up now has a full SL like interaction key to the plot. A private virtual world, complete with VR rig to access it. Though that is out shone by the fictional EyeBlend device that Roisin gets to use instead of just a Mac or smartphone for even more virtual/real interactions."
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