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Title: Virtual Life : by David J Hitchcock ISBN: 0-595-65799-0 Publisher: iUniverse, Inc. Pub. Date: 25 August, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.95

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: This book will grab and hold you!
Comment: If you are a science fiction buff or even if you generally avoid science fiction, this book will grab you and hold you. The reason is that it blends the latest virtual reality research with issues and problems we face daily.

The main plot is simple. A military truck is transporting the latest development in military training tools. The equipment allows the user to see, hear, and truly believe they are experiencing actual battlefield conditions; eliminating many hours of field training and the physical hazards involved. A violent traffic accident occurs and by chance a well cushioned helmet rolls down an embankment into a river. Our hero, sixteen-year-old John Clayton, later finds it and takes it home to his basement lab. He activates it, and by experiencing the programming built in, he, in one year, grows from boyhood to manhood, both physically and mentally.

The author holds degrees in physics and engineering and knows his subject well. This is not one of those Hollywood enhanced books featuring alien monsters. However, there is a real chill factor when you realize that virtual reality research, while a boom in many aspects, raises some of the same fundamental questions Karel Capek raised in his 1920 play R.U.R. (which popularized the word robot).

Read this book and you may someday be able to say you read the first Hitchcock book, which led to his joining Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein as a star in the science fiction galaxy.

Rating: 5
Summary: The start of a great author!
Comment: You know it's a good book when you read late into the night because you don't want to stop... David draws you in from the opening paragraph and keeps you going to the very end. With a style reminiscent of the character building of a Tom Clancy novel, David builds a believable tale of people and technology that is far more enjoyable than some comparable books by "established" science fiction authors that I have read recently.

This book will appeal to a wide range of readers with a balance of an insightful look at a small town teenager's trials and subsequent life-choices and the possibiltiies of near-term technology - sprinkled with choice bits of philosophy as a very appropriate spice..

I can't wait for his next novel!