Virtual Destruction: Signed

The worlds of virtual technology and reality become dangerously intertwined when a top scientist in the field of virtual reality is murdered at a top-secret California installation, despite its extremely tight security. Original.

Anderson and Beason have teamed up once again, but this time the results are less inspiring than their Nebula nominee, Assemblers of Infinity. Perhaps the biggest problem with this near-future thriller is that it doesn't stick to its authors' strengths. The portrayal of the potential future uses of virtual technology are convincing and intriguing, but this technology is incidental to the plot. In addition, all the characters seem like recent graduates from junior high school. If this book is accurate, America's military-industrial complex is and staffed and run by people who wear Spider-Man T-shirts, cheat on their mistresses and stuff plutonium buttons down each other's pants. Given these problems, it's hard to take this too seriously as mystery or as science fiction.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Anderson and Beason's fourth collaboration blends hard sf and detective fiction to preview the dazzling next step in virtual reality. Livermore National Laboratory is the site of the sensation--a chamber reproducing, complete with touch, sound, and smell, any recorded experience from F16 dogfights to rock climbing. Seizing a chance for major funding and exposure, project overseer Hal Michaelson offers the new technology to the government as a means of nuclear weapons surveillance. Yet before a key public demonstration, Michaelson is found dead in the chamber from exposure to a deadly acid, leaving FBI agent Craig Kreident to ferret out clues and suspects, including a project coordinator who may be passing design secrets to the computer gaming industry. Although the VR gimmickry is fascinating and plausibly rendered, it is pushed aside for a relatively routine detective story that, though a disappointment compared to Anderson and Beason's Nebula nominee, Assemblers of Infinity (1993), will be demanded by fans of that and their other books. Carl Hays