By Karen McCarraher
DevilsGame by Michael Wolk is an immersive cyber novel that portrays the consequences of how defective software would be able to knock out airlines, hospitals, 911 call centers, banks and credit cards worldwide.
The game was marketed worldwide and became amazingly popular. The SciFi players “liberate” popular landmarks. The Entity battles the Other—shadowy animated aliens. At first, the Entity is one of the “good guys” but later the Entity hacks the Devils Game mining group and drains data and cash. Game credits encourage children to explore pornography, gambling and so-called dating sites where prostitution flourishes. A new group, APpOCALYPSE, appears and advocates socially engineered suicides. Six players at the Mall of America blow themselves up. More deaths occur across the nation. The news agencies are reporting new deaths constantly and the world is in an uproar. The Other gain super human powers through a rip in the galactic fabric. They begin creating a new continent from Atlantic Ocean garbage,
Nathan Rifkin who marketed DevilsGame for his company realizes that there is malware implanted in DevilsGame. He searches for the creator of the game to try to get this removed. In the meantime, Clair Bowdine, a Doctor of Divinity reports on the radio and television urging people not to play the game and to pray.
Sounds fantastic? But could it really happen? The novel was lengthy, and a lot of the information was reported through conversations between Nathan and Clair. News clips were added which made the information repetitive. I would have liked to see more prose and less of the ongoing conversation. However, the action was fast, fabulous, and totally believable.
Michael Wolk is a Broadway producer, playwright, and novelist. He is a member of the Drama Guild and lives in Times Square in New York.
DevilsGame is available online.