Press Start to Play

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By Daniel H. Wilson & John Joseph Adams

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Publisher Description

IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS.

You are standing in a room filled with books, faced with a difficult decision. Suddenly, one with a distinctive cover catches your eye. It is a groundbreaking anthology of short stories from award-winning writers and game-industry titans who have embarked on a quest to explore what happens when video games and science fiction collide.

From text-based adventures to first-person shooters, dungeon crawlers to horror games, these twenty-six stories play with our notion of what video games can be—and what they can become—in smart and singular ways. With a foreword from Ernest Cline, bestselling author of Ready Player One, Press Start to Play includes work from: Daniel H. Wilson, Charles Yu, Hiroshi Sakurazaka, S.R. Mastrantone, Charlie Jane Anders, Holly Black, Seanan McGuire, Django Wexler, Nicole Feldringer, Chris Avellone, David Barr Kirtley,T.C. Boyle, Marc Laidlaw, Robin Wasserman, Micky Neilson, Cory Doctorow, Jessica Barber, Chris Kluwe, Marguerite K. Bennett, Rhianna Pratchett, Austin Grossman, Yoon Ha Lee, Ken Liu, Catherynne M. Valente, Andy Weir, and Hugh Howey.

Your inventory includes keys, a cell phone, and a wallet. What would you like to do?

57 Reviews

3.5

Jimmie Woodward

Created 23 days ago

Jamie

Created 3 months ago

yuzureads

Created 4 months ago

“PRESS START TO PLAY is a short story anthology from a range of different authors, tied together through the theme of video games. The majority of these stories would fall under sci-fi/fantasy or speculative fiction, exploring the impact of video games on the characters’ lives and relationships, and sometimes even imagining the point of view of the game characters themselves. There were a lot of big sci-fi names here, like Ernest Cline, Andy Weir, Seanan McGuire, and even Ken Liu (!!) As with many story anthologies, the stories can be a hit or miss, but PRESS START TO PLAY definitely contained more hits than misses for me, and I’m hard-pressed to pick even three top favourites. Despite my game addiction phase which I’ve recently managed to claw my way out of, I honestly haven’t played a whole range of games myself, and definitely not most of the types of games that these stories draw on, but that didn’t make it any less enjoyable. I loved reading how these stories used games and gaming as narrative devices, parallels to the “real world” of the story, or as some sort of otherworldly disruption of the mundane. Some of my favourites in this collection are “NPC” by Charles Yu, “Rat Catcher’s Yellows” by Charlie Jane Anders, “Creation Screen” by Rhianna Pratchett, and “The Clockwork Soldier” by Ken Liu.”

AechXX

Created 9 months ago

“Some of the stories weren't super thrilling, but I highly enjoyed a lot of them. I think "Twarrior" by Andy Weir was my favorite. It's probably the shortest, but I was cackling.”

wordg1rl

Created 10 months ago

About Daniel H. Wilson

Daniel H. Wilson

Daniel H. Wilson is a New York Times bestselling author and coeditor of the Press Start to Play anthology. He earned a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he also received master’s degrees in robotics and in machine learning. He has published more than a dozen scientific papers, holds four patents, and has written eight books. Wilson has written for Popular Science, Wired, and Discover, as well as online venues such as MSNBC.com, Gizmodo, Lightspeed, and Tor.com. In 2008, Wilson hosted The Works, a television series on the History Channel that uncovered the science behind everyday stuff. His books include How to Survive a Robot Uprising, A Boy and His Bot, Amped, and Robopocalypse (the film adaptation of which is slated to be directed by Steven Spielberg). He lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Find him on Twitter @danielwilsonPDX.

John Joseph Adams

John Joseph Adams is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the editor of many other bestselling anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent and forthcoming projects include: Loosed Upon the World, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Operation Arcana, Wastelands 2, and The Apocalypse Triptych, which consists of The End Is Nigh, The End Is Now, and The End Has Come. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, Adams is a winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been nominated eight times) and is a six-time World Fantasy Award finalist. Adams is also the editor and publisher of the digital magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare and is a producer for Wired.com’s “The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy” podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.