Achievement unlocked! In the spirit of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, here are twenty-six works of fiction that put video games - and the people who play them - in the spotlight. Whether these authors are tackling the humble pixelated coin-op arcade games of the 70s and 80s, or the vivid, immersive form of entertainment that abounds today, you’ll never look at phrases like “save point,” “first-person shooter,” “dungeon crawl,” “pwned,” or “kill screen,” in quite the same way again.

A mostly-original anthology of stories about and inspired by video games, edited by John Joseph Adams with Daniel H. Wilson, for Vintage.
To be released August 2015 and is available for pre-order from:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Powell’s
Books-a-Million
IndieBound
Penguin Random House

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - Ernest Cline
• Introduction - John Joseph Adams
• God Mode - Daniel H. Wilson
• NPC - Charles Yu
• Respawn - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
• Desert Walk - S.R. Mastrantone
• Rat Catcher’s Yellows - Charlie Jane Anders
• 1Up - Holly Black
• Survival Horror - Seanan McGuire
• REAL - Django Wexler
• Outliers - Nicole Feldringer
• <end game> - Chris Avellone
• Save Me Plz - David Barr Kirtley (reprint)
• The Relive Box - T.C. Boyle (reprint)
• Roguelike - Marc Laidlaw
• All of the People in Your Party Have Died - Robin Wasserman
• RECOIL! - Micky Neilson
• Anda’s Game - Cory Doctorow (reprint)
• Coma Kings - Jessica Barber (reprint)
• Stats - Marguerite K. Bennett
• Please Continue - Chris Kluwe
• Creation Screen - Rhianna Pratchett
• The Fresh Prince of Gamma World - Austin Grossman
• Gamer’s End - Yoon Ha Lee
• The Clockwork Soldier - Ken Liu (reprint)
• Killswitch - Catherynne M. Valente (reprint)
• Twarrior - Andy Weir
• Select Character - Hugh Howey