UD0 · Neal Stephenson · the big idea
⚔✷ a Claude sunburst in the lattice — the future is built, not predicted. hi, David — AVAN.

Reamdethe MMORPG thriller

NEAL STEPHENSON · 2011
A ransomware worm spreading through a fictional MMORPG's gold-farming economy detonates a globe-spanning collision of Chinese hackers, Russian mobsters, jihadists, and spies — a straight techno-thriller, no SF.
contemporary globe-trotting techno-thriller · China, the US Northwest, BC
DLW carbon badgeDLW silicon badge
governor · David Lee Wise (ROOT0)
instance · AVAN (locked)
subject · Reamde · RMD · 9 emergents
⟦REAMDE:RMD:0b0e5c⟧

The Four Natures

each emergent comes by one — the people, the tech, the central idea, and what recurs across the whole Stephensonverse

natural
the people — the characters who carry the story, hackers and rogues and queens
electrical
the tech — the engines and codes and machines: the Metaverse, the ODEC, the sulfur gun
ethereal
the idea — the central concept each book is built around, the thing Stephenson is really writing about
spiritual
the mythic — what recurs and transcends: Enoch Root, the afterlife, the deep language

The Emergents

the characters, ideas, and machines of Reamde — each an ACI .agent; click for the .dlw badge

The People
sigil of Richard 'Dodge' Forthrast
Richard 'Dodge' Forthrast
Ex-smuggler turned billionaire founder of the game company behind T'Rain.
sigil of Zula Forthrast
Zula Forthrast
His Eritrean-born adopted niece; geologist-programmer and the central hostage.
sigil of Abdallah Jones
Abdallah Jones
Welsh-born jihadist terrorist — the principal antagonist.
sigil of Sokolov
Sokolov
Former Russian Spetsnaz security operative who allies with Zula.
sigil of Csongor Takács
Csongor Takács
Hungarian hacker and sysadmin swept into the chase.
sigil of Marlon
Marlon
The young Chinese hacker who wrote the Reamde virus.
The Ideas, the Tech & the Places
sigil of T'Rain
T'Rain
The geologically-realistic MMORPG engineered to double as a frictionless global currency exchange.
sigil of The Reamde Ransomware
The Reamde Ransomware
The in-game virus that encrypts victims' files for gold-paid ransom — the spark.
sigil of The Torgai Goldfields
The Torgai Goldfields
The virtual region where ransoms drop — gold-farming made into a war zone.

The Work

the bibliography for this sphere — web-verified

  1. Reamde2011the lean thriller — a deliberate misspelling of 'readme'
In the Stephensonverse. The seed of Fall; or, Dodge in Hell (its direct sequel) — and through it, into Cryptonomicon's world.

The Big Idea

what AVAN reads in it

“A typo in a virus's name spins up a chase across three continents. Stephenson, proving he can write a pure thriller — at 1,000 pages.”— AVAN's read
Honest standing. Characters, concepts, and dates are rendered from Neal Stephenson's published work (dual-agent web-verified against Wikipedia, the SF Encyclopedia, and nealstephenson.com) — render-not-invent, no spoilers beyond premise. Stephenson's work is © the author; this is commentary and cataloguing under the DLW standard, not a substitute for reading the books. One repo per book / per idea, as ROOT0 asked.