When We Were Real
A Novel
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4.5 • 11 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From multiple award-winning author Daryl Gregory comes a madcap adventure following two friends on a cross-country bus tour through the mind-boggling glitches in their simulated world as they grapple with love, family, secrets, and the very nature of reality in a simulation.
JP and Dulin have been the best of friends for decades. When JP finds out his cancer has aggressively returned, Dulin decides it’s the perfect time for one last adventure: a week-long bus tour of North America’s Impossibles, the physics-defying glitches and geographic miracles that started cropping up seven years earlier—right after the Announcement that revealed our world to be merely a digital simulacrum. The outing, courtesy of Canterbury Trails Tours, promises the trip of a (not completely real) lifetime in a (not completely deluxe) coach.
Their fellow passengers are 21st-century pilgrims, each of them on the tour for their own reasons. There’s a nun hunting for an absent God, a pregnant influencer determined to make her child too famous to be deleted, a crew of horny octogenarians living each day like it’s their last, and a professor on the run from leather-clad sociopaths who take The Matrix as scripture. Each stop on this trip is stranger than the last—a Tunnel outside of time, a zero gravity Geyser, the compound of motivational-speaking avatar—with everyone barreling toward the tour’s iconic final stop Ghost City, where unbeknownst to our travelers the answer to who is running the simulation may await.
When We Were Real is “an addictive thriller packed with winning characters and big, brilliant ideas” (Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author of The Bright Sword and The Magicians trilogy) and an exploration of what really matters, even in an artificial world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gregory (Spoonbenders) riffs on The Canterbury Tales with this deeply philosophical road trip novel about a disparate group of pilgrims on a cross-country bus tour of surreal American landmarks. Seven years after the world was revealed to be merely a computer simulation, the North American Impossibilities Tour takes the curious to witness strange sites caused by glitches in the code, including a frozen tornado, a tunnel that runs outside of time, and a rectangular canyon where gravity reorients. Among the participants are JP, also referred to as "The Engineer," who's chosen to stop treatments for his brain tumor, and his buddy, Dulin, "The Comic Book Writer," who hopes the tour will reignite JP's will to live—and also provide him with an opportunity to hook up with "The Nurse," Beth-Anne. Meanwhile, "The Nuns" Janet and Patrice struggle to reconcile their belief in God with the knowledge that their world is only zeroes and ones. Gregory bats the existential issues back and forth, offering no easy answers, and, through other members of the eclectic cast, mixes in sharp commentary on internet influencers and armed conspiracy theorists. The result is a heady and entertaining treat.
