Secret Realms [Mass Market Paperback]

Tom Cool (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 1999

In the first half of the next century, a band of warriors is raised from infancy in ignorance of the real world, raised in a virtual-reality environment of endless battle where they grow into superb soldiers. But as war breaks out in the real world between Japan and China, the puppet masters who control their lives tighten the leash. Their virtual scenarios become maps of reality, and their strategies are acted out by real battle units. But Cat, Trickster, Dreamer, Snake, and the others don't know it. All they have ever known is the endless settings of the virtual world.

And then they discover the real world, their real bodies held prisoner in a secret military facility on an island in the pacific. They decide to reclaim themselves and enter the real war.

And the first thing they discover is pain.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Virtual-reality war-games yarn--something like The Lawnmower Man meets Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game--with some intriguing wrinkles of its own, from the author of the paperback Infectress. When child warriors Trickster, Cat, Snake, Dreamer and their colleagues enter Battle Space, they fight increasingly complex wars against a variety of ever more powerful foes; otherwise, they interact only with one another and with System, and wonder whether they're really only software. Trickster, though, begins to grasp that they're inside a VR system and have real bodies somewhere, and dreams of being able to destroy System. What they don't yet know is that they're a part of Standing Whirlwind, a project set up by China in order to train them as VR soldiers for the imminent showdown with the world's other superpower, Japan. As the war begins, a US warship wanders into the battle zone, while a huge typhoon obscures the progress of the fighting; helped by Iva, a project psychologist and actually Trickster's mother, Trickster and the others gain control of System. Trickster sends VR copies, or doppelgngers, of himself to subvert the Japanese computer network; meanwhile, he locates and reoccupies his physical body. Soon, he and the others break out and defeat their Chinese masters, but still must deal with Japanese commandos and US marines. Finally, Trickster gambles on being able to stop the war before it escalates into a nuclear holocaust. An impressively developed scenario in a yarn that emphasizes both the reality of violence and its emotional consequences: affecting and effective. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Secret Realms is indeed a crackerjack....A very satisfying adventure."--Analog

"Commander Cool brings a ring of obvious authenticity to scene that others can only describe from the outside. He's been there!"--David Drake

"As plausible a rendering of the 'virtual reality' cyberspace paradigm as I've ever seen, made all the more striking by its cast of strong, sympathetic characters, who led me through the story in one sitting."--William Barton

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction; Reprint edition (April 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812545265
• ISBN-13: 978-0812545265
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,678,346 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

See www.tomcool.us

Tom Cool is a true name.

I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1954, when the Earth had only one satellite. I grew up in Rennerdale, a small, peaceful town nestled in an Appalachian valley. It was an anarchic paradise, with no crime, police, traffic lights or any apparent government, although there was a volunteer fire department down by the pond.

That, and a huge Nike missile site that loomed on the western ridge. Its giant radar rotated above the town for most of my childhood. The Nike site's mission was to shoot down Soviet bombers before they could nuke Pittsburgh.

The book that hooked me on science fiction was THE AMSIRS AND THE IRON THORN, by Algis Budrys, 1967, which concerns a small human settlement dominated by a huge alien artefact.

At the age of fifteen, I wrote my first science fiction novel, SENTINELS, which has since been lost in fire.

In 1976, I graduated from Penn State's creative writing program with honors, in the honors program of English. Thus prepared for life, for the next few years, I worked as a hodcarrier in northern Ohio and backpacked throughout north and central America, eventually ending up in the Guatemalan jungle with no money and no official papers. How I got home from there is another story.

In 1979, for a variety of reasons, I joined the United States Navy. During my naval career, I served at stations in Denver, Norfolk, Panama City, Monterey, Pearl Harbor, Alameda, Washington D.C. and Miami. I made four deployments in aircraft carrier battle groups to the Mediterranean, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Gulf.

The Navy treated me well, sending me to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where in 1987, I earned a Master of Science in Computer Science. Later I worked as an agent of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Intelligence, developing software in support of military intelligence analysis. My final tour of duty was as the Deputy Director of Intelligence for Plans and Programs, United States Southern Command. I retired a commander in 1999.
Tom Cool and the Lone Sailor statue, Navy Memorial, Washington D.C.
Two sailors, circa 1998

After taking a year off, I began working as a computer engineer for The MITRE Corporation, a not-for-profit company.

My published works to date are three science fiction novels, SOLDIER OF LIGHT (with John de Lancie), SECRET REALMS and INFECTRESS. My stories are "Universal Emulators" (Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1997) and "Frozen," which was included in the anthology TREACHERY and TREASON in early 2000.

My beloved wife is Eva. We have two wonderful children, Natasha Katinka Cool and Tai Tai "Fiery Rage" Cool.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite successful, March 6, 2006

By 

Desirina Boskovich "cpunk junkie" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secret Realms (Hardcover)

'Secret Realms' has the makings of a pretty good story. There is love, and pain, and a burgeoning sense of humanity and self-knowledge. There is a cast of archetypal characters. Actually, not only are they archetypal, their names pretty much point them out, so you don't even have to figure out who is who. Dreamer is dreamy, Snake is sneaky, and Trickster's got plenty a trick up his sleeve.

The premise of the book is that there is a bunch of characters living in this virtual reality environment, where they go through increasingly complicated battle problems. They aren't aware that they are training to be warriors in the next war against Japan. They're also not aware that their bodies are actually being kept in a cage, encased in some sort of strand which holds them up and responds to their movements. Like most of the technological phenomena in this book, these strands' actual method of operation remained pretty unclear.

The main character has growing revelations and epiphanies concerning the nature of reality. Finally, with the help of an outside character who only interacts in the VR environment sometimes and is not trapped there, he discovers the workings of the world and how to manipulate it. Then he frees the other people in the VR so they can be in the real world, and then all kinds of bad stuff happens. As the book jacket puts it so well, "And the first thing they discover is pain."

The VR environment is rendered masterfully, and is very entertaining. Despite knowing that the world was not real, I found the scenes in the environment to be quite engaging. For the characters, the world clearly is real, and their ties to it feel very believable and genuine.

However, this book has some other major problems. First, there is the incredibly cheesy and moralistic dialogue and themes. There are passages in this book which make Ayn Rand's "Anthem" look strikingly subtle. Like, "The tribe, he realized, was humankind. Together, they were all victims in the same realm. The realm of the real world. Victims of war."

Secondly, the technical aspects of this book are hopelessly muddled. The rules of the VR environment and its interaction with the real world remain extremely unclear at best and clearly impossible at worst. I am not sure whether or not such an interface could be described in a realistic manner, but it does not happen in this book. In general, the main character's technical feats are conveyed so implausibly that they merely leave the reader baffled.

But, all in all, it was a pretty good read. The author seems to be striving for something more insightful and literary than a mere sci-fi yarn, but never quite hits it - the thematic aspects of the book are too moralistic and blatant. I wish he would have been content to write a good VR/survival story, and spent a little more time focusing on a plausible atmosphere and plotline. I would recommend this book if you are looking for sci-fi paperback type story: some short term entertainment and a cyberspace fix, but not much substance.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent story -- a daring concept made convincing., July 2, 1999

By 

Stephen Hickman ([e-mail]) (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Secret Realms (Mass Market Paperback)

No one can deny that the provisions for modern (global scale) warfare are closing the gap between the training simulations and actual combat with a bewildering rapidity. Secret Realms deals with the use of an enclosed virtual simulator which has been designed for the purpose of developing the entire human potential for tactical and strategic thinking in select individuals who have been ruthlessly isolated from actual real-life experiences in their virtual simulator from infancy (a project implemented by those ultimate pragmatists, the Chinese). I personally have little use for computer games, but the author has managed to make the virtual trainee's imaginative environment fascinating, and more important, has made the characters alive and important to the reader in their bizarre context. Tom Cool has combined first-rate story-telling with an exceptional visual imagination to produce a great story.

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly detail-oriented, November 26, 2002

By 

Robert M. Underwood, Jr. "Robert Milton Under... (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secret Realms (Mass Market Paperback)

Having only read a few sci-fi novels in my lifetime, I took a chance and read "Secret Realms" by Tom Cool. I was very impressed with it. The author spent great effort in being very detail-oriented. It was obvious that he had the technical knowledge to go with his military background in creating a plot that had depth and high interest. I found the concept of growing up in a virtual world almost mind boggling, but accept its plausibility; the concept took me into new territory of thought as I read it. I would highly recommend (and already have recommended) Cool's book. I have already put in an order for his first book, "Infectress," and am looking forward to receiving it.