Hello! Today I am introducing a new post category: book discussion. As the name implies, I will discuss a book or series, mainly about stuff that couldn’t go in a book review. Book discussion posts allow spoilers, but that’s not the point. I’ve been wanting to create this kind of post for a while. This desire became greater after reading certain books. Among these is the Warcross duology by Marie Lu. They are science fiction novels popular for their portrayal of cutting-edge technology and their lovable main character.
The protagonist of Warcross and its sequel Wildcard is Emika Chen. She’s an Asian-American teenager living in a New York not much different from ours. The difference is that technology is significantly more advanced. The most prominent example is known as the NeuroLink. It’s a pair of electronic glasses—which soon become contact lenses— that allow their wearer to enter a stunningly realistic virtual world. The most popular use of the NeuroLink is to play Warcross, a game akin to a cross between Fortnite and Quidditch. Its popularity is such that an official Warcross championship is as huge an event as the real-life Super Bowl or Olympics.
The NeuroLink is a prime example of virtual reality. This is the talk of the tech world lately. Some even say that virtual reality is the next step in the Internet’s evolution. This future iteration is ostensibly named ‘metaverse’. Basically, in the metaverse you could have a virtual avatar with which you can visit online virtual worlds. This has drawn comparisons to Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, but I think Warcross is more like it. In the books, the second most frequent use for the NeuroLink is to shop at virtual stores. Imagine if you could go to, for instance, a virtual Barnes and Noble in the metaverse. You could browse digital representations of books that you can hold in your (virtual) hand. Upon buying one or more, they’d arrive either at your house or in your e-reader. The idea of this is intriguing to me. It would be amazing.
Having a custom avatar would also be cool. In Warcross, every user who connects to the NeuroLink has one. The glasses also have augmented reality features, so users can see digital advertising on real buildings, for instance. They can also choose to appear as their avatar to other NeuroLink users. Emika often makes herself look different to keep people from recognizing her. She becomes famous after Hideo Tanaka, the creator of the NeuroLink, makes her an official Warcross player. Emika went from being a nobody to being the talk of the planet overnight. She also had to move to Tokyo, one of the world’s most populated cities in-universe. I don’t blame Emika for trying to stay unnoticed.
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| Image credit: https://www.instagram.com/arz28/ |
Like many readers, I thought Emika Chen is a really likable and interesting protagonist. She has good morals (even if she’s been forced to steal for survival) and very high intelligence. Emika is particularly skilled with technology. I sort of wish I was like her. Emika is very similar to Daisy Johnson from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Like them I am considerably tech-savvy, but I can’t code to save my life, and hacking? Fuggedaboudit. Programming and hacking are well outside my tech abilities. You’d think that, as someone who’s learned three point two human languages, I could learn a computer language too. That’s sadly not the case. Maybe that is why I find tech-savvy women so attractive. Emika’s smart, rather gorgeous, and doesn’t lust after power, even when she takes over Hideo’s company. Emika would never abuse the NeuroLink the way he did.
The Warcross duology also presents one of the dangers that some experts think the future metaverse will introduce. There are some who are concerned that people could easily conceal or fake their identities within the metaverse. This is exactly what the character of Zero does in the books. His avatar masks his identity so well that even Emika can’t pierce through it. This sounds way more secure than browsing the Internet via Tor and a VPN. Personally, I’m a privacy advocate, at least when it comes to secure messaging apps like Signal. But the potential to pretend to be someone you are not inside the metaverse? That does sound very dangerous. I would support an identity verification system if the metaverse is ever created.
And this is the end of this discussion post. Those were all the points about Warcross I wished to write about. I hope this was a compelling post. So, what are your thoughts? Will the future metaverse look a lot like the NeuroLink virtual reality? Is Emika Chen a great role model and overall fascinating character? Feel free to share your opinions in the comments. Have a great day!
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