about the book
Arizona high school student Anda is fairly talented with computers, but not all that interested until a gamer speaks to her class about the massive international multiplayer online role-playing game, Coarsegold, and the importance of strong female characters. Suddenly inspired, Anda begins to spend every spare moment playing.
She soon discovers that she is a natural at the violent fantasy. In this gaming world, she can be a leader, a fighter, and a hero. She can meet people from all over the world and make friends. For Anda, Coarsegold is the perfect world.
As she gets better, her new online friend Sarge shows her that they can be compensated within the game for killing gold farmers. These illegal avatars collect game resources and then the player behind the avatar sells the on-line resources for real cash to cheaters who have not fairly earned the gold, tools, weapons, and powers. Anda is all for taking out as many gold farmers as she can. Obviously, these illegal participants are corrupting the game!
But then she begins to get to know one of the gold farmers, Raymond, a sixteen-year-old Chinese boy. She discovers that he lives in very poor conditions, has no health insurance, and barely gets by. He works twelve hour days as a gold farmer and he needs the money he makes selling these illegally gotten resources just to live! As the days pass, the two form a true bond. Hoping to help her friend in the real world she encourages him to demand health care or strike until he gets it. It’s a noble idea, but the ramifications are bad for Raymond….
Our 21st century world is now a global one that is spurred and influenced by the promise of technology. This novel toggles between the real physical world and the fantasy Coarsegold one—unfortunately the real one has far too many inequalities. Right and wrong are a lot less straightforward when a real life is at stake.
about the author
Cory Doctorow was born in 1971 in Toronto, Ontario, in Canada. His father was a refugee from Azerbaijan, and both parents were uber techno-utopians involved in computer science and education.
Cory started writing at the age of six, which is also when he started getting interested in science. By the age of seventeen, he was selling his fictional works. Still, he had a hard time finding his place in the world. Though he jumped through four universities, he graduated from none.
Instead of pursuing writing, Cory turned back to his family’s passion, the computer industry. He co-founded the free software company Opencola and sold it four years later. During this time he became very interested in the liberalizing of copyright laws and digital rights, and he worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil liberties organization. When he moved to London, he helped establish the Open Rights Group and became a proponent of the Creative Commons organization.
He left to pursue writing full time. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, his first novel, was published in 2003; it was nominated for a Nebula Award and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel in 2004. His young adult book, Little Brother, which hit the New York Times Bestsellers list, is about students hacking into their school’s computer system as part of a game and being swept up by the Department of Homeland Security after a terrorist attack. Another young adult book, For the Win, is about massive multiplayer online role-playing games. Anda’s Game, his short story, was adapted into a full length graphic novel, In Real Life, by writer and illustrator Jen Wang.
When Cory isn’t writing, he is a frequent public speaker, an activist for many causes, and the co-editor of the very popular blog bOiNGbOiNG, a Weblog about technology, culture, and politics. Cory married Alice Taylor in October of 2008, and they have one daughter, Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow. The family left London and returned to Canada in 2015 in protest over Britain’s choice of a Tory government.
Sources:
Author interview: Phoenix New Times
Author biography: Wikipedia
Also by Cory Doctorow:
Homeland (Little Brother, Book 2). Tor Teen. 2013.
For the Win. Tor Teen. 2010.
Little Brother (Book 1). Tor Teen. 2008.
about the writer and illustrator
Jen Wang grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, and she still lives there today with Stella, her polydactyl cat (which means that it has extra toes!). Jen attended the Los Angeles branch of University of California, graduating with a Bachelor’s in Design Media Arts. She also earned a Master of Information degree in Management and Systems from the University of California, Berkeley.
She worked as a design intern at Location Labs, as a visual designer at Acopio.org, and as a senior designer at Penguin Group. Currently she is a freelance designer at Dominant Primordial Beast. Her writing and illustrations have appeared in the Adventure Time comics and LA Magazine.
Jen wrote and illustrated her first graphic novel, Koko Be Good, in 2010. In 2013, she illustrated Tom Angleberger’s children’s chapter book, Fake Mustache. In Real Life, her second graphic novel, was written in collaboration with Cory Doctorow and is based on his short story Anda’s Game. Her first draft came almost straight from his story, but with each edit, she added more new ideas which Cory approved. She loosely based Coarsegold, the role-playing game in the story, on World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy Online, Second Life, and Animal Crossing—all games a fifteen-year-old kid would be obsessed with!
Besides writing and illustrating books, Jen also does a webcomic, The White Snake. In her spare time she enjoys nature shows on television, biking, making pottery, libraries, and trying new things. Jen is also a co-founder and organizer for the Los Angeles festival, Comic Arts L.A.
Sources:
Writer/Illustrator website
Writer/Illustrator biography: Macmillan
Writer/Illustrator interview: Cybils
Koko Be Good by Jen Wang book page: Amazon
Writer/Illustrator biography: Wikipedia
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