FOR YEARS and years various organisations have been complaining about the influence of video games and online gaming on 'impressionable youth'.
According to America's Entertainment Software Association, almost two-thirds of all American households play electronic games of some sort and apparently the average age of a game player is 35-years-old.
So, all those years in dark rooms shooting dragons and pretending to be elves, orcs or spies doesn't seem to have had too negative an impact on modern society.
Video games and online gaming has become a part of every day life, which is why Walter Jon Williams' novel, This is Not a Game, was a fascinating read.
It begins with Dagmar, an online gaming producer, or 'puppet master', who finds herself stuck in a hotel room in Jakarta as the economy and government of Indonesia collapses around her.
Stuck with no escape, Dagmar contacts the gamers who play her games for help to escape. The unreal online world connects solidly with reality and things happen.
Williams' premise is that the sprawling, million-strong, global communities of online game players are an untapped pool of innumerable skills.
I'll have to drop a bit of a spoiler here, so if you're planning on reading This is Not a Game, skip the next paragraph.
Dagmar discovers that not only can she get help from half-way across the world, the online community can succeed better than a professional mercenary outfit.
Using online communities for raising funds is nothing new. The UK's National Council For Voluntary Organisations even has a website page dedicated to 'Social networking and raising funds'.
What makes This is Not a Game unique is the way the author has extrapolated this idea into getting gamers to actively participate in real world events.
Set just slightly into the future, the novel gives the characters faster broadband, personally designed PDAs and cheaper technology; but really, most of what they do can be done today, as long as you have the money and the time.
The four central characters of This is Not a Game - Dagmar, BJ, Austin and Charlie - grew up with role-playing games like the classic Dungeons and Dragons and have taken their penchant for twisty plots and extreme ideas into successful careers in the IT world.
When one of them is murdered, a number of things come to the fore. None of the four actually really like each other, and someone has been doing something not quite kosher.
Once again, the online community comes to the rescue, picking up clues and tracking down real world criminals.
Williams intersperses the prose with 'e-mails' from various characters and online chatroom conversations, which adds to the texture of the story. Anyone who has ever visited a forum will recognise the corny user names and short forms of online language.
While all of this is interesting, without strong characters and an engaging plot, This is Not a Game would be nothing but another bit of 'fan fiction' about the joys of living online.
Instead, Williams' novel is punchy, tightly plotted – very tightly with a strong twist or two – and entertaining. There's a enough action and global drama to keep any thriller lover happy.
While it's not a particularly 'girly' book, the character of Dagmar ensures a strong female focus which mean readers of both sexes with enjoy This is Not a Game.
Like other speculative fiction authors before him, most notably William Gibson, Williams has managed to take what is happening now, wrap it in imagination and offer us a look at the future.
This is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams is published by Orbit and is available from good bookstores and online.