SuitabookThe dead are rising
Jeff Norton
- Reading
- Discuss the difference between an avatar, its user and a person reborn into the real world. Pause after major confrontations to ask whose safety, freedom and identity are being protected.
- Themes
- Digital identity and embodiment: Uploaded avatars seek to become alive again by infecting live avatars and their users with their personalities, with some becoming reborn in the real world. The premise invites questions about whether continued existence, a personality and a physical body amount to the same kind of life.
- Resistance and moral choice: Jonah, Sam and Axel try to keep the Metasphere safe while confronting Granger and the danger posed by freely roaming Uploaded avatars. The story appears to frame protection as necessary but morally unsettled, since Jonah questions whether fighting is the right action.
- Worth knowing
- Some scenes may feel intense because live avatars and their users are preyed upon, infected and stalked, with threats extending to both virtual avatars and real bodies.