"Cyberpunk glitz and biotechnology blend with warped Eastern mysticism in Alexander Besher's loosely linked Rim sf series. This began with Rim, set in 2027, and continued with Mir --one of whose bizarre inventions was sentient tattoos. By the time of Chi, it's 2038 and the world is even weirder . . . A mysterious and decidedly offbeat variety of global spiritual transformation is threatened. Besher mixes surreal comedy, a spice of gruesomeness, and enough weird SF ideas for half a dozen books . . . A wild roller-coaster ride . . . Great fun." --David Langford, Hugo Award winning novelist and publisher of the SF fanzine, Ansible

Rim (HarperCollins, '94; HarperPrism mass market, '95) Book 1 of the Rim Trilogy Nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, '94

It's 2027. Tokyo has survived the Mega-Quake of the Millennium and Satori Corporation, the owner of a virtual reality entertainment empire, is embroiled in cutthroat corporate warfare to preserve its market share, and, incidentally, save the lives of thousands of users trapped inside its virtual worlds. All of this seems far away to professor Frank Gobi as he strolls across the placid Berkeley, California, campus--until he gets home to find his perpetually on-line ten-year-old son stuck inside Satori's virtual Gametime and literally fighting for his life.

Besher inadvertently ventured into the realm of "real-time" prophecy with the on-line serialization of his novel, Rim, on HotWired, Wired magazine's then on-line publication. The novel which features a Mega-Quake set in Japan appeared on the very day of the Great Kobe Earthquake in January 1995.

The San Francisco Chronicle (January 18, 1995) reported: "Coincidences continue—the author, Alexander Besher, is from Kobe, the hardest hit city in Japan . . . Although the on-line magazine changes daily, Chip Bayers, managing editor of HotWired said he had long planned to begin the serialization yesterday (the day of the 'quake). Prophesy, Bayers said, 'often happens with science fiction but not this close to the date of events.'"

Mir (Simon & Schuster, 1998) Book 2 of the Rim Trilogy

The year is 2036, and epidermal programming is all the rage among the fringe dwellers of the hacker underworld. Sentient tattoos travel on-line, perform tasks for their owners in Omnispace and can even be transferred from body to body in forbidden techno-pagan rituals. But these tattoos are also contaminated with bio-software bugs that can wreak havoc not only on the user but also on the entire Net. And one particularly virulent bug, codenamed Mir, is on the loose, destroying everything in its path. Trevor Gobi, son of the legendary VR investigator Frank Gobi, is in hot pursuit. But Mir has plans of its own . . .

Mir is a wildly imaginative, frighteningly believable, breakneck cyber thriller from the acclaimed author of Rim.

Chi (Simon & Schuster, 1999) Book 3 of the Rim Trilogy

It is the year 2038. Wing Fat, head of a Southeast Asian biotech drug cartel, is siphoning off vital chi essence from enslaved humans held on plantations in the former Golden Triangle. And bootleg chi products are flooding the world's black markets, offering global consumers everything they have always craved: super-enhanced intelligence, greater creativity, heightened sexual powers, multimedia implants and even short-term immortality. If you can afford it, you can have it. But even the 650-pound chi-godfather Wing Fat, who is having an affair with his intelligent elevator, can't have everything. It is up to Frank and Trevor Gobi, the father and son team of virtual reality investigators, to make sure of that.

Following Rim and Mir, Chi is Alexander Besher's third novel in his sequence of wildly imaginative, wickedly funny and page-turning cyber-thrillers.