When We Were Real A Novel
When We Were Real A Novel by Daryl Gregory is published by Simon and Schuster in April 2025. This 464-page book presents a madcap adventure that follows two friends, JP and Dulin, as they embark on a week-long bus tour across North America. The journey takes them through a series of physics-defying glitches and geographic wonders that emerged after the revelation that their world is a digital simulation. As they navigate this bizarre landscape, they confront themes of love, family, and the nature of reality.
Readers will encounter a diverse cast of fellow passengers, each with their own motivations for joining the tour, including a nun searching for God and a pregnant influencer aiming to secure her child’s fame. The narrative unfolds with stops at increasingly strange locations, such as a Tunnel outside of time and a zero gravity Geyser, leading to the climactic destination, Ghost City. This edition invites exploration of the intersection between humor and science fiction, while delving into the complexities of existence within an artificial world.
Official synopsis Publisher
From multiple award-winning author Daryl Gregory comes a madcap adventure following two friends on a cross-country bus tour through the mind-boggling glitches in their simulated world as they grapple with love, family, secrets, and the very nature of reality in a simulation.
JP and Dulin have been the best of friends for decades. When JP finds out his cancer has aggressively returned, Dulin decides it’s the perfect time for one last adventure: a week-long bus tour of North America’s Impossibles, the physics-defying glitches and geographic miracles that started cropping up seven years earlier—right after the Announcement that revealed our world to be merely a digital simulacrum. The outing, courtesy of Canterbury Trails Tours, promises the trip of a (not completely real) lifetime in a (not completely deluxe) coach.
Their fellow passengers are 21st-century pilgrims, each of them on the tour for their own reasons. There’s a nun hunting for an absent God, a pregnant influencer determined to make her child too famous to be deleted, a crew of horny octogenarians living each day like it’s their last, and a professor on the run from leather-clad sociopaths who take The Matrix as scripture. Each stop on this trip is stranger than the last—a Tunnel outside of time, a zero gravity Geyser, the compound of motivational-speaking avatar—with everyone barreling toward the tour’s iconic final stop Ghost City, where unbeknownst to our travelers the answer to who is running the simulation may await.
When We Were Real is “an addictive thriller packed with winning characters and big, brilliant ideas” (Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author of The Bright Sword and The Magicians trilogy) and an exploration of what really matters, even in an artificial world.
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