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So I'm trying to find a Sci fi book series from when I was younger (probably about 12 years ago) although the book was already pretty old before I get hold of it (I'd estimate a late 90's / early 2000s publishing date).

The cover of the first book was orange and had some black almost circuit board design all over it. The second book was blue with the same design and I believe there may have been a third green one.

The title on the cover is where I get hazy, It might be just a 4 digit year (in my head I have 3076 or something close), and the title for the second book was just the digits of the next year.

The basic plot of the story is set in the future where everybody has these small boxes that a full body VR suit plugs into, however it goes wrong and the user is stuck inside (I believe with safety measures off) and they go through the web? / game? (I cant remember exactly), However they do eventually make it back to reality.

I understand it's not a lot to go on and I know it fits the bill for many books but I've been searching for the last few years and if anybody can help me find these books, I'd really appreciate it.

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    You could improve this question by going through the checklists here and editing in any relevant info you can think to add.
    – Valorum
    Mar 11, 2021 at 23:03
  • Hi, welcome to SF&F! Did you read this in English? What country?
    – DavidW
    Mar 11, 2021 at 23:03
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    Sounds similar to scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/169063/…. Do any of the details there match what you're looking for?
    – FuzzyBoots
    Mar 11, 2021 at 23:06
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    "already pretty old [..] I'd estimate a late 90's / early 2000s", darn, now I feel more than pretty old..
    – Kaddath
    Mar 12, 2021 at 13:48
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    "the book was already pretty old before I get hold of it, I'd estimate a late 90's / early 2000s" withers into dust
    – Darth Pseudonym
    Mar 12, 2021 at 14:35

5 Answers 5

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Could it possibly be The Web 2027 and The Web 2028? These were omnibus versions of a YA novella series (each one contained 6 of the books from the series), and they were built around the idea of people spending most of their time online using VR suits. Both were published in 1999. I'm pretty sure the "trapped in virtual reality" thing happened in one of the stories in 2027.

The titles and covers both also match your description, although there was never "The Web 2029" with a green cover.

Cover of "The Web 2027". The title is displayed in red-black text, with an orange circuit board in the background. Cover of "The Web 2028". The title is displayed in red-black text, with a blue circuit board in the background.

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  • HOLY SHIT YOU ACTUALLY FOUND THEM. But seriously thank you this is them, ive been trying to find these for ages, and even with the limited information my stoned brain could give you actually found them.
    – Aidn
    Mar 15, 2021 at 9:48
  • I had both books, so it just took me a while to work out how to find them. The first book was much better than the second, as I recall.
    – ConMan
    Mar 15, 2021 at 13:17
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Might be the Otherland series by Tad Williams. The first book, at least in a German version, has the circuit design.

Cover of "Otherland". The title is displayed in a black box, around which extends a circuit board. Above the circuit board, a large yellow pyramid and several yellow obelisks are displayed, against a blue background with pale white dots.

The series itself deals with the main characters being stuck in a virtual world and figuring their way out. It is a series of four books and was published in the late 1990s.

Also, the other covers are indeed similar designs in different color schemes.

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Could be The Wonderland Gambit from 1995.

Cover of "The Wonderland Gambit". The cover shows a scantily clad pale woman with her arms outstretched, in the center of a clear tube. Around the tube, circuitry and mechanical parts are visible.

EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW IS WRONG... That was the strange message left on Cory Maddox's e-mail--just at the moment when years of work on a revolutionary subspace computer system was about to pay off. Nothing would be the same for Cory again. Suddenly his life was thrown into chaos when the company that controlled his patent was sold out from under him, and instead of imminent wealth, Cory was facing immediate poverty. Then along came Alan Stark, who wanted to recruit Cory for a special research project on virtual reality. Stark was reviving the secret NSA work of the legendary Matthew Brand, who had disappeared under mysterious circumstances years before. Cory had always idolized Brand, so he was initially thrilled to be involved. But he quickly discovered that there was nothing virtual about the realities he was working on. Instead, he found that Stark was on the verge of controlling the very fabric of reality itself. Cory was unsure of Stark's ultimate goal, until he began to recall pieces of another life and found himself in the middle of a battle between two groups of people who could use "rabbit holes" in space and time to jump between different realities, personalities, and lives. Whoever had control of the power to shape reality would have the power to become a god--or a devil. But before Cory could combat Stark and his minions, he first had to remember which side he was on...

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  • This was the one that occurred to me as well.
    – Emsley Wyatt
    Mar 18, 2021 at 17:46
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Is it the Rasmussem, Inc books from Vivian Vande Velde ? The books are Heir Apparent, User Unfriendly and Deadly Pink.

The three books all deal with people stuck inside a VR game, with the games all made by a company called Rasmussem, Inc. In the book Deadly Pink the person has actually chosen to strand themself in the game. The three books are not a trilogy, they just use the same setting.

The covers are coloured blue, pink and greem, with patterns that could be vaguely circuit board related. The titles are not numbers, however.

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Sounds to me like Gemini Game by Michael Scott: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2535956.Gemini_Game

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    Could you edit this to explain why it sounds like that? How does this match the description given in the question?
    – TheLethalCarrot ♦
    Mar 12, 2021 at 13:43

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