Gearheads: The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports [Paperback]

In the early nineties, a visionary special-effects guru named Marc Thorpe conjured a field of dreams different from any the world had seen before: It would be framed by unbreakable plastic instead of cornstalks; populated not by ghostly ballplayers but by remote-controlled robots, armed to the steely teeth, fighting in a booby-trapped ring. If you built it, they'd come all right....
InGearheads, Newsweektechnology correspondent Brad Stone examines the history of robotic sports, from their cultish early years at universities and sci-fi conventions to today's televised extravaganzas -- and the turmoil that threatened the whole enterprise almost from the beginning.
By turns a lively historical narrative, a legal thriller, and an exploration of a cultural and technological phenomenon,Gearheadsis a funny and fascinating look at the sport of the future today.Brad StonejoinedNewsweek'swriting staff in 1995 and became the magazine's Silicon Valley correspondent in 1998. Stone has covered a wide variety of stories, including the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run race, the Napster trial, the Microsoft antitrust suit, and the Timothy McVeigh trial. A graduate of Columbia University, Stone lives in San Francisco and is developing an unhealthy passion for robot combat, having recently bought a robotics invention kit.Steven Levy author ofCryptoandHackersOn one level,Gearheadsis a book about robots -- fearsome, heavily armed, and in some cases questionably legal machines -- and the talented mechanical artists who build them. But Brad Stone has also written a moving narrative about dreams, and how they're dashed.Will Wright robot builder and creator of the bestselling video gamesSimCityandThe SimsThis fascinating story not only chronicles the birth of a new sport, but also the explosive confrontation between its creator and his business partner. The violence of this struggle exceeds anything seen in the robot arenals