“With careful, easy, and fun-to-read prose, Lisa Messeri examines the efforts to build and promote a new technology and related industry, thereby introducing readers to current hot-button concerns in our culture: about the role and power of technology, the changing nature of the real and fantasy, and the assaults on truth and humanity. A compelling ethnography.”
-- Alexandra Juhasz, Distinguished Professor of Film, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
“In the Land of the Unreal is a fantastic, groundbreaking, and beautifully written ethnography covering the nexus between place and technology. Lisa Messeri meticulously examines how Los Angeles, a hub for the entertainment industry with a rich history of urban fantasy, uniquely influences the virtual reality industry. She also provides a comprehensive yet precise vocabulary for grappling with thorny epistemological questions related to reality, the unreal, the virtual, the hyperreal, and fantasy. Her concepts shed light not only on virtual reality and digital life but also on American political culture in a post-Trump era, when ‘reality’ has itself become a battleground, as Messeri argues so persuasively.”
-- Gabriella Coleman, author of Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous
"Absolutely one of the best books I've read about virtual reality, full stop."
-- Kent Bye Voices of VR podcast