History of the Future

The dramatic, larger-than-life true story behind the founding of Oculus and its quest for virtual reality, by the bestselling author of Console Wars.

In 2012, nineteen-year-old Palmer Luckey?inventor, gamer, dreamer?lives alone in a trailer in Long Beach, California, that he has transformed into a makeshift laboratory optimized to build virtual reality headsets?a technology most believed died in the nineties. Luckey, however, is adamant about its resurrection; so, too, are other visionaries.

Enter famed coder and video game pioneer John Carmack, who is developing a game that might be the perfect software companion to Luckey's hardware. Soon enough, the two team up, and with the help of a charismatic serial entrepreneur, a brilliant Russian programmer, and dozens of other colorful characters, Luckey's scrappy startup?Oculus?kickstarts a virtual reality revolution. What happens next turns out to be the ultimate entrepreneurial journey: a tale of battles won and lost, lessons learned, and never-ending twists and turns?including an unlikely, multi-billion-dollar acquisition by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who wants to help bring VR to the masses. The result is a modern-day tale of the American Dream that is a front-row seat to the birth of a game-changing new industry.

Auteur

Blake J. Harris is the bestselling author of History of the Future and Console Wars, which is now a CBS All Access feature film by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. He has written for ESPN, IGN, Fast Company, The Huffington Post, /Film and The AV Club. He is also a regular guest on Paul Scheer's How Did This Get Made? podcast, where every week he interviews some the biggest names responsible for some of the worst movies ever made. Harris lives in New York with his wife.