The 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.