Brunner, John. Players at the game of people. New York: Ballantine Books, 1980. ISBN 0-345-29235-9.

Summary: At first, the protagonist of this elegant, balanced science-fiction horror story appears to be a spoiled elistist who has an extraordinarily rich fantasy life that he cannot separate from his real life, and seems to know a lot of beautiful people of the same sort. Gradually, it appears that he and his friends are not all that imaginative and that their delusions are of quite a different nature, designed to conceal the Faustian bargains they have made with their owners and the bad ends that they will come to.