“In the dream machines it is always sunshine and the dreamers draw as deep a breath of good air as we do right now and feast their eyes on as fair a scene! What manner of man are you to ask such questions?”

“But how can that be?”

“Very simply. What you see is merely what your eye signals over nerves to your brain, is it not? Well, in the dream machines the eye-nerves are stimulated in precisely the same way. So are the nerves of smell, of taste, of hearing and the entire surface of the body’s tactile nerves,"

“Go on! How is this done?”

('The Man Who Awoke - The City of Sleep' (1933) by Laurence Manning)

"Oh, it is a surgical operation. The nerve ends are connected to fine wires and the wires lead to the control room from each dreamer. Here a complete set of sensations is sent out from a number of master records and so far as the dreamer is concerned he seems to be living a complete life. Before he enters he determines what sort of thing he wishes to experience. Some live the lives of great explorers and fight wild beasts in the wilderness; others seem to invent great scientific instruments and actually acquire. a complete knowledge of any subject they wish; others make trips in rocket ships to Mars or Venus and there go through incredible adventures on those grotesque and almost uninhabitable worlds. Jalna wants to dream a life of ease and homely comfort with occasional adventures and dangers that are so arranged as to result happily — more to enhance the pleasures of peace than for any other reason.”