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"SF looks towards an imaginary future, while fantasy, by and large, looks towards an imaginary past."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Virtual Reality (Virtual Matrix) | ||
| An early use of a term very similar to the idea of cyberspace. |
Early use of a similar term; see The Veldt, the 1951 short story by Ray Bradbury that is probably the first full description of the concept.
| "Well, this virtual matrix we're in was built up the same way. I knew you were with me, but I felt omnipotent... and lost. Then the phylogenetic codes came snapping in, one by one, and everything sort of... crystallized." She stops, perched on one leg, and looks searchingly at her Other. "What would've happened if I'd come through into here on my own? Psychosis?" "If you'd made it," Beth says. "I doubt you'd have been able to. It's a complicated trick, and only a very stable, imaginative adult mind can originate it. Youngsters entering Fourth Level are guided in. If a child did come through without support? It's a horrifying thought. Total solipsism, I suppose. Something like the cyborg Dreamvats, but worse—there'd be no constraints. A mad god in a closed universe. We stabilize our generated reality here by consensus, and that includes sophisticated social compulsions as well as the phylogenetic wired structures..." "Basically, we're the only dysentropic probability vector in these 'virtual realities': the ontology's plastic. There's a sort of consensual cocoon around us modifying our immediate environment synchronistically." |
| Technovelgy from The Judas Mandala,
by Damien Broderick. Published by Not known in 1982 Additional resources -
|
The earliest use of the term is probably in Antonin Artaud's The Theatre and Its Double (1938). He describes theater as "la realite virtuelle", literally a virtual reality "in which characters, objects, and images take on the phantasmagoric force of alchemy's visionary internal dramas".
For virtual reality-stale gaming systems, be sure to see dimensino - alien entertainment center from Time is the Simplest Thing by Clifford Simak (1961) and rifle range - virtual skeet shooting designed by aliens from Way Station also by Simak (1963).
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'...Anything was possible in my imaginary environment.'
'Somewhere in space, a chrome and blue automobile raced the green light of Earth.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair...'
'We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect.'
'Detailed plans for the construction of the Gundstetter-Halone warp drive were flowing.'
'Do not waste your priceless company on the unappreciative folds of a sleep pod...'
'...so we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'Hocus-pocus religions and archaic weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.'
