Reality Bites

Sitting on a shelf in my bookcase is a novel called Virtual Realities. Written by one Claire Carmichael, it forms the first part of a trilogy followed by Cybersaur and Worldwarp (both of which are also sitting on a shelf in my bookcase). I got these books when I was a kid and I recall a lot of interest in them (well the first one at least) when I was in primary school.
What makes them interesting, from a retrospective position, is that these novels represented an early nineties paranoia of video games rising in popularity and the (believed) subsequent breakdown of the distinction of fantasy and reality. The novels deal with a young boy called Andy who, through usage of the then new technology virtual reality, somehow triggers some kind of psychic power and is able to give his obsession with dinosaurs flesh.

There is only one thing wrong with writing a futuristic work and that’s having to contend with the future itself. So where does this leave the Virtual Realities? Well, much like other man-being-conquered-by-machine works of the nineties it seems somewhat prophetic. Okay so virtual reality itself now comes across as horrendously antiquated (and makes the rest of us wonder what the hell the big deal was in the first place) but, even as a young lad, I do recall the ideas put forth in the story quite compelling: the breakdown of the distinction of fantasy and reality, an over-reliance on technology and the use of computers to ultimately create some sort of collapse of the social order. Sure the idea had been revisited before (in the form of the limp movie The Lawnmower Man) and since (in the form of the ace anime Serial Experiments Lain) but it was with this trilogy of novels that these ideas were first presented and has been interesting me ever since.



Which brings me the present day: Nowadays we are hearing all kinds of stories of people investing far too much in gaming at the expense of the modern world. Indeed, this is a particular problem in Korea where people are deliberately shutting themselves off from the modern world and, more famously, dropping dead from lack of sustenance brought about by 24hr World of Warcraft marathons. True such activities give gamers a bad name that potential condemners are all too happy to pick up on but for me, it is interesting to see how this fear of man being dominated by technology, from nearly two decades ago, comes across now in an age filled with miniaturised devices that can do practically everything and how people are more than willing to sign up to a MMORPG as an method of disregarding real-life problems that won’t go away.
I’ve been terrified of the notion of artificial realities becoming more important than that of the real world: It’s the idea of abandoning everything you knew before for the sake of something that is ultimately superficial. It is the notion of scrapping that which makes yourself you in the favour of some rules someone else decided. With every technological advancement being made in this world, I wonder how soon it will be before we actually have a USB port or something inserted into our bodies – or even to the point where flesh is abandoned…..

Who would’ve guessed that such a challenging science fiction idea would eventually point us down the road we all seem to be heading?