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"Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful."
- Philip K. Dick
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| Virtual Reality | ||
| A fictitious and illusory world. |
As far as I know, the first use of the phrase "virtual reality" (la réalité virtuelle).
| Where alchemy, through its symbols, is the spiritual Double
of an operation which functions only on the level of real
matter, the theater must also be considered as the Double,
not of this direct, everyday reality of which it is gradually
being reduced to a mere inert replica — as empty as it is sugar-
coated — but of another archetypal and dangerous reality, a
reality of which the Principles, like dolphins, once they have
shown their heads, hurry to dive back into the obscurity of
the deep.
For this reality is not human but inhuman, and man with his customs and his character counts for very little in it. Perhaps even man’s head would not be left to him if he were to confide himself to this reality — and even so it would have to be an absolutely stripped, malleable, and organic head, in which just enough formal matter would remain so that the principles might exert their effects within it in a completely physical way. Before going further, let us consider the curious predilec- tion for the theatrical vocabulary of all books dealing with alchemical subjects, as if their authors had sensed from the beginning all that was represetuative, i.c., theatrical, in the whole series of symbols by means of which the Great Work is to be realized spiritually, while waiting for it to be realized actually and materially, as well as in the digressions and errors of the ill-informed mind among these operations, in the almost “dialectical” sequence of all the aberrations, phantasms, mi- rages, and hallucinations which those who attempt to perform these operations by purely human means cannot fail to en- counter. All true alchemists know that the alchemical symbol is a mirage as the theater is a mirage. And this perpetual allusion to the materials and the principle of the theater found in almost all alchemical books should be understood as the ex- pression of an identity (of which alchemists arc extremely aware) existing between the world in which the characters, objects, images, and in a general way all that constitutes the virtual reality of the theater develops, and the purely fictitious and illusory world in which the symbols of alchemy arc evolved. |
| Technovelgy from The Theatre and Its Double,
by Antonin Artaud. Published by Editions Gallimard in 1938 Additional resources -
|
Compare this to the Saga simulation from Arthur C. Clarke's 1956 novel The City and the Stars, mental phantasmagoria from The Lotus-Engine (1940) by Raymond Z. Gallun, dead-show from Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1974) by James Tiptree, Jr., the virtual matrix from The Judas Mandala (1982) by Damien Broderick, cyberspace from Burning Chrome (1982) by William Gibson and the metaverse from Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson. Note also the DreamTime Scleral Contact Lenses From The California Voodoo Game (1992) by Larry Niven (w/S. Barnes).
Compare to the life chamber from The Chamber of Life (1929) by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, the virtual assembly from If The Sun Died (1931) by R.F. Starzl and the holodeck from Encounter at Farpoint (1987) by David Gerrold.
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'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
'There were cubic miles of it, and it glistened like a silvery Christmas tree...'
'Jason had been guiding the caravan of cars as usual...'
"The robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again...'
'There was a wall ahead... It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
