Early scifi writers not only provide interesting glimpses of their imagined futures, they also tell us about some of the collective anxieties of their present. Two of the themes that ran from the beginning of the genre until today are the utopian and dystopian story lines. The urge to escape our reality is nothing new but the anxieties about technology are new. In retrospect it is surprising how many times some themes appear that anticipate some of the things that we find in our contemporary virtual realities. Here are a few good science fiction books that were prescient for their time.
1818 – Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was a known novelist of her time, remarkable for a woman in pre-Victorian England. She was the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley the poet and philosopher. I also note that in 1820 her husband a play titled Prometheus which was based on the Greek mythological character.
Subtitled The Modern Prometheus and often called Frankenstein’s Monster, this novel is often credited with being the first science fiction story. It is important to note that Viktor Frankenstein is the scientist/creator while the monster is rarely refered to by name. Prometheus was a Titan in Greek mythology a Titan. He is credited with having stolen fire from the gods and given it to humans who he fashioned from clay. The event that animates the Frankenstein story is the switching of a brain from a criminal from the intended brain. This embodies the sense in which our morality and much more resides in the brain and that the brain is somehow distinct from the body and the source of our consciousness and reason.
1895 – The Time Machine, HG Wells
In this novel the story is narrated by a friend of the Victorian scientist who builds a time machine. I recounts the tales the scientist told his friend about his adventures in the future and his eventual disappearance, suggestively into the far future where he has fallen in love. He tells of a future where books had all decayed but the ancestors had left talking rings that were effectively recordings that taught the listener about their history. The physical escape from the present into the future is a form of virtual reality even while that reality is intended to be the future of our reality.
1930 – Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future, Olaf Stapledon
Using the device of a future history, this science fiction novel, written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon, is a narration of a person from the distant future who recounts and comments on the history of the human race. The association I make between this novel and the concept of virtual reality is a theme of wishing to step outside of our physical reality and view it from a different perspective. There are earlier works which echo this same these in the genre of future history so this stands as a good example. If we had a virtual reality that not only contained our entire human history, but also somehow could foretell our future history, this would be that virtual reality.
1930 – Pygmalion’s Spectacles, Stanley G Weinbaum
In retrospect it seems inevitable that fiction writers could predict VR from the stereoscopes.
This story by science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum contains the idea of a pair of goggles that let the wearer experience a fictional world through holographics, smell, taste and touch. In hindsight the experience Weinbaum describes for those wearing the goggles are uncannily like the modern and emerging experience of virtual reality, making him a true visionary of the field.
I note that the creation of stereoscopic pictures and viewers were popular by the time this novel was written.
See also:
1933 – The Man Who Awoke, Laurence Manning
In this science fiction novel by Canadian writer Laurence Manning, the main character Norman Winters puts himself into suspended animation for 5,000 years at a time. The stories detail his ensuing adventures as he tries to make sense of the societies he encounters each time he wakes. It describes a time when people ask to be connected to a machine that replaces all their senses with electrical impulses and, thus, live a virtual life chosen by them.
He found:
- 10,000 AD. The world is dominated by the Brain – the immovable in purpose computer that knows all, sees all, and feels nothing. Thanks to its cradle-to-grave supervision, human life is easy and comfortable, but what will happen when The Brain realizes people are superfluous?
- 15,000 AD. People can now program their choice of dreams and sleep their lives away. Winters awakes to find the sleeping outnumber the living. He cannot stop the implosion of civilization by himself.
The two themes of the story include a type of virtual reality where one can program their dreams as well as the concept of an all controlling machine that ensures human comfort. This theme was later used in the science fiction movie, Forbidden Planet which is a reimagining of Shakespeare The Tempest.
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