People have become seriously addicted to, for example World of Warcraft.
Among the many accusations leveled against the Internet is that too much of life takes place online. Between Facebook, Instagram, other social media sites, MMORPGs, and a host of other distractions, one person can spend a lot of their waking hours (and supposed-to-be-sleeping hours) online. (I’m not even going to talk about data mining and censorship.) But, truth: the “ignoring the real world” argument has been leveled at movies, rock music, board games, crime television (Britain and the U.S. create a ridiculous amount of police procedurals), and, if we were in the 18th century, reading books (especially for women; novels might excite our fragile minds too much). Essentially, if it isn’t a newspaper, a piece of classic literature, classical music, or some other educational effort, it’s a waste of time.
In theory, just about every book, game, song, or movie ever created is immersive. It’s just that different people immerse themselves in different ways and find some aspects and some products to be more immersive than others. Before the Internet, if I wanted to immerse myself in a movie, I saw it as many times at the theater as I could afford. (Also, not gonna lie, this was the best way to indulge in celebrity crushes.) I recorded songs off the radio and played them as often as possible. I cut out pictures from old travel and science fiction magazines and newspapers and plastered them across my walls, dreaming as much about New Zealand’s mountains and rivers as I did about the old canals of Mars. I reread certain books every year at a certain time. Or I’d pluck a book off my shelf and just reread particular passages. (I’m in the “of course, you should dog-ear the pages” camp. Sorry all.)
Everyone needs escapism. We need immersion. Is it good all the time? I suppose that remains to be seen. People will argue that some are more susceptible to it than others. That might be true, but I also think no matter what we do, how far we advance (we can argue levels of “advancement”), that people will always need escapism. Here are three stories that examine the pros and cons, the rights and wrongs, of immersiveness. (They just happen to feature virtual reality; I didn’t notice that until I was almost done writing this post.)
Circuit of Heaven (1998) by Dennis Danvers
Circuit of Heaven, is, before anything else, a story of star-crossed lovers. Here, Romeo is Nemo, a young man whose parents deserted him for life in The Bin, a virtual paradise where there is no greed, no injustice, and no death—unlike the world everyone left behind, rife with decrepit technology and roving gangs of religious fanatics. Resentful of his parents and the Bin, Nemo refuses to join them, but dutifully visits them there, utilizing a temporary upload process which will kill him if he overstays it. On one of these temporary visits he runs into and falls for Justine, the Juliet of the story. Justine is a new resident of the Bin, and seems to have some secret past that she herself doesn’t even remember. Nemo and Juliet can’t be together without one of them making a huge sacrifice: either he succumbs to his parents’ wishes and uploads himself into the Bin, or Justine (illegally) sacrifices immortality and downloads herself into the body of someone whose mind has just entered the Bin. (Frankly I’m not quite sure who is uploading or downloading what here.) Either way, their lives are threatened as a group of those left behind plots to blow up the Bin and everyone uploaded inside it. Danvers’ story is complex, and twenty years after publication, it’s worth tracking down and reading because its story still holds up. Danvers followed Circuit of Heaven with End of Days (2000), but even though it resolves some issues from the first book (even some that perhaps should have stayed knotted), tackle that one only if it’s an absolute must for you. Circuit functions best as a standalone.
The Light of Other Days (2000) by Stephen Baxter (premise, Arthur C. Clarke). I grew up reading Clarke, checking his stories out of the school library, but this is the only one I’ve read by Stephen Baxter. These days I’m not as enamored of Clarke’s stories, because he did not write women well at all (male gaze syndrome is only one of his writer issues). Yet the scope and complexity of this book still haunts me. If Circuit of Heaven was about star-cross’d lovers, then The Light of Other Days (named after one of my favorite poem) is about the tug-of-war between two brothers and their sociopathic father. David, the son of Hiram, who is the CEO of a industrial/technological magnate, and Bobby, Hiram’s clone (controlled by a brain implant, no less), spar against their father and each other when David develops a kind of wormhole technology (the “WormCam”) that allows anyone, anywhere, to spy on anyone, anywhere, and, eventually, anytime. (I really wish they had come up with a better name for an invention that is the crux of the story.) The WormCam’s existence and eventual widespread use necessarily erodes any societal notions of privacy, so people are almost always on their best behavior because they don’t know if they’re being observed. (A “SmartShroud” was developed to continue occasional mischief). The WormCam also allows people to view their ancestors (uh-oh), and religious adherents to view their past (double uh-oh). The story gets both crazier and more bittersweet from there; some people become voyeurs, others use the technology to form hiveminds–and all of this is taking place as an asteroid is headed toward Earth.
Rakuen Tsuiho, or Expelled from Paradise (2014). Fans of Fullmetal Alchemist and Seiji Mizushima might like this actually-kind-of-lighthearted anime movie. The earth has been rendered nearly uninhabitable due to a catastrophe referred to as the “Nano Hazard.” Consequently, most survivors uploaded their minds to an orbiting space station where they would live forever in a digital, paradise called DEVA. (Shades of Dennis Danvers!) With a twist: since DEVA’s required computing resources are finite, better bandwidth was allocated to the more influential and more powerful people. Ordinary people, including criminals, were reduced to a minimal number of CPU cycles. Imagine it like this: ordinary citizens present as and run around in an 8-bit environment, while the wealthy experience an immersive virtual reality. DEVA, however, discovers someone named Frontier Setter is hacking the universe to spread propaganda that implies DEVA isn’t this great, wonderful reality–nothing ever changes and therefore no progress will ever be made. Enter Agent Angela Balzac, who is downloaded into a body back on Earth to track down the hacker. She and her contact, Dingo, discover Frontier Setter isn’t human at all, but rather an artificial intelligence bent on carrying out its own mission. Agent Balzac and Dingo must decide whether to protect or destroy Frontier Setter’s project. Expelled from Paradise isn’t an “earth-shattering” movie about whether what’s real is better than what’s virtual, or vice versa—all that was tackled in Dark City and The Matrix and… I could go on. But it’s a highly watchable, very entertaining anime that asks a lot of questions about the purpose of paradise without getting too judgemental about the answers.
What other stories can you think of that tackle immersiveness and/or escapism? Add your entries in the comments below, and keep the chain going!
Featured image from Blizzard.com, more here.
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