1964 SF. Douglas Hall is working on a simulated reality to make
product test-marketing cheaper. But all of a sudden things aren't the
way he remembers them being… UK vt Counterfeit World.
This early virtual-world story is perhaps more remarkable for its
idea than for the execution. The language of technology is clearly of
the late analogue electronic computer era, and nobody seems to have
thought about just how much storage space would be needed to run
something that thinks like a human being – and indeed one of the plot
points is that people in the upper world don't regard the inhabitants
of the lower world as human, even though they can be inserted into
that lower world and have conversations with them.
There's some effectively Dickian paranoia, as Hall tries to work out
whether his increasingly strange experiences are signs of an ongoing
mental breakdown or of something actually wrong with the world. Other
characters are less convincing, particularly the women, though
everyone becomes an object of suspicion at some point; a side plot
with the funder of the simulation planning to use it to make himself a
political leader feels as though it's really from a different story;
and the ending, while somewhat foreshadowed, seems remarkably upbeat
conmpared with what's gone before.
Still, an enjoyable book and an interesting one considered in its
historical context.
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