Sorry the details are so sparse, but it was about the future of humanity…basically, mankind had “done everything”-people were jaded, and only wanted to live fantasy lives.
So people woul allow themselves to be placed into suspended animation, where they would live dream lives.
Any of this ring a bell?
This rings a couple of dozen bells. LOTS of stories with this as an element if not the main plot points.
Got a year? Was it in a magazine, or an anthology, or was it a novel?
It was a full length novel, good reading it was.
Hope I can find it (never finished it).
Unless you can give us more details, we can’t figure out what it is. What year did you read this novel? Did you own it or did you borrow it from a library or a friend or whatever? Was it paperback or hardback? Was it an old book at the time? What did the picture on the cover look like? Approximately how long was it? Do you have any more details about the story or the author?
Something from Theodore Sturgeon, maybe?
I suggested him because I don’t read much SF but I do read Sturgeon, so I’m thinking that’s why it rang my bells too.
Heck, I remember that story. A 20th-century guy wakes up from suspended animation in the far future and he’s sufficiently unhappy that they pack him off into endless virtual-reality land (something normally only done after people retire) to get rid of him.
The fantasy they stick him in (of which we only get a taste in the final paragraph) has him as a rugged cowboy. Gosh, I guess a good ol’ American West fantasy is timeless!
*Spectator Sport *by John D. MacDonald.
Printed in 50 Short Science Fiction Stories.
The link is to Google Books and not all the pages are displayed.
Bryan Eker’s post rang the bell for me.
There was another one where I guy is flying off to a colony on another planet; only his suspended animation doesn’t work right. The ship’s computer provides him with virtual reality simulations so he doesn’t lose his mind being immobile for however-many decades.
When the ship arrives at the planet, he thinks his arrival is another simulation – one that he’d been through countless times during his journey.
runner pat, how can it be that story? ralph124c said that it was a full-length novel.
Johnny L.A., the story you’re thinking of is probably “Frozen Journey” (a.k.a. “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”) by Philip K. Dick. Unless we’re assuming that ralph124c has no correct memories of the story at all, that can’t be it either, since it’s a short story.
I missed his second post.:smack:
S’okay. I was being facetious. I knew the story I was thinking of wasn’t a full-length novel, as described. I was just joking about how commonplace the theme is. Without additional detail, it’s nigh-impossible to narrow down except by randomly guessing until ralph hears a familiar element.
Well, the brain cells are starting to work-I now remember that the people in the dream state KNEW that they were dreaming-and getting “killed” in your dream was no big deal-since you knew it was illusion.
Oh, and the main crarcter dreams he is vacationing with his girlfriend in Hawaii-where he is robbed and murdered.
I don’t want to mention it outright because the VR story was a surprise ending as I recall but maybe you’re thinking of Old Twentieth by Joe Haldeman.