# The First Sci-Fi Author to Conceive of Virtual Reality. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 17, 2016, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053 "2016-08-17T07:27:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jim\_B](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jim_b/32/4338_2.png) [@Jim\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_B)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/1 "2016-08-17T07:27:05Z")
Science fiction authors are amazing. They often conceive of scientific discovers, well, long before even some scientists do. We all know of things like time travel. _The Time Machine_ was published by H. G. Wells in 1895. But it says in his Wikipedia article, Wells had conceived the notion of time travel before, in a short story in 1888 titled “The Chronic Argonauts”. Astounding, no? This was many decades before Einstein, and his theory of relativity, you know. Anyways, time travel is an easy one, for that reason. What I have always wondered, is who was the first sci-fi author to conceive of virtual reality? I think most of us would tend to think it happened with the pilot episode of Star Trek: TOS, IN 1966, and then airing with “The Menagerie”, same year. But was that really the first time, it was ultimately conceived of? Just to throw a wild theory out there, I offer _A Christmas Carol_ by Charles Dickens, in 1843. Hear me out. When the ghost of Christmases past shows Scrooge his old boy schoolmates, he tries to talk to them. But the ghost admonishes him, these are but “shadows” of the things that were. Even I have to admit, though, that is kind of weak. I hope you all will come up with better examples than that. Also, just to throw something out there, there is The Twilight Zone (1985) _Dreams For Sale_. In a future world, a young woman finds herself in the “Dreamatron”. [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeJgK0PTGp4) is the Youtube video. (But watch it now. In a couple of weeks, they’ll probably have it down for copyright infringement;).) As I said, by all means be creative. But be _accurate_ too. I really want to know–and suspect I am not alone. :):):)🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/2 "2016-08-17T07:44:59Z")
The Wikipedia article on virtual reality mentions a 1935 story called Pygmalion’s Spectacles by Stanley Weinbaum. It’s [available](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22893/22893-h/22893-h.htm)on Gutenberg and while I have only glanced through it, it seems a legitimate example of VR created through technology. As VR becomes more prominent in the real world I bet this story will become more famous. [Weinbaum](http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=4543)apparently died of lung cancer shortly after writing this story. I wonder if he would have guessed that this story would be remembered many decades after he died. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/3 "2016-08-17T12:38:32Z")
Not VR in the immersive sense, but EM Forster’s _The Machine Stops_ has a future society where people live in small cells and communicate and see the world mostly by telepresence. So an important foundation document for the idea of VR worlds without actually postulating VR. [Full text here](http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Great\_Unwashed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_great_unwashed/32/4791_2.png) [@The\_Great\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Great_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/4 "2016-08-17T12:46:17Z")
There’s always [Plato’s Cave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave) ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/5 "2016-08-17T12:48:35Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Not VR in the immersive sense, but EM Forster’s _The Machine Stops_ has a future society where people live in small cells and communicate and see the world mostly by telepresence. So an important foundation document for the idea of VR worlds without actually postulating VR. [Full text here](http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html) Yes, not quite VR, but I thought it was a chilling vision of one possible end result of internet technology… written over a century ago! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/6 "2016-08-17T13:11:53Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Not VR in the immersive sense, but EM Forster’s _The Machine Stops_ has a future society where people live in small cells and communicate and see the world mostly by telepresence. So an important foundation document for the idea of VR worlds without actually postulating VR. [Full text here](http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html) :clap clap clap: I’m saving this to read when I have time, for sure. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/7 "2016-08-17T13:30:53Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > :clap clap clap: I’m saving this to read when I have time, for sure. FYI it’s very short. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/8 "2016-08-17T13:34:15Z")
I think we need to set some ground rules here, on just what defines virtual reality. If it’s any illusions at all, then that’s ancient: People have been seeing visions in stories for as long as there have been stories. So I think we first need to establish that VR is visions produced by technology. Then we have to ask how the technology works. Is it VR if the visions are produced by hallucinogenic drugs? Probably not, because the resulting hallucinations are not controllable by the one administering the drug. There’s also the possibility of controllable hallucinations produced through direct brain stimulation of some sort: I’m guessing that this is what the “dreamatron” does. This could fill the same role that we associate with virtual reality, but the technology is very different. Now, that “Pygmalion’s Spectacles” story that **Lantern** linked, that looks like it hits most of the bases: Moving pictures, captured via a sort of photographic technology, delivered one to each eye via lenses, to produce the illusion of three dimensions. It still isn’t truly interactive, except to the easily-misled mind, but if we’re going to demand interactivity, then the question becomes more like “what was the first science fiction story to feature a computer game”. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/9 "2016-08-17T13:42:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Then we have to ask how the technology works. Is it VR if the visions are produced by hallucinogenic drugs? Probably not, because the resulting hallucinations are not controllable by the one administering the drug. _The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_ (Philip K. Dick, 1965) lays out a controllable drug-induced hallucination scenario. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/10 "2016-08-17T15:53:52Z")
In a pre-World War Two era, would you consider telepathy to be sci-fi or fantasy? In Burroughs’ _Thuvia, Maid of Mars_, 1916, the Lotharians have the power to create lifelike illusions in the minds of less-powerful beings. (Similar scenario to Trek’s “Menagerie”. They used the illusions as weapons, and they were dying out for lack of attachment to the real world.) ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/11 "2016-08-17T17:00:39Z")
“Spectator Sport” by John D. MacDonald (in his SF days). 1950. Pretty much nails modern VR. ---
**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/12 "2016-08-17T17:30:41Z")
I think the “feelies” described in Brave New World (1931) are essentially VR. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Great\_Unwashed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_great_unwashed/32/4791_2.png) [@The\_Great\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Great_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/13 "2016-08-17T20:35:40Z")
> [@The\_Great\_Unwashed](#): > > There’s always [Plato’s Cave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave) Too old? Okay, how about [Descartes’ Demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon)? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/14 "2016-08-17T23:20:57Z")
When I was young, we had an antique [Holmes stereoscope](https://www.google.com/search?q=holmes+stereoscope&safe=off&client=ubuntu&hs=zJC&channel=fs&biw=1791&bih=955&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_tYOMycnOAhVS9GMKHY74CsIQ_AUICSgC), from the 1860s, and the technology dates to the 1830s at least. Television technology started to come into being in the 1910s, and it’s likely that people would have been aware that such a technology might be possible from at least a decade earlier. The history of animation goes way back. Ada Lovelace already figured out that a computational device would be able to generate music “on the fly” from algorithms (~1840), and the math for manipulating 3D space (e.g., the quaternion) was certainly in place by the 1840s as well, so it wouldn’t be a far stretch to visualize the possibility of generating 3D spaces on the fly. I’d say that by 1900, it would have been completely reasonable for someone to come up with the idea of VR. The stories suggested from the 1930s certainly seem like they’re in the right time frame, though it’s possible that someone could have been thinking along these lines earlier than that given the information that they would have had available to them. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-sci-fi-author-to-conceive-of-virtual-reality/763053/15 "2016-08-18T03:22:44Z")
A lot of people hold that Daniel F. Galouye’s novel _Simulacron-3_ (AKA _Counterfeit World_) is the first VR novel. It was published in 1964 as a paperback, and it does feature an electronically-created artificial reality (unlike earlier “artificial worlds” that take place wholly in the mind or in miniature models or the like). Certainly I don’t know of other examples. The book was adapted for television in Germany in 1973 by Werner Fassbinder (!), and was turned into the movie **The 13th Floor** in 1999. It was overshadowed by the monster hit **The Matrix** (and to a lesser degree by David Cronenberg’s VR movie **eXistenZ**. But I really like The 13th floor, and think it deserves better. According to the Wikipedia page on it, the book was adapted as a stage play – _World of Wires_ (which is almost a direct translation of Fassbinder’s TV movie) in 2012, which I haven’t seen. > **[Simulacron-3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacron-3)** > > Simulacron-3 (1964) (also published as Counterfeit World), by Daniel F. Galouye, is an American science fiction novel featuring an early literary description of a simulated reality. > Simulacron-3 is the story of a virtual city (total environment simulator) for marketing research, developed by a scientist to reduce the need for opinion polls. The computer-generated city simulation is so well-programmed, that, although the inhabitants have their own consciousness, they are unaware, except for one, ...