Simulacron-3
| Author | Daniel F. Galouye |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
Publication date | 1964 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
Simulacron-3 (1964) (also published as Counterfeit World), by Daniel F. Galouye, is an American science fiction novel featuring one of the earliest literary descriptions of virtual reality.
Plot summary
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, that they are only electronic impulses in a computer.
The simulator’s lead scientist, Hannon Fuller, dies mysteriously, and a co-worker, Morton Lynch, vanishes. The protagonist, Douglas Hall, is with Lynch when he vanishes, and Hall subsequently struggles to suppress his inchoate madness. As time and events unwind, he progressively grasps that his own world likely is not “real”, and might be only a computer-generated simulation.
Symbolically, the title term "Simulacron-3" denotes to the just-built virtual reality simulator, and ostensibly refers to a third attempt at "simulectronics" (the reality-simulating technology), however, the "3" also refers to the novel’s three levels of "reality", or three levels of computer simulation — if the 'final', "real" world is simulated. Moreover, "simulacron" is closely derivative of simulacrum, a superficial image representing a non-existent original.
To date, the novel Simulacron-3, about a counterfeit world, has twice been adapted, first as the two-part German television play Welt am Draht (1973) (World on a Wire), by Rainer Werner Fassbinder; second, cinematically, as The Thirteenth Floor (1999), by Josef Rusnak.
Like-subject works
The short story The Tunnel Under the World (1955), by Frederik Pohl, deals with like philosophic themes and satirical criticism of marketing research, although the described simulated reality is mechanical—an intricate scale-model whose inhabitants’ consciousnesses reside in a computer, rather than being solely electronic. The American novel Time out of Joint (1959), by Philip K. Dick, describes a man unaware of living his life in a physically-simulated environment, until changes in his (apparent) reality begin to manifest themselves. The Polish short story Skrzynie profesora Corcorana (1960), by Stanislaw Lem, deals with scientists building a machine to simulate a complete reality for a human mind (consciousness) trapped in a computer. Some forty-odd years later, The Matrix (1999) and The Thirteenth Floor (1999) describe worlds whose populations are unaware that the world containing their minds is a virtual reality simulacrum.