Because the human mind is meant to deal with a data flow, total sensory deprivation causes hallucinations, irrationality and lunacy while prolonged sensory impoverishment has slower, subtler but even more destructive effects. In an interstellar spaceship, direct electronic stimulation of encephalic centers generates long, intense dreams that become a necessary substitute for real experience.
This clarifies that the "dream boxes" generate dreams, not the virtual realities that are to be found in some other speculative works by Anderson. However, the text does not describe the dream box dreams of any of the characters.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
We do know from some of Anderson's later works, such as the HARVEST OF STARS books, that he had some reservations about the "dream boxes" in those stories. E.g., too much indulgence in quiviras could lead some people to losing contact with reality, seeking to live wholly within fictions.
Sean
Fiction is fairly compelling even when you have to mediate it through print. My own daydreams are -extremely- compelling to me. If you could throw in sensory data, rather than just imagining them, I can see the addictive potential -- it would be extremely difficult to extract myself.
As a writing aside, it's very difficult to make a fiction-within-a-fiction interesting. This is why a lot of "gaming fiction" -- D&D and equivalents turned into novels, with players sucked into the game or something on that order -- was a failure. It takes very fine writing (or very headlong, immersive writing) to avoid the distancing effect.
This is also why "and it was all a dream" usually vitiates the impact of a story, with some exceptions like the Wizard of Oz.
In Alan Moore's graphic novel, WATCHMEN, a boy reads a pirate comic and we become concerned about the outcome of both stories. The graphic novel was filmed and the pirate comic was separately animated.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, I can see how WRITING can be such an "immersive" experience for you. And how much more so that would be if you could throw in convincing sensory data as well. Because of the detail and particularity you and Anderson could put into your stories, a mere reader like me could participate in those "day dreams" as well, to some extent. Nicholas van Rijn, Dominic Flandry, Horst von Duckler, the Terran Empire, the Angrezi Raj, etc., felt like REAL persons and places to me.
Sean
I'm curious if the dream boxes create intense regular (random) dreams, or if they were under the control of the dreamer (lucid)? If the former- I wouldn't particularly care for an intensified nightmare. Dream boxes sound like electrical hallucinogens...
-kh
It seems like the dreams were always enjoyable, however this was arranged.
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