Club Update

First of all, the meeting went well on Saturday June 16th. The topic was "Virtual Realities," and it covered books, anthologies or short stories with the title theme.

Virtual Realities

What did "Virtual Realities" mean, then? The Matrix, perhaps. a reality where the life you live, the life you call "reality," is a lie?

Or Wonderland, another virtual reality entered involuntarily by Alice in Lewis Carroll's amusing story, where mathematics and logic are turned in on themselves?

What themes appear in these strange alternate forms of reality?

- "There's No There, There:" The reality seems to exist above and beyond, parallel to or within the "normal," yet it is clear that the traveller has not physically travelled anywhere.

- "What Happens In Vegas:" What happens in the virtual may, or may not, reflect events in the real world. The best example of this is the urban legend that if you die in your dreams, you will die in real life.

- "We Do Things Differently Here:" The rules for this virtual reality are different to those in the real world; perhaps the mathematical rules of computers apply, or dream logic, or absurdity.

- "I'm So Confused:" The visitor may or may not have difficulty in distinguishing between his chosen reality and the alternate reality. This might lead to great confusion on everybody's part, when the protagonist starts talking to virtual avatars existing only in the virtual world.

- "The Resemblance Is Uncanny" During the protagonist's virtual sojourn, friendly or not-so-friendly faces appear resembling characters the protagonist knows in the real world. These caicatures bearing familiar faces seem to represent something about the real world characters.

- "The Way In Is Not The Way Out:" The exit may only appear when the character has performed some deed.

- "Not The End:" Even when the protagonist has left, the virtual journey might not necessarily be the end; the "real world" the protagonist has jumped into might still be a part of the virtual world, a la the plot twist of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Ship In A Bottle," where the characters are fooled into thinking they've left the holodeck where they have, in fact, just stepped from one part of the holodeck into another.

What sort of virtual reality is it? Is it like the Net of William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy, the idea which spawned the modern internet that we know and love, and cyberspace - the term coined by Bruce Sterling?

Or is it like the worlds of Lost Horizon's Shangri-La, Brigadoon, Tir Na Nog, the various fantasy worlds of Enid Blyton, or the world of Fundindelve from Alan Garner's novels?

Does this virtual existence work through dream logic, like Lovecraft's Dreamlands, or the astral plane, or the Umbra or Astral Plane or the state of Twilight in White Wolf's World of Darkness roleplaying games such as Mage: the Awakening?

Or is it the product of a possible psychotic breakdown, such as William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum?"

Whatever the source, however it is reached, the topic of virtual realities raises some of the most fundamental questions of philosophy - what is real? Which reality is the best real? Can we choose which reality to live in? and so on.

Club News - 2013 Topics

The round of 2013 topics is upon us. We must select the topics to cover for next year, so that we can put up the data in a poster to advertise in the library.

I'd appreciate you thinking about what you'd like to see, and bringing the topics with you for the July meeting so we can thrash out a final list by the end of the August meeting and have a poster by September.

Quarterly Magazine

If you have ideas for articles for the quarterly magazine, next month is the deadline for them. I start working on the first issue of the quarterly magazine on July 15, and publish it in PDF the day after the August meeting. Give me time to review the August meeting. Probably the June and July meetings too.

Next Meetings

July's meeting takes place on July 14, with the theme of "Giants and Dwarves." Expect a blog post soon. Likewise, expect a blog post on the topic of the August meeting's theme, "Magic and Sorcery."

If there is anything I have missed, please let me know.

-- Alex Greene.