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Article: Virtual afterlife leads edgy new stories
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- January 20, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2002 Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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Imagine the afterlife: angelic choirs, harps, wings and maybe even
God. Now visualize eternity as a virtual reality brought to you by
"Disney-Mitsubishi"--and welcome to hell.
This dystopia is the premise of "In Xanadu," by Thomas M. Disch,
one of the superb stories in Redshift: Extreme Visions of Speculative
Fiction, edited by Al Sarrantonio (Roc, $24.95). It's the best
collection of new science fiction in recent memory.
"Xanadu" uses verses from
Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" to head mini-chapters exploring how
virtual reality can substitute for life after death. Your mind is
recorded, and after you die it's fed into a hard disk "heaven."
Beware the fine print, though. In Disch's vision, ...