It was the opening sentence of Patrick McGrath's New York Times book review of Kevin Brockmeier's novel, "The Brief History of the Dead," and follows:
"Here is a novel with an intriguing premise: that humans are divided into three categories, comprising those who are still alive, those who have died but live on in the memories of the living, and those who are dead and forgotten."
What an interesting way of looking at the world.
As I think about it, I realize that I do occasionally think of some dead people — relatives, friends, classmates, ballplayers I enjoyed watching as a boy (many of whose autographs were my most precious possessions at the time); beyond those relatively few, though, most of the people I've had occasion to cross paths with while sporting my current meat suit are entirely forgotten, and thus belong to Brockmeier's third group.
McGrath wrote that the novel takes place in a city populated by individuals in the second group: "... they're entirely sustained by the thoughts of people still living in the real world."
How is this different from virtual people in virtual gaming worlds?
Are they too not "entirely sustained by the thoughts of people still living in the real world?"
And let's take it a step farther: aren't the inhabitants of virtual worlds created "by the thoughts of people still living in the real world?"
Unless the game creator is dead.
BTW the reviewer said the book is terrible apart from its superb premise.
Still, that premise is powerful and provocative enough for me to go ahead and take a flyer on the novel.
Are virtual worlds real if there's no one around to visit them?
If the world is a calculation and everyone drops dead and there's no one around to do the math, as it were, does the world disappear?
There are many who would say, "Absolutely."
Me, I think there's no more interesting question than that one.
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