"The City of the Living Dead" in Science Wonder Stories: May 1930
Virtual reality story written in 1930
The City of the Living Dead (1930) by Laurence Manning and Fletcher Pratt is an early and remarkably sophisticated anti-machine dystopia told as a frame narrative. An elder of a remote Norse valley recounts his youthful discovery of a vast abandoned city whose remaining inhabitants lie suspended in mechanical dream systems, every nerve in their bodies threaded with silver filaments that feed them artificial sensations in place of lived experience. The last surviving operator of the system, a man whose face and senses have largely been replaced by machinery, explains how civilization gradually surrendered labor, art, adventure, and finally consciousness itself to machines designed to provide endless synthetic experience. The novella anticipates later virtual reality dystopias with unusual precision for 1930. This May 1930 issue of Science Wonder Stories (Vol. 1, No. 12) contains the complete novella.
Softcover. First Edition. New York: Stellar Publishing, 1930. #10675.
Good copy with chipping and tears to spine with stray ink scribble on front cover, but overall surprisingly well-preserved for the age, with all pages intact.
Softcover. First Edition. New York: Stellar Publishing, 1930. #10675.
Good copy with chipping and tears to spine with stray ink scribble on front cover, but overall surprisingly well-preserved for the age, with all pages intact.