Author Notes to

This Life and Later Ones

 

Much has been claimed for virtual reality as a novel theme. But it harks back, fully formed already, to Lawrence Manning’s 1933 story “The City of Sleep,” to James Gunn’s novel The Joy Makers (1961), as well as to George du Maurier’s first novel, Peter Ibbetson (1891), and to many others. I first dealt with the idea in “Starcrossed,” and with the idea of cyberspace in Macrolife (1979). But in “This Life and Later Ones” I treated the idea in very personal terms.

“Wonderful,” wrote Barry N. Malzberg, “right up to that last line, which is a knife in the heart. A considerable achievement. If it’s possible to do more in 3500 words, I haven’t found it yet. The mark of a really good story is that after you’ve read it you say, ‘it’s so obvious, why the hell didn’t I do that?’ But of course you didn’t, and that’s the whole point. I don’t think I’ve ever done something as neat and terrifying as this. It’s so damned good that I don’t even feel competitive; it’s worth doing for its own sake and if you had done nothing in a career but this story (and of course you’ve done a lot in a career) it would be something worth taking into the night.”