I'm less than 100 pages in so far ... but whoa.
She's made the protagonist a writer. Which I'm sure I've mentioned before, I hate. But Scarlett Thomas is amazing, so she's forgiven.
She's carried on some pop co themes, and the end of mr y themes. But oh dear ... she's talking about infinite universes and she mentions how one book the writer has researched goes on about these two worlds that everone lives in without realising. Now, in pop co (about a toy company having a weekend retreat, summarising like crazy there lol) there's a videogames division and one member of the videogames group comes up with this concept of actually living out something like second life. That online game where you create an avatar and it has its own currency and you can get married etc etc? But it was mixing that with virtual reality suits/pods, so you could literally act out your fantasies. That's all fine. But when she talks about this writers works, she mentions microchips that are inserted at birth, and whenever people's brainwaves start to slow down, to initiate sleep, this other reality comes into being, and people unwittingly lead two lives. Does that just sound like the plot of a 10 year James Cameron project or what?
I like all the stuff about the Omega point and the universe and our existence going on ad infinitum. She talks about how we existed in one universe until our scientists created what they call 'second world', this point where the dead undie and time is never-ceasing, and it's all from this self-generating computer.life support machine. And to leave this 'second world' and go to heaven you should do more with your life, those doomed to sit on the sofa eating pizza will exist in the second world for longer, stuck by their own lacklustre attitude to their second life.
Of course, the writer's derisive about these concepts, she doesn't like the thought of living forever, but she has like, 300 more pages to change her mind ...
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