Douglas Hall, the novel’s main character, is a computer scientists whose work is to build, by way of a super-computer called Simulacron-3, an exact replica of the world in which the reactions of virtual persons to that damn toothpaste would be recorded and then we could put down those endless polls. This is how corporations fix their products, this is how politics are decided. As you stroll the sidewalk, someone might come to you with a notepad, flash a badge and proceed to ask your opinion on that particular toothpaste. Galouye’s 1964 proto-cyberpunk novel Simulacron-3 takes place in a world where opinion polls are mandatory.

Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Alien Life?.

Being You: Are we ready to understand consciousness?.

The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul.

There is not much more that I can write about this book without depriving you of the pleasure of reading it, so let me just recommend that you get a copy from a website near you and take with you for the summer holidays.

Not only the presentation of the simulated reality world is very convincing and the technology very believable, but it also turns out that the reasons why the simulated reality world (Simulacron-3) was created could be sold as a business plan for any ambitious startup today. For a book written more than half a century ago, the story is surprisingly modern and up-to-date.

Still, to my knowledge, Simulacron-3, by Daniel Galouye, may have been the first SF book to tackle the issue head-on. Greg Egan, the master of realistic SF, may have taken the matter to its ultimate consequences, with Permutation City and Instantiation, but the truth is that this question has been the subject of many books, including the famous Neuromancer, by William Gibson.

Even the popular Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) webcomic has helped clarify the issue, in a very popular strip. The simulation hypothesis which states that all of reality, including the Earth and the observable universe, could, in fact, be the result of a computer simulation is a hot topic of debate among philosophers, scientists, and SF writers. Are we living in a computer simulation? And, if so, how could we tell? This question became very popular in the last few years and has led to many articles, comments, and arguments.