It's not as though Tron (1982) invented virtual reality or cyberspace — the idea of humans entering into an immersive computer generated environment was around way before Flynn and his cohorts ran the grid in their light cycles. Philip K. Dick had something like it in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep with the Empathy Machine and even *Doctor Who *had VR in the 1976 episode "The Deadly Assassin," where the good Doctor enters the Time Lords' ultimate computer — called the Matrix (look it up) — to do battle in a virtual world controlled by his arch-nemesis The Master.
What Tron did was bring the idea of virtual reality much closer to the popular conscience, making the thought of going into the computer seem plausible. Tron was initially only mildly successful, but — unlike Disney's previous attempt at sci-fi, The Black Hole — quickly developed a cult following. There's no way of telling exactly the effect the movie had on the the burgeoning cyberpunk literary movement that blossomed in the 1980s, but there can be little doubt that everyone in the sci-fi sub-genre saw the movie or at least played the video games based on it.
With yesterday's release of the sequel *Tron: Legacy *on a variety of digital media, we also finally get the original movie back, absent from our shelves for many years. The rumor goes that Disney didn't want to re-release it in advance of the sequel because they were worried kids would be turned off by the primitive special effects of the original and it would hurt Legacy at the box-office. Whatever. I know my son (who saw the sequel with me) and I can't wait to see both of them (yes, I liked Tron: Legacy, despite its shortcomings).
Tron may not have invented virtual reality, but I remember being thrilled as a young teen in the early 1980s by the concept of being digital that it presented. It was those ideas of becoming one with the machine that I sought out in the books I read after that.
For your consideration — five of the top cyberpunk books that feature virtual reality. Tron may or may not have inspired the authors to write them, but I know the movie inspired me to read them.
Style of VR: Jack your skull straight into cyberspace.
First book of The Sprawl Trilogy (3 novels and one book of short stories), Neuromancer is possibly the most important work in the Cyberpunk cannon. Based in an eroded American future, it is the story of Case — a burned out cyberjockey, and Molly, a bad-ass cybernetically enhanced bodyguard/assassin/courier as they disinterestedly try to save the world from a megalomaniacal AI computer in cyberspace. The computer wins. But that's actually a good thing.
Style of VR: Better driving through plugging your eyes directly into the vehicle.
Imagine a world where the whole Red State/Blue State thing is not just a political division in North America, but the governmental break down. Yes, Walter Jon Williams shows us a future where there is no US any more, and everywhere is a no fly zone. To run supplies (and bootleg) across the "heartland," smugglers resort to jacking straight into their vehicles and becoming one with their cars.
__Style of VR: __Everyone is just a node in the net now.
Although most commonly associated with the movie and TV series of the same name, Ghost In the Shell started out as a popular manga series in the late 1980s. It's the story of the Major, a cyborg with a human ghost that can slip between reality and cyberspace as easily as she can slip in and out of her skin tight body suits. More than being a cyborg, though, Masiamune's cyberspace art is (I believe quite literally) genius bordering on insane. It is so intricately detailed that it can become sensory overload.
Style of VR: 3D goggles that hack your brain straight through the optic nerve.
Snow Crash has, without doubt, the best character name ever. Hiro Protagonist is, yes, the hero protagonist of the novel, a brilliant but idealistic hacker living in a America completely run by corporations, where the U.S. Government (Inc.) is just another franchise operation struggling for relevance. Hiro is trying to save the cyberspace world from a nasty computer virus that can jump over and infect the human brain, reprogramming anyone exposed to be a willing slave for a mysterious cult.
Style of VR: Stick a feather in your mouth and go for a ride
Although not well known in the US, Jeff Noon's horrific tale of urban decay in British Manchester is some of the best punk SF I've read. Part drug, part consensual hallucination, vurt is delivered in color coded feathers that take the ingester into virtual reality trips ("vurt," get it?) with the other people using the same feather. The mechanism for this is never clearly explained, but the book is all the stronger for that fact. (Remember how midi-chlorians ruined The Force? Sometimes things are just better left unexplained)
