Simulacron-3

Simulacron -3 is the title of a science fiction novel by American author Daniel F. Galouye, which was first published in 1964. In the United Kingdom, the novel has also been published under the alternative title Counterfeit World.

Action

The work deals with the operator of a virtual city, which is used for market research purposes. The gigantic computer of the so-called TEAG (Test AG) makes this possible. In its stores, there is a simulated city that is designed together with its thousands of inhabitants and absolutely down to the smallest detail. The simulation is so perfect that the residents have their own consciousness and not even notice that they exist only as software in a computer. Over time, recognizes the protagonist Douglas Hall, the technical director of the plant, more and more, that his world is not real, but also exists as a simulation in a higher reality. With the help of Jinx, one of this higher reality " descended " administrator of the local system he finally succeeds, not only to preserve his own simulated world from being destroyed by the "Great Simulatroniker " the higher world, but also its own spirit in its body with his physically identical to transfer and the Great Simulatroniker as to fling to the simulated levels of the computer, where his old body is in the course of a popular uprising, which is directed against the political and economic abuse TEAG destroyed. The, however, very gently told love story between Jinx and Douglas forms the emotional background of the story.

Background

Simulacron -3 ( from the Latin simulacrum = illusion ) can be regarded as one of the first descriptions of simulated reality, even if the theme of the illusory nature of the world was treated by Plato in his allegory of the cave more than two thousand years ago. Another philosophical foundation gave René Descartes with his maxim "I think, therefore I am." She also plays in the course of the novel's plot quite directly a significant role in the slow and analytically headed towards truth considerations of Hall.

Films

The novel was filmed twice, a two-part TV movie entitled World on a Wire, opposes first in 1973 by Rainer Werner Fassbinder the deep pessimism and fatalism of novel resistance. 1999 produced by Roland Emmerich, directed by Josef Rusnak a second version under the title The 13th Floor - Are you what do you think? . Although he is not a film adaptation in the strict sense, also takes on the film The Matrix (1999 ) Elements of the basic idea of Galouyes novel.

Criticism

" How else might only Philip K. Dick questioned Daniel F. Galouye with this novel reality: Is it all just note, we are not at the mercy of an unquestionable fate against which we can not say in? Galouyes novel is deeply pessimistic: as Hall penetrates into the actual reality, it turns out to be gray and colorless as the illusion. What is the reality in which we must live, for now, really? "

Expenditure

• Counterfeit World, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd.. 1964
• Simulacron -3, New York: Bantam Books 1964
• World on a Wire, Munich: Goldmann 1965, ISBN 3-442-23057-8
• Simulacron Three, München: Heyne 1983, ISBN 3-453-30904-9 ( Library of Science Fiction Literature, Vol 16)
• The Thirteenth Floor (Eng. ), Kiepenheuer & Petrovich 1999, ISBN 3- 462-02826 -X