SOURCE: "Virtual Reading," in The New Yorker, Vol. LXX, No. 49, February 13, 1995, pp. 86-7.

[In the review below, Espen offers a negative assessment of Vurt.]

Virtual reality, true to its name, continues to recede into the brave new digital future. Except for a few tacky theme-park versions, the technology remains a vaporware phenomenon that has yet to escape from the labs and into the real world. For more than a decade, however—certainly since the publication of William Gibson's Neuromancer, in 1984—V.R.'s imaginary analogues have proliferated in the subgenre that Gardner Dozois, the editor of Asimov's Science Fiction, christened "cyberpunk." More recently, virtual-reality story lines have become hot properties in Hollywood: Michael Douglas watches a virtual Demi Moore delete his career in Disclosure; Keanu Reeves (in the forthcoming Johnny Mnemonic) and Denzel Washington (in Virtuosity) will soon jack into the cyberspace frontier on film; and Robin Williams...