The feed. The net. The metaverse. The matrix. The cyberverse. The...?

January 22, 2024 1:54 PM

For a project, I'm collecting terms from fiction (books, film, TV, anything) that refer to fictional all-encompassing virtual or digital worlds that serve as alternates to reality. If you want to add them to the list, give me the name and media of origin, like: OASIS (the novel Ready Player One) The Matrix (from the movie franchise of the same name) San Junipero (an epidose of the TV show Black Mirror) Obscure ones welcome in particular.
posted by daisystomper to Media & Arts (30 answers total)

Best answer: The matrix, but from Neuromancer instead.
posted by kpmcguire at 1:56 PM on January 22 [2 favorites]

Best answer: There's the V-World/New Cap City from Caprica (the Battlestar Galactica spinoff prequel series).
posted by General Malaise at 2:01 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Second Life is still going.

There's the Holodeck from Star Trek.

I, er, have a published sf novel out there, Against Peace and Freedom, where the thing is called the Vee.
posted by zompist at 2:07 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

The holodeck.
posted by cocoagirl at 2:07 PM on January 22

Best answer: In case you haven't checked TV Tropes yet... it has a Metaverse entry.
posted by stormyteal at 2:08 PM on January 22 [5 favorites]

Best answer: The Grid, TRON: Legacy
posted by foxfirefey at 2:09 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Not exactly what you're asking, but perhaps a useful list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_in_fiction and another possibly useful list is https://www.nypl.org/blog/2022/07/05/metaverse-sci-fi-reading-list
posted by adekllny at 2:09 PM on January 22

Oh! Would the definition of what you're seeking stretch to include Tel'aran'rhiod from The Wheel of Time?

Or things like halls of doorways? (There's something akin to that in Feist's Magician series. Or the Modes in the Piers Anthony books?)
posted by stormyteal at 2:12 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The Spew/DemoTainment Space, in The Spew by Neal Stephenson.
posted by adamrice at 2:16 PM on January 22

The Matrix, Doctor Who.
posted by rjs at 2:26 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

And maybe the Pattern and the Logrus in Zelazny's Amber Chronicles?
posted by rjs at 2:33 PM on January 22

Best answer: The "Cryptosphere" / "Data Corpus" / "Crypt" from Feersum Endjinn by Iain M Banks.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:48 PM on January 22

Eternity from Asimov's The End of Eternity

The Phantom Zone from Superman (or anywhere there's 'another dimension')

Heaven/the afterlife (various religions)
posted by Rash at 3:07 PM on January 22

Best answer: The Aleph from Mona Lisa Overdrive.
posted by pompomtom at 3:12 PM on January 22 [2 favorites]

The Phantom Zone

And its counterpart in the Marvel Universe, the Negative Zone
posted by Rash at 3:25 PM on January 22

eXistenZ, the shared virtual world/game from the movie eXistenZ, and transCendenZ, from the same movie.
posted by ejs at 4:18 PM on January 22

Best answer: Vurt, a “hallucinogenic drug/shared alternate reality, accessed by sucking on colour-coded feathers,” from the novel Vurt by Jeff Noon.
posted by ejs at 4:22 PM on January 22 [6 favorites]

Otherland, from the series of books by that name by Tad Williams.
posted by tomboko at 4:24 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Infinite Fun Space (Iain M. Banks’ Culture series)
posted by mbrubeck at 4:29 PM on January 22

Best answer: The Agora, in John Scalzi's Lock In/Head On novels.
posted by pollytropos at 4:52 PM on January 22

Metaverse - Snow Crash (1992)
data-net, Shockwave Rider, John Brunner (1975)
posted by theora55 at 5:06 PM on January 22

The Wired, from Serial Experiments Lain. (Though it's not quite as simple as that.)

The Crypt in Banks' Feersum Endjinn.

Trying to think of some more but wanted to get these in before someone else did!!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 6:15 PM on January 22

Oops, EndsOfInvention beat me. But I thought of Lethe from More Than This by Patrick Ness, though I think that is not necessarily the proper name for the place/environment.

Also Summer Wars has a sim called OZ.

The Sphere from Jon Evans' Exadelic.

Ra, from qntm's Ra.

Deus in Devs.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 6:38 PM on January 22

Remember the Information Superhighway ?
posted by JonJacky at 7:49 PM on January 22 [1 favorite]

Better Than Life from the Red Dwarf books (I don't recall if it showed up in the TV series).

It's the name of a specific game, not a name for the general cyber-verse, but it was depicted as an immersive VR game very much metaverse-y.
posted by rhiannonstone at 8:58 PM on January 22

Best answer: The Linkings, from the Wayfarers series.
posted by mumkin at 9:01 PM on January 22

"The Maelstrom", from Peter Watts' Rifters trilogy.
posted by mochi_cat at 10:54 PM on January 22

Not quite the same thing (more like reality through a conceptual Fourier transform, according to my brain), but how about Shadesmar from Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight archive?
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 11:18 PM on January 22

The 2013 movie The Congress, based on Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Congress
posted by Pronoiac at 1:35 AM on January 23

In Blindsight by Peter Watts the protagonist's mother goes to Heaven, an immersive simulation.
posted by Illusory contour at 8:14 AM on January 23