Literary Trope: imaginary rooms

[da]

I've read three books in the last year that have used a similar plot device in passing: an invisible room.

That is, a room that exists only by convention.

In Little, Big there was the Imaginary Study, where Auberon spends time by himself in his tiny one-room apartment shared with his sweetie.

In Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close there are Nothing Places, which serves nearly the same purpose.

In a Donald Westlake potboiler called Trust Me on This, there are Squaricles, lines drawn on the floor in an office too cheap to give its employees Cubicles.

It's occurred to me that I enjoyed all three of these books, so I'm wondering whether anybody knows of other books with some similar element, since I'm looking for more fiction to read. Oh, and no mimes. :)

Comments

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Does virtual reality count as an imaginary room?

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Excellent question. I hadn't considered virtual reality.

On the one hand, VR worlds can surely be imaginary. On the other, I expect that VR might be a different literary trope, even if they are invisible and imaginary.

VR is computer-mediated, and posing the question, I was mostly interested in "spaces that exist only in the mind of the occupants." and how people come to agree that it exists, even if it's just a joke at first; and how it becomes real for them.

And, holodecks are just *so* tired and 1990s, aren't they?

But. One of my favourite imaginary environment stories ever, is still The Game in Ender's Game, which was sort of VR; and once I did have a thing for Neuromancer, as embarrassed as I may be about it today.

So, sure, I'll open it up to include VR, if the fiction is good.

If nothing else, I can go look up good novels with VR, I suppose. Any suggestions? :)

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Greg Egan's "Permutation City," might have something of the flavour you seem to be thinking of, but within VR, although it might not. Probably not the flavour you want, but I did enjoy the Otherland series by Tad Williams, which had an interesting mixture of VR and real-life thriller-style drama. It runs a little long, but I like that in a story.

I adored Greg Egan's "Diaspora," which certainly considered the disparity between reality and constructed reality and a time when that might not have the obvious answers we assign it now. I think it's a better book than his other mentioned above, but it has less to do with your theme.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Oo, Greg Egan I've not read. I will get my mitts on those somehow, though the local library doesn't seem to have them. Though they have the Tad Williams, so I may give that a shot as well, even though I'm more into the thinkin' than the action-drama.

Thanks for the recommendations!

[kraig.livejournal.com]

I still like Neuromancer; the writing seems cliched, but I think that's cos everybody glommed onto it.

I miss old-school cyberpunk.