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Tech   companies have spent years developing better, cheaper devices to immerse[i]   people in digital worlds. Yet they are still figuring   out [ii]how to make virtual   reality the kind of technology that people cannot live without.

So   for inspiration[iii],   they are turning to science fiction[iv].

At   Oculus, a leading virtual reality company, a copy of the popular sci-fi novel   “Ready Player One” is handed out to   new hires[v].   Magic Leap, a secretive augmented reality start-up[vi],   has hired science fiction and fantasy writers. The name of Microsoft’s   HoloLens headset is a salute[vii]   to the holodeck, a simulation room from “Star   Trek.”

 “Like many other people working in the tech   space, I’m not a creative person,” said Palmer Luckey, 23, a co-founder of   Oculus, which was bought by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. “It’s nice that   science fiction exists because these are really creative people figuring out   what the ultimate[viii]   use of any technology might be. They come up with a lot of incredible[ix]   ideas.”

Those   ideas are especially relevant[x]   now, as some of the biggest technology companies are nearing a major push[xi]   of a new generation of virtual reality products. In the next few   months, virtual reality headsets from Oculus, Sony and HTC go on sale. Venture capital[xii]   money is pouring into the industry.

But   how people will interact with the imaginary worlds remains largely unknown   territory. And that is where science fiction comes in[xiii]. Science fiction is shaping the language the companies   are using to market the technology, influencing the types of experiences made   for the headsets and even defining long-term goals for developers.

“Science   fiction, in simplest terms, sets you free,” said Ralph Osterhout, chief   executive of the Osterhout Design Group, which builds augmented reality   glasses.

Perhaps   no fictional work resonates[xiv]   more throughout the industry these days than “Ready Player One,” written by   Ernest Cline and now being made into a movie by Steven Spielberg.

Much   of the action in the book takes place inside the Oasis[xv],   a global virtual reality network. Characters in the network attend school,   socialize and take part in a high-stakes[xvi]   treasure hunt. Through virtual reality, they can inhabit[xvii]   the perspectives of actors in classic movies.

The   book was published in 2011, around the time Mr. Luckey began building an   early prototype[xviii]   of the Oculus headset. Mr. Luckey said he appreciated Mr. Cline’s portrayals[xix]   of characters controlling their avatars[xx]   through full-body suits rather than plugging “Matrix”-style cables into their   brains.

 “One of the things I like about ‘Ready   Player One’ is all of the depictions[xxi]   in the book are pretty feasible[xxii],”   Mr. Luckey said. “None of it is crazy, far-out[xxiii]   tech.”

Oculus   gave out 3,000 copies of the book to attendees of an Oculus developer   conference last year. For good   measure[xxiv], Oculus named the meeting rooms at its   headquarters after famous fictional versions of virtual reality, including   the holodeck, the Oasis and the Matrix, from the movie of the same name and,   before that, William Gibson’s “Neuromancer.”

Mr.   Cline said he wrote “Ready Player One” partly because he could not figure out[xxv]   why virtual reality had not taken off[xxvi]   in the real world.

“I   think that was the same impulse[xxvii]   that drove Palmer,” said Mr. Cline, who has visited Oculus several times to   speak to employees. “Growing up with ‘Neuromancer’   and ‘Max Headroom’, it had the same   effect on me as a writer as it did on businesspeople.”

Techies[xxviii] do not need any   encouragement from their employers to read or watch science fiction, long a pillar[xxix]   of geek culture[xxx].   Throw a rock in Silicon Valley and you are likely to hit a software engineer   who can cite how long it took the Millennium Falcon to make the Kessel Run in   “Star Wars.” (Less than 12 parsecs[xxxi],   according to Han Solo, whose use of a term for distance — one parsec equals   about 3.26 light-years — rather than time has been the subject of entire   articles.) The genre[xxxii]   has influenced many corners of technology, from smartphones to robotics[xxxiii]   to space exploration.

But   there is something unique about the interplay[xxxiv]   between science fiction and virtual reality, a technology that is essentially   an instrument for fooling[xxxv]   people into believing they are someplace — and   often someone — they are not. Virtual reality is a medium, like television or   video games, which can borrow liberally from the virtual worlds experienced   by fictional characters.

Magic   Leap, based in Dania Beach, Fla., and which counts Google as one of its big   investors, has gone even further than most companies by hiring three science   fiction and fantasy writers on staff. Its most famous sci-fi recruit[xxxvi]   is Neal Stephenson, who depicted the virtual world of the Metaverse in his seminal[xxxvii]   1992 novel “Snow Crash.”

In   an interview, Mr. Stephenson — whose title is chief futurist — declined[xxxviii]   to say what he was working on at Magic Leap, describing it as one of several   “content projects” underway at the company.

More broadly[xxxix], Mr. Stephenson said   science fiction books and movies are often useful within tech companies for rallying[xl]   employees around a shared vision.

“My   theory is that science fiction can actually have some value in that it gets   everyone on the same page without the kind of expensive and tedious[xli]   process of PowerPoint,” he said. But the influence of the genre within tech   companies is “surprising and mysterious to me as well,” he added.

There   is a regular theme in science fiction that its fans in tech talk less about,   though: the dystopian[xlii]   aspects of virtual reality. Addiction, disconnection from relationships in   the real world and alienation[xliii]   from the environment are often side effects[xliv]   in narratives about virtual reality. It’s hard to make that into a selling   point for the technology.

 “Entrepreneurs are optimistic and upbeat by   nature, which is why I enjoy hanging around with[xlv]   them,” Mr. Stephenson said. “They’ve got an admirable[xlvi]   ability to completely ignore the more dystopian elements you’re talking about   and see the cool stuff and positive potential of where it might go.”

Of   course, authors and moviemakers get to overlook[xlvii]   details of their own — like the tough technological challenges that real tech   companies face.

 “You never have to reboot[xlviii]   the damned thing” in sci-fi books, said Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist[xlix]   who works at Intel and has written about the interplay between technology and   science fiction. “The mechanics are less interesting to most science fiction   writers than the experience.”

Sometimes   science fiction plants seeds in the minds of inventors that take years to sprout[l].   The holographic chess game that Chewbacca played on a tabletop aboard the   Millennium Falcon was pretty far-out in the 1970s, when Jeri Ellsworth saw it   in the original “Star Wars.” It   took several decades before technology caught up.

In   2013, Ms. Ellsworth’s start-up, CastAR, gave the first public demonstration   of the company’s augmented reality glasses, which overlay[li]   digital imagery on the user’s view of the real world.

By now, the experience shown in the demonstration   should come as no surprise — the glasses enabled the person wearing them to   play a holographic chess game on a tabletop.

 “It’s something I’ve been dreaming about my   entire life,” Ms. Ellsworth said.

多年来，科技公司一直致力于开发更好、更廉价的设备，以便让人们沉浸在数字世界中。然而，他们仍在研究如何使虚拟现实成为人们生活中不可或缺的技术。

所以为了寻找灵感，他们求助于科幻小说。

在领先的虚拟现实公司Oculus，新入职人员会收到一本颇受欢迎的科幻小说《头号玩家》。Magic   Leap（一家神秘的增强现实初创公司）已经聘请了科幻和奇幻作家。微软的HoloLens头显设备的名字，正是向《星际迷航》中的模拟房间全息甲板(holodeck)的致敬。

“和科技业的其他很多从业者一样，我不是一个有创意的人，”23岁的帕尔默·勒基(Palmer Luckey)说。他是2014年被Facebook用20亿美元收购的Oculus的联合创始人。“有科幻小说存在是件好事，因为它们的作者真的很有创造力，他们会想出任何技术可能会有的终极用途。他们想出了很多不可思议的创意。”

那些创意现在尤其重要，因为一些最大的科技公司即将大力推介新一代虚拟现实产品。接下来的几个月里，Oculus、索尼(Sony) 和宏达国际电子(HTC)的虚拟现实头显将纷纷上市。风投资金正在涌入这个行业。

但总的来说，人们将如何与虚拟世界互动仍是一个未知领域。而这正是科幻小说的用武之地。科幻小说正影响着科技公司用来推销相关技术的用语，同时他们还影响着为头显产品设计的体验类型，甚至决定着开发人员的长期目标。

“简单说来，科幻小说能让你自由，”生产增强现实眼镜的公司Osterhout设计集团(Osterhout Design Group)首席执行官拉尔夫·奥斯特豪特(Ralph Osterhout)说。

如今，或许没有哪部科幻作品能比《头号玩家》在整个行业引起更多共鸣。由欧内斯特·克莱因(Ernest Cline)所著的《头号玩家》现在被史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格(Steven Spielberg)改编成电影。

书中的大量活动都发生在一个叫绿洲(Oasis)的全球虚拟网络里。这个网络里的角色会上学、社交、参加高风险的寻宝活动。通过虚拟现实，他们能够居住在经典电影里演员所处的景观中。

该书2011年出版。勒基正是在该书出版前后开始开发Oculus头显早期样品。勒基说，他欣赏克莱因的描写，因为书中的人物是通过覆盖全身的衣服，而不是在头上插入《黑客帝国》(Matrix)里那种线缆，来控制代表自己的角色的。

“我喜欢《头号玩家》的一个地方是，书中所有的描写都相当可行，”勒基说。“没有一个地方说的是疯狂的，遥不可及的技术。”

去年，Oculus发了3000本《头号玩家》给出席Oculus开发者会议的人。此外，Oculus还用知名科幻作品中的虚拟现实系统命名其总部的会议室，包括全息甲板、绿洲和来自电影《黑客帝国》的母体，以及更早的一部科幻小说——威廉·吉布森(William   Gibson)的《神经漫游者》。

克莱因说，他之所以会写《头号玩家》，有一部分原因是想不通为什么虚拟现实还没有在现实世界中流行起来。

“我觉得驱动帕尔默的也是这同一种力量，”克莱因说。他曾多次来Oculus，给这里的员工做演讲。“读着《神经漫游者》和看着《超级麦克斯》(Max Headroom)长大，对我这样一个作家的影响，和对商人是一样的。”

科技人士压根不需要雇主鼓励他们阅读科幻小说和看科幻电影，长久以来，他们一直是极客文化的中坚力量。在硅谷，你随便扔出一块石子，都有可能砸中一个可以说出《星球大战》里的千年隼号(Millennium Falcon)用多长时间跑完克赛尔航程(Kessel   Run)的软件工程师。（据汉·索罗[Han Solo]讲，这个时间是不到12秒差距——一秒差距约相当于3.26光年，他使用的是一个描述距离而非时间的词汇，这个在以前曾是一些文章整篇谈论的主题。）科幻题材的作品对各个技术领域都产生了影响，不管是智能手机、机器人，还是太空探索。

但科幻作品与虚拟现实之间的相互影响，却有一些独特之处。虚拟现实技术实质上是一种欺骗人的手法，让人误以为自己置身其他某个地方，而且常常具有另一个身份。虚拟现实是一个媒介，就像电视或电子游戏，可以从虚构人物所处的虚拟世界中任意借用各种元素。

总部在佛罗里达州达尼亚滩的Magic Leap尝试的举动，比大多数公司都更进一步，该公司雇佣了三名科幻和幻想作家。这家公司的大型投资者中包括谷歌(Google)。该公司在科幻领域最著名的招聘举动就是雇下尼尔·斯蒂芬森(Neal Stephenson)，后者在1992年的杰出小说《雪崩》(Snow Crash)中描绘了称作“超元域”(Metaverse)的虚拟世界。

在一次采访中，担任“首席未来学家”职务的斯蒂芬森谢绝透露他在Magic Leap公司正在做些什么，只是说那是该公司进行的若干项“内容项目”中的一个。

斯蒂芬森比较宽泛地说，在科技公司里，科幻小说和电影常常有助于用一个共同的愿景凝聚员工。

“我的理论是，科幻小说实际上具有一定价值，因为它能让所有人都有一致的理解，而不必采用那种又费钱又枯燥的讲很多PPT的过程，”他说。但这种文学题材在科技企业内部的影响力，他补充道，“对我来说也是相当让人惊讶，相当神秘的。”

但是科幻小说中一个时常出现的主题，在科技企业的粉丝当中谈论得却没有那么多：虚拟现实技术也有反乌托邦的特性。在关于虚拟现实的论述中，时常谈到的副作用有成瘾、疏离现实世界中的人际关系、与周遭环境相隔绝。企业很难把这些问题变成相关技术的卖点。

“创业者天生就是乐观、向上的，所以我喜欢和他们打交道，”斯蒂芬森说。“他们具有一种让人羡慕的能力，可以完全忽视你谈的这些较为反乌托邦的元素，看到酷的东西和它未来走向的积极潜力。”

当然，作者和电影人自己也会忽略一些细节，比如真正的科技企业需要面对的艰巨的技术挑战。

在科幻小说里“永远都不需要重启那个破玩意儿，”吉纳维芙·贝尔(Genevieve Bell)说。“对多数科幻作家来说，原理机制不如那种体验有意思。”贝尔是文化人类学家，曾在英特尔(Intel)工作，撰写过关于科技与科幻相互影响的著作。

有时候，科幻作品能在发明家头脑里植下种子，再经过很多年才能萌芽。1970年代，杰瑞·埃尔斯沃斯(Jeri Ellsworth)看到楚巴卡(Chewbacca)在千年隼号里的桌子上玩的全息国际象棋，当时还觉得相当超前。过了几十年后，技术才跟上。

2013年，埃尔斯沃斯的初创公司CastAR首次公开展示了该公司的增强现实眼镜，这种眼镜能将数字图像覆盖在用户看到的现实世界图像上。

到目前为止，在演示中展示的体验应该不足为奇——戴眼镜的人可以在桌面上玩全息国际象棋游戏。

“这是我梦想了一辈子的事情，”埃尔斯沃斯说。