Quote:
Originally Posted by Treadstone71
[T]he premise was something along the lines that really popular literature became real as another universe, and the main characters in the novel traveled between these universes. . . . I think he also did something similar for "Job: A Comedy of Justice", where various deities and afterlifes existed depending on the number and strength of their believers.
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All of which has nothing to do with the idea that whatever you think becomes instantly real, so that what you fear is actually summoned by your fear and is coming for you from that moment forward on some level, on some plane. Worse, whatever holocaust or annihilation you picture will then occur -- if not here, then somewhere parallel -- meaning that all who have undisciplined thoughts and fear the worst for humankind become prolific and unconscious mass murderers.
And even worse than all that is the idea that the unconscious ramifications of whatever we all think in any moment are all coming true all the time, in a kind of grim collaboration that lacerates any hope of sustained future existence.
As a hidden but encompassing truth about the totality of existence as represented in a work of fiction, my idea is far more likely to have been used by a horror writer than in pulp science fiction, since the concept is more Platonic/Cabalistic than science- or even pseudo-science-referential. A vintage pulp science fiction writer is more likely to create a machine that causes someone to summon or be killed by the object of their fear. And even if a horror writer has done it in the metaphysical sense I'm talking about, the evidence of which I haven't yet encountered, the chances they did it exactly as I or someone else would are nil.
Besides which, Kenneth Grant is closer to the idea as I perceive it than any other writer you might have mentioned.
Some guy (re Brahms's Second Symphony): "Isn't that same melody used in a Mendelssohn string quartet?"
Johannes Brahms: "Yes, yes, any idiot can see that."
Every child has had the experience of imagining that the people around them are performing -- are in essence acting their lines in an endless movie of which said child is the star. If that idea inspires me, should I really stop myself from presenting it my way because something as banal as The Truman Show already exists?