Science fiction is a type of literature that is based upon a
made-up reality—a fantasy, if you will—of the future and technologically
advanced societies. The story, “Reality
Check,” by David Brin, has quite a few elements that qualify it as science
fiction. For one, the story takes place
some time in the distant future. We know
this because there is a reference to the past year of 2147 when “the last of
their race died.” Additionally, the
story begins by assuming the reader is some type of computer-human hybrid by
the way it requests the reader to “pattern-scan” the story “for embedded code
and check it against the reference verifier in the blind spot of [the] left
eye.” Further, the narrator discloses
toward the end of the story how his people have a “machine-enhanced ability to
cast thoughts far across the cosmos.” The
story represents a dystopian society, or at least a society that is deemed to
be failed and dystopian by the narrator.
This is evidenced by the narrator’s reference to his planet as “The
Wasteland” and how he discloses how much of his “population wallows in
simulated, marvelously limited sub-lives.” As the story concludes, it is made clear how
unhappy his society is when it is stated that they have been “snared in [a] web
of ennui.” Because of these loathsome
descriptions of his society, it seems quite impossible that the society could be
anything near a utopia thus could only be seen to be dystopian.
