I think it required literacy in a specific branch of SF. My mother may not be a huge SF fan herself, but my father read a lot of hard SF, at least in the 50s and 60s, not so much by the time I was growing up but I've read my parents' book shelves. She also raised two SF fans. So I'd expect her to be pretty good at picking up SF tropes. But Dick aside (and there wasn't any Philip K. Dick on the family bookshelves for whatever reason) the whole VR strand really took off after my sister and I left home and my Dad had stopped reading fiction in any real quantities and, judging by comments elsewhere, the whole VR thing was completely opaque to anyone not familiar with that particular genre.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-15 07:30 am (UTC)