The Cassutt Files
The Rise of the Avatars

What makes sci-fi, either in books or on screen, so appealing is its ability to take you to another world. To let you become—however briefly—another person, whether heroic or tragic.

Books and movies in any genre accomplish the same goal, of course, but sci-fi offers the broadest range, from a "forgotten" past where several types of humanoids co-existed and magic worked, to a "present" where a single driven billionaire funds the first flight to the moon, to a future in which humans change genders the way we change clothing.

In two months, James Cameron begins filming (an obsolete word, given that this will be a 3-D digital-video production) his first feature in a decade, Avatar. The storyline reportedly deals with an embittered miner who finds a new life on an extra-solar world that is uninhabitable for humans ... the hero's consciousness is overlaid on an alien being, seeing through its eyes, feeling what it feels, breathing as it breathes ...

The avatar concept goes back, at least, to Poul Anderson's wonderful 1959 story "Call Me Joe." Even your humble columnist has explored the theme in "More Adventures on Other Planets." The concept is especially timely, not just as a sci-fi trope but as a tool of real-life space exploration. I've grown convinced that the only way humans will "visit" most of the bodies in our own solar system is by using avatars. Overlaying our personalities on space probes.

So it's no surprise to me that James Cameron, the filmmaker with the purest sci-fi vision in the history of cinema, the tech-head who chairs seminars at the American Institute for the Advancement of Science, who seriously tried to get qualified to perform extra-vehicular activity on the Mir space station, has patiently waited a decade for the improvement in CGI techniques—and the reduction in costs—to converge to the point where Avatar became possible ... and affordable.

But has he waited too long?

Living la vida segunda

Avatars have been with us for years now, not just in the odd story or film, but in massively multiplayer online (MMO) games like World of Warcraft, Warhammer and especially Second Life. They are another unanticipated legacy of the Internet and the home computer.

The statistics of the MMO world are mind-boggling even to someone raised in the television industry: More than 115 games are currently running in the online world, with close to that number in development. The business itself grosses around $2.3 billion a year, and the curve ahead slopes sharply upward.

World of Warcraft is a concept I can understand. It is the logical evolution of early role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. (I was the CBS TV children's programmer for the animated series of D&D what seems like, and actually was, a generation ago.) I look on WoW's impressive (8 million users) audience, the intensity of their interest and the vast sums of money spend on last month's The Burning Crusade expansion pack with a mixture of admiration and jealousy.

But no confusion. What sci-fi reader would fail to understand—or long to play in—a world like that of Warcraft? It's a fantasy realm with powers and scheming opponents and arcane rules to be overcome by your avatar. I've lived in some version of WoW all my life—and I'm not just talking about my scriptwriting career.

Second Life is something altogether different. In this MMO, with a reported "population" of more than 3 million, the setting is here and now, in an archipelago of virtual islands populated by virtual characters living in virtual structures, living virtual second lives and—most strangely—making real money.

Yes, some of the avatars have managed to gain control over virtual properties and sell them for cash to other players.

Second Life avatars are not only making money, they are having relationships that are no doubt richer and more exotic than those in their organic lives.

How "real" is the world of Second Life? The Reuters news agency has "stationed" a virtual reporter in it! Yes, there are now stories about the various characters—avatars—available to the world outside Second Life. (Given that people who are subjects of what passes for news these days are pretty close to fictional, this isn't actually a major leap.)

Still, it proves to me that these MMOs have crossed over. They are as real to me as Singapore or Darfur.

And easier to reach.

The ultimate sci-fi experience

In the same way that your college experience is different from high school (you choose a college, but you are generally stuck with a high school), an MMO world is a community you choose to join ... indeed, a world you can help to create.

And while you're in it, you can be anybody you want. Female instead of male. Tall instead of short. Rich—well, who chooses to be poor?

Surely everyone is thinner, too. (In fact, don't all avatars recall Donald Fagen's line from the song "I.G.Y," "eternally free, yes, and eternally young"?)

Even the names are whimsical, like Daffodil and Chromium, new extended family names suggested by Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions.

The associations—your avatar's avatar friends—are yours to chose, within the rules of the community.

When you add the glorious possibilities of being able to be an avatar in a richly realized future or on a dangerous, brilliantly conceived alien world ... there can't be a sci-fi reader or viewer who wouldn't sign on. The only limitations are bandwith and time. (MMOs are being described as "the new golf." As someone who has spent untold hours chasing little white balls over fields of green, I can readily appreciate the comparison.)

Being an avatar is the ultimate expression of the sci-fi experience.

My only complaint about the concept is this: It will destroy—well, replace—sci-fi books and movies as we know them. It will make James Cameron's Avatar obsolete before a pixel is recorded.

Why read about a future when you can actually live in it?

Why write about a single story or a series of stories set on an alien planet when you can inhabit it?

How can Lost, Battlestar Galactica or The Dresden Files compete?

I remember seeing a blurb in a magazine or a title some years ago—"Live? Our machines will do it for us!"

Make that "avatars" instead of "machines."

Then add the words "and better!"