In both “The Veldt” and “The Commuter” by Ray Bradbury and Phillip K. Dick respectively, we are introduced to people living within or amongst some type of alternate reality. In Bradbury’s story, the alt reality is within the home of a family of four. The nursery as it is called, a room where the imagination and feelings of the children are brought to life in order to diagnose and treat social and emotional anxieties of sorts. Inevitably, since we are dealing technology in the sci-fi realm, the alternate reality blends with the real world becoming a real life danger.
Within “the Commuter”, the alternate reality is a small town that doesn’t seem to exist. This story follows Ed Jacobson, a ticket salesperson at the train station within the city, who encounters a gentleman trying to purchase a ticket book home to a town called Macon Heights. Jacobson shows the man that the place does not exist on the map, to which he swears by it that he takes this train twice daily and simply disappears. Bound to find out how this could be possible, Ed does some research and even recruits his partner Laura to find what they can on this town. Riding the train through the night, Ed finally feels he has seen the stop he is looking for and returns the next day to find Macon Heights. After realizing that the town comes and goes and the phenomena is now spreading, he rushes home to make sure Laura is ok. Upon arrival things seem off, buildings he hadn’t noticed and places that seemed foreign within his own city blocks but finds everything is right as rain at home with Laura, and their baby, that exists now!
Though both are essentially the same situation, where alternate realities seem to blend too close to home in the real world and cause some danger and confusion, they are also very different in the context of how they describe the reality and how it goes off the rails. Dick’s story is more set in the mind and spacetime of this one man dealing with his own realizations of the world falling beneath him. Conversely, Bradbury presents the reality in less of a universal rip in the continuum and more technological and personal to this one family. I think both authors want to dial in on how our psyche and what we are willing to accept can shape and form our reality but used different creative vehicles to drive it home.
