on thousand dreams of Stellavista
We enter the story through the narrative of a lawyer Howard Talbot. He and his wife Fey are searching for a new house in a futuristic resort Vermilion Sands. As they are on a search of a house where they would settle down, they find one who formerly belonged to a movie star Gloria Tremayne and her husband, architect Miles Vanden Starr.
The house itself is a psychotropic house — with thousands of sensors able to detect and react to its owner’s emotions — but still remembers the personalities of Gloria and Miles. Although Fey is disturbed by the ghostly presence of Gloria in the house, Howard is interested even more when he learns who was the previous owner. As Gloria was his clients after she died the idea of her presence in the house rose some nostalgia about her.
They moved in and everything could be fine unless Howard wasn’t so preoccupied with studying the house and Gloria’s personality captured in it. Fey noticed this and when she addressed this issue, Howard dismissed it. The moods of the house started escalating until one day the house attacked Fey. This was the last drop for her. Fey expected a house where they can rediscover their marriage but this was just too much for her and proposed moving into a static house.
Shortly after we see Fey leaving and Howard in relief. Continuing living in the house and dive into endless observations of the house. Until one night the whole house collapsed reconstructing Gloria’s murder of her husband.
Howard almost got killed by the house but managed to escape and continued living in the house, hoping to see the spirit of Gloria again.
— —
When reading Ballard’s short story about living houses I felt an awful dread. Of course, the nearly living houses as organisms is achievable, but is it necessary? Technology is omnipresent in our lives but do we want technology to consume our lives?
I believe, these highly sensitive and responsive houses can be exhilarating but only for a short period of time. Living in an environment that can infuse your emotions and mirror them would only deepen the emotions. When it comes to positive emotions, there’s no problem with them, but when they’re negative they become magnified. We could see this when the anger from a small quarrel stayed in the room longer, or when simply a small irritation created a massive response and fell on Fey.
Another danger is that we become preoccupied with things rather than humans. This is noticeable when Fey addresses this issue directly. And although Howard and Fey moved into the new house to get a new perspective on their marriage, it only created a bigger distance between them.
Overall, Ballard’s story is nothing new. We surround ourselves with sad or frustrated content on the internet and we build relationships with our devices rather than our partners. No need for futuristic sensing houses. What Ballard reminds us is, that no matter the technology, we will always be prone to occupy ourselves with it when bored. The only question is, what we’ll do about it.
