Telefactory is a very old science-fiction concept. A telefactor is an artificial body operated remotely by a human being. It's the human component that makes a telefactor different from a robot.

My twist on the old telefactor concept is that the human being operates the body while asleep and in a state of lucid dreaming. The input for the dreams comes from the sensory apparatus of the artificial body, so unlike normal dreams, these are connected to reality--at a distance. The idea is that operating the body in this way increases the realism of the experience and enhances the telefactor's cabilities.

If you read the story, you'll see that it explores who and what a person is. It does this through the concept of Royerbote addiction, which results in a dream life becoming more real and important to a person than real life. It does this in a different way through the concept of oneiric telefactory, which essentially separates a person's body from its mind. The person's somatic existence becomes connected to the remote sensory input of the artificial body.

I find the image of a telefactory rig holding the actual body of the person operating the rig very compelling. It works as a kind of metaphor for the longing we all feel to be whole, integrated persons. The military psychologists in the story aim to do exactly the opposite: they want to separate people from their bodies and by extension from their humanity.

Maybe it was. The thing is, "hard" science fiction, when it works, always explores the moral, ethical, theological, etc., implications of hard scientific possibility. If it doesn't do that, then it may be good science, but it isn't good story telling. The science has to be good; it has to be plausible, but it has to matter, too.

I got the idea for Tangible Light while looking at the Tiffany mosaics in the Chicago Cultural Center. At the south end of the building is a magnificent marble double staircase. Running along the sides of the balustrades are small mosaics with a common motif: a central disk of polished semi-precious stone. Each stone is different and each is patterned in a way suggestive of geographical features, oceans, clouds, as if the disk were a satellite image of a planet. You can see several examples of these beautiful stones on the Tangible Light book cover.

The variety and beauty of the stones take on new depth if you imagine them as living planets. For one thing, you see them as if they were far away and would reveal more and more detail if you came nearer. For another, you see their features as changeable things frozen in time. In reality, the clouds would move, landmasses reflect alterations of wind and season, day and night, and then there is the other side of the planet which is hidden but present.