The Door To Nowhere (2008)

‘Am I still in the game?’

It’s a question asked at the end of “eXistenZ”, an insanely eerie and quite brilliant David Cronenberg movie about a game that becomes more real than actual life. This subject has been explored before, most memorably by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor in the Red Dwarf novel ‘Better Than Life’ and the episodes of the popular TV show that inspired it.

My son’s birth was quite a traumatic event. It shouldn’t have been, but we’d decided on a home birth, something I would strongly discourage all first-time parents from doing. It was a split decision: I’m vasovagal and almost pathologically phobic about hospitals, and my wife thought we would get better, more personal (1-on-1) care in the safety of our own home. The resulting disaster turned what should have been the happiest day of our lives into a situation that would have been better suited to a horror movie.