I'm surprised that more writers haven't exploited the possibilities opened up by cyberspace, since it lets you put the characters virtually anywhere you could imagine.
Neil
That may actually be part of it. People like defined spaces and boundaries. Virtual reality makes anything possible, but where anything is truely possible people become uncomfortable. Is anything what it seems to be? Can you expect the laws of physics to stay in effect? How many writers want to stretch the borders that far? How many readers are willing to give themselves over to a story where a scene between Avon and Blake could end up with Servalan removing the VR gear and telling Travis, also stepping out of gear, that they seem to have finally managed the perfect imitations of the rebels, and now they can get on with creating computer generated news vilifying them. The character junkies would probably feel cheated that the scene wasn't real at all. Likewise a caper story with Avona nd Vila might turn out to be a consensual shared hallucination they are using to speed-train each other in their respective skills, because Avon would be seeing through Vila's eyes and feeling through his fingers as he handled his lockpicks, and Vila was shadowing Avon's movements through computer screens. The cross-skilling would be valuable and if they had the equipment and trust, they very well might try it. But the rebel-cheering enthusiast might feel let down that no power plant was really blown up in the making of this shared hallucination.