In 1981 Editions Galilée published what was to become Baudrillard's most famous book Simulacres et Simulation. Published by the University of Michigan Press in 1994 in English translation by Sheila Faria Glaser, Simulacra and Simulation is the book which appears in the film The Matrix, directed by the Wachowski brothers in the late 1990s. There were two sequels The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions in 2003 by which time Baudrillard had given interviews rejecting the film as misunderstanding his notion of simulation and the real. However, Baudrillard figured prominently in thinking around the film's production and consumption and the leading actors in The Matrix were provided with the white-cover English edition of Simulacra and Simulation to read. There is no doubt at all that association with the film gave Baudrillard the greatest global popular cultural boost in his life and career. The Sheila Faria Glaser translation into English is the extract here. Simulacra and Simulation is in fact made up of a series of short essays written and published at different times up to and including 1981. In one section, at page 1 in the English translation, Baudrillard begins with the infamous quote attributed to Ecclesiastes in the Bible, which ends with the words ‘The simulacrum is true’, which he later admitted was completely imaginary and made up. The extract here is a short piece entitled ‘The Beaubourg Effect’, first written and published in French between the publication of Symbolic Exchange and Death and Seduction.