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Snow Crash in SL: The Metaverse Comes Home

Posted Friday, August 11th, 2006, at 8:49 am Eastern by Mark Wallace
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Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash to be published in Second Life

Virtual-world services company Rivers Run Red is busy these days. Having recently announced they’d be bringing hit pop band Duran Duran to the virtual world of Second Life, the news is now that they’re bringing the metaverse back home, so to speak, by working with publisher Penguin to create a virtual version of Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi novel, Snow Crash, to be distributed in Second Life, a world largely inspired by the book. Virtual copies of a portion of the book should be available starting next week.

Book publishing in Second Life, of course, has not been a smashing success. “Prim” books are unwieldy, hard to manipulate and often very difficult to read. But RRR and publisher Penguin seem savvy on this note, with the in-world version apparently offering only a sampler of portions of the text and excerpts from an audio version — with a special discount (presumably on paper-and-ink purchases) being offered to Second Life residents.

While it may only be a small step forward in virtual media technology, it’s a very cool undertaking nonetheless. Written in the years 1988 through 1991 (”as the author listened to a great deal of loud, relentless, depressing music”), Snow Crash foreshadows a Second Life-like metaverse (a term coined in the novel) with remarkable accuracy — especially given that even the Web browser was yet a few years out. Many of the emergent societal tropes that can be found today in Second Life were present 15 years ago in Snow Crash, from the ability to create one’s own fantasy assets (and the wide disparity between newbies and uber content creators in that regard), to the social pressure felt by residents whose avatars aren’t up to fashionable standards and even a feted inner core who enjoy special privileges not available to those standing outside the velvet rope of a virtual nightclub like the book’s Black Sun. Second Life creator Philip Rosedale has said, “Snow Crash has the closest practical resemblance to Second Life as it exists now: a parallel, immersive world which simulates an alternate universe, which thousands of people inhabit simultaneously for communication, play, and work, at various levels and variations of role-playing with their avatars.”

No word yet on whether this means a brand new print version of the book, but I’d assume that it does, since I think the current version of Snow Crash is in print from a division of Random House. Penguin’s involvement may mean only a new UK version. More details will presumably emerge soon. Meanwhile, 3pointD welcomes Stephenson and his seminal metaversal vision back to the metaverse. Good to have you.

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