I Ask Neal Stephenson About His Own Metaverse Definition, the Much-Delayed <em>Snow Crash</em> Movie/TV Adaptation, and How The Metaverse Is Already Larger Than He First Imagined

In case you missed it, FastCompany recently featured an excerpt based on my extensive interview with Neal Stephenson for the book. Highlights include his own definition of the Metaverse, reports that he looked into building it back in the 1990s right after Snow Crash was published, and that 1992 novel's long-delayed Hollywood adaptation. Marco Brambilla, director of the not horrible Stallone/Snipes 90s sci-fi movie Demolition Man, was attached to direct it as far back as 1996; the project's since changed Hollywood hands for now nearly 30 years.

So we talk about that, and I get to point out how the Metaverse concept is actually larger in real life than what he first imagined — which elicits a classic taciturn Stephenson reply:

The first is from the term "metaverse"—a shared virtual space—coined in Snow Crash, a 1998 novel. Here’s my design concept for an unrealised Paramount adaptation of Snow Crash worked on w/ Kathy Kennedy, 1998. The Metaverse is no longer sci-fi as our interactions are digitised. pic.twitter.com/P8XUDFiKaw

— Marco Brambilla Studio (@BrambillaStudio) May 25, 2021

What’s the status of the Snow Crash adaptation as a series on HBO?

HBO Max was developing it for television, and then they passed on it. So it all reverted back to Paramount, and I think it’s still up in the air: Is it a TV series? Is it a limited series or an ongoing series? Is it a movie or a series of movies? You’d have to touch base with them to try to get the latest on that front.

It’s sort of in this paradoxical place where because Snow Crash is so extremely influential, turning the novel into a movie might seem derivative, because there’s already been so many movies and TV shows inspired by Snow Crash.

It’s been interesting to watch over the years. You know, when we started talking about film adaptation in the ‘90s, obviously, you think about the state of computer graphics in 1995. And then imagine making that movie with those graphics. Maybe you make it a little nicer because you’re looking into the future but today if we were to watch a 1995 adaptation of Snow Crash, we would be immediately pulled out of the story by the obviously substandard graphics, from 27 years ago. And so, over time, now, we’ve kind of reached the point where it’s not clear that you would even use computer graphics. I mean, you could film actors playing whatever role and just claim that they were photorealistic avatars.

You mention at one point in Snow Crash that the metaverse has a concurrency twice the population of New York. I checked the city’s population in 1992 when you wrote it, and that would equate to about 15 million. And that’s roughly the combined total concurrency of Roblox, Fortnite, and so on—that 2020 Travis Scott event in Fortnite alone attracted over 12 million people.

That’s an interesting stat. Cool idea.

Much more here, and of course here.

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