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Nearly thirty years on, any adaptation will have to lose some of the book’s charming elements that made sense at the time, such as an America dealing with the f
by Mediterraneo10 7y ago
Nearly thirty years on, any adaptation will have to lose some of the book’s charming elements that made sense at the time, such as an America dealing with the fallout of specifically the Reagan administration, or a conspicuous amount of immigrants from early post-Soviet Tajikistan. Still, the theme of everything being privatized has held up well.
The one downside of bringing Snow Crash back into the public consciousness, though, is that uninformed viewers may well take Stephenson’s use of Sumerian as the "original human language" seriously, and Julian Jaynes’ work will be probably be accepted as a valid thing when in fact it is extremely controversial.
- Pfhreak 7y ago> such an as America dealing with the fallout of specifically the Reagan administration I mean, Snowcrash's view of income inequality, limitless corporate power, the value of the human life vs capital... I don't think they have to tone that down at all. In fact, my money is they play that up pretty significantly as the essential Neoliberal endgame.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoDitto, I think that'll sell well in a world where millennial are killing $THINGS
- andybak 7y agoWestworld also had several references to Jaynes. They fitted perfectly. Damn that series was good.
- jacquesm 7y agoIf you liked the series you should definitely track down the original movie with Yul Brynner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld_(film)
- notahacker 7y agoThe biggest challenge is going to be getting the levels of irony and cartoonishness right, especially if the network executives are hoping for something more like Blade Runner. The one downside is it could end up taking itself too seriously or going too far down the road of kitsch crap. I don't think finding a Reagan substitute is going to be a challenge though, and I don't think there's too much to worry about viewers absorbing themselves in Julian Jaynes' work, not least because any form of adaptation is going to cut Stephenson's exposition to the bare minimum "it's like a virus for your mind. This tech is older than the pyramids; it's how they controlled the people that built them", and it's going to be in the context of skateboarders latching onto mafia pizza delivery drivers, Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong and villains with harpoons hooking up with underage heroes
- User23 7y agoJaynes' ideas are facially wacky it's true, but they're still extremely interesting. I recommend anyone who is curious about the human condition to read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. I'm not saying he gets everything (or even anything) right, but it's indisputably a really fascinating thesis. And let's bear in mind that plenty of other obviously absurd theories actually hold up really well, relativity and quantum electrodynamics being two of the obvious big ones. Obviously the science of human consciousness is much more intractable, but even so.
- LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago!Nam-shub