6 ms·
Snow Crash Related Items Auction
- turbobooster 4y agoThis same guy provided nothing to Magic Leap...one of reasons it failed
- xhkkffbf 4y agoI liked _Snow Crash_ but I didn't realize it was popular enough to support such a big name auction at a big name house.
- rout39574 4y agoNerds with more dollars than sense. And that's looking in the mirror; I feel the pull even though I no way could afford it. Though I'd pay a bit more not to have the NFT. :P
- OscarCunningham 4y agoReally? I'm no fan of NFTs, but they do fit the Snow Crash aesthetic. You could sell it for some sweet Kongbucks.
- Sebguer 4y agoThey fit the Snow Crash aesthetic in the torment nexus sense. Though, based on his recent professional decisions it turns out that all along, Neal Stephenson was actually advocating for the torment nexus!
- Geee 4y agoIt's not that popular in itself, but Snow Crash introduced metaverse as a term and a concept which is why it has such high status.
- guenthert 4y agoThe term perhaps, the concept is much older. I remember 'Welt am Draht', but doubt that was first either.
- stevenwoo 4y agoThere are variations on this in Philip K Dick's work, like the shared hallucinatory visions in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch or the shared experiences via the empathy boxes of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which might be the biggest part of the book that the movie adaptations did not attempt to translate to screen.
- femto113 4y agoFor a science fiction novel it was pretty huge--selling over 125,000 copies[1] in its first couple years, and is ranked near the top 10 of all time. This list [2] has it in 12th place overall, but a lot of the others on the list have also been movies, which raises the profile of books a lot. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1995/02/21/on-the-nets-cutting-edge/5d2344e6-61f6-4253-8e2c-b386b162dab5/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1995/02/21/... [2] https://best-sci-fi-books.com/the-bestselling-science-fiction-books-of-all-time/ https://best-sci-fi-books.com/the-bestselling-science-fictio...
- tiedieconderoga 4y agoIt's a book which helped coin the term "metaverse", written by an author who also published a hit novel about cryptocurrency in the late '90s. It might not be a bad time to cash in on that nostalgia and new money, especially if you feel bearish about how those concepts are being reified today.
- hprotagonist 4y agohow much for HN usernames? neal, call me, baby.
- fakethenews2022 4y agoIt is Hiro Protagonist.
- hiroprot 4y agoThis
- tpmx 4y agoI really miss the 90s version of Neal. Snow crash was foundational/awesome. Then he just went weirder and weirder and weirder. I kept waiting for a return to that awesomeness for like 20 years before I gave up.
- quacked 4y agoCryptonomicon is one of my favorite novels, and I loved Snow Crash and The Big U. I find I find his current stuff unreadable, but I can't put my finger on why.
- tpmx 4y agoYeah Cryptonomicon (1999) was good. It had great parts but as a whole it wasn't great. Way too unfocused. In that aspect a preview of things to come.
- MikeBVaughn 4y agoIt's weird that I so fundamentally disagree; it really drives home how subjective fiction is. I strongly prefer Cryptonomicon to Snow Crash. I'm a big Stephenson fan, and I find his post-Cryptonomicon stuff more focused (or at least more cohesive? Structurally cogent?) on a conceptual level. I revisited Snow Crash a few years ago, and liked it much, much less than I remembered - I wouldn't describe it as a disciplined novel. It's a baggy mess with the same maximalist bent of his later work. it's a discursive, meandering story that synthesizes disparate concepts in a very fun way. But, it never gels too well; it sort of feels like he lashed a hyper-globalized-strip-mall-hellscape dystopia to a parody of the cyberpunk aesthetic, and superglued both of those things to Julian Jaynes. It just happens to indulge his maximalist tendencies in a smaller page budget, and fails to get the best of either a short novel or a big messy "idea-novel." Don't get me wrong, like you, I found the first reading of Snow Crash a formative experience as a SF fan. But I'd also never read anything like cyberpunk; I was solidly a Niven Kid in middle school, completely ignorant of post-New Wave SF. I think a lot of what I found special as a kid was actually done better elsewhere. In terms of that "90's Retrofuturistic So-Cal Strip Mall Apocalypse" brand of cyberpunk, I think William Gibson's Virtual Light was far more satisfying to revisit. It's a more assured, contained novel, and to my surprise, I think the relative restraint yields a much funnier novel than Snow Crash.
- TigeriusKirk 4y ago"*Sake not included."
- sirtimbly 4y agoThe sort of collectible one of his characters would purchase after a successful exit from a crypto startup. But it is beautiful. Also what is this new snowcrash story he was working on!?!
- GeekyBear 4y agoI loved Snow Crash, but I found the tech in his book, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, to be more compelling.
- nessus42 4y agoThe Diamond Age is my favorite novel of all time.
- dhc02 4y ago... except for that one scene.
- nkohari 4y agoI feel like this describes every Stephenson book I've read, Snow Crash among them.
- kadoban 4y agoHmm, what's the bad scene in Snow Crash?
- block_dagger 4y agoHidden needle
- Animats 4y agoThe leather jacket for YT seems unrelated. The novel has YT wearing a jumpsuit which she can switch to either black or orange.
- simplicio 4y agoThe book was originally conceived as a graphic novel using some sort of software to generate the images from photographs of actors and props. The jacket was a prop for one of those photoshoots. You can see some examples of the art in one of the other items up for auction.
- wbobeirne 4y ago> The leather jacket meant to be worn by Y.T. in the original graphic novel concept for "Snow Crash From the listing.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoA sword for $120k to $180k: the essential accessory for the wealthy mall ninja.
- aidenn0 4y agoMall Ninja; that really takes me back. I don't think they can afford the sword after buying a vest that can stop a .308 magnum...
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoAs a young person, malls were still a thing, and my local mall did in fact have a store that sold swords. I think most of their trade was in more practical things like kitchen knives, but the swords were for sale if you had the money and wanted one.
- aidenn0 4y agoIn the early 2000s there was a widely circulated post with someone saying that they were mall security, that they always wore a bullet proof vest, but were looking for something that could stop a sniper rifle. They also bragged about being a master of several martial-arts including ninjitsu. Thus, the legend of "mall ninja" was born.
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoI think I remember that, and they tried to make a case that mall security was the Front Line Against Evil in today's society or some such.
- nessus42 4y agoWhy is the sword worth $150k? Did it appear in something famous? Or is it just because other Weta Workshop items have appeared in famous films?
- jaak 4y agoIt's probably because it has something to do with Stephenson's notorious failed Kickstarter sword fighting game "Clang." https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang
- speed_spread 4y agoBecause the market for such items include people who are willing to believe it is worth that much.
- rideontime 4y agoBecause of the "twinned NFT," of course.
- pimlottc 4y agoSome background on the auction items posted by Neal Stephenson on Twitter [0]: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1629161748812156929.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1629161748812156929.html 0: https://twitter.com/nealstephenson/status/1629161748812156929 https://twitter.com/nealstephenson/status/162916174881215692...
- Apocryphon 4y agoAnyone in this thread read The Star Fraction by Ken MacLeod, the beginning of his The Fall Revolution series? Am I the only one who thought it was like a British, anarcho-syndicalist (in some parts of the setting) version of Snow Crash? Right down to the computer program MacGuffin?
- leashless 4y agoHe’s such a star. Yes.
- speed_spread 4y agoWhat I want is a Reason prop.
- Slow_Hand 4y agoSeems like a missed opportunity to make an NFT that resembles the Snow Crash data stream that makes hackers go brain dead, or a Nam Shub of Enkidu NFT.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoMy favourite bit is where he goes "Okay I had to learn a lot about number theory / RF propagation / Victorian literature / 17th Century French politics / exotic timber for this bit, so now you've got to learn it too."
- chayesfss 4y ago[dead]
- chayesfss 4y ago[dead]