The early ’90s sci-fi novel Snowcrash, by Neal Stephenson, has found a second life, as a readable virtual book, in SecondLife (SL). The ground-breaking novel, with its Metaverse virtual world that mirrored the real one, was one of the inspirations for SecondLife, so it’s especially poignant to have it show up there as a virtual book. W. James Au, an “embedded journalist” working in SL, explains the book’s upcoming e-publication:
“The SL edition was created with the approval of Stephenson himself, then brought in-world by Fizik Baskerville of UK virtual world branding company Rivers Run Red, working with Penguin, Stephenson’s publisher.
“”We have only two hundred of them,’ Baskerville tells me, after offering an advance peek at the SL edition Snowcrash. ‘One is going in the Welcome Area. The others will be ‘lottery’ picks for discerning communities.’
“The SL edition, it should be said, only contains the book’s first forty pages, displayed on an accompanying HUD, with buttons to launch an hour of the book’s audio recording (or an ambient music channel for background reading music), and a button that launches a web browser, taking you straight to the Amazon page where you can buy the full version.”
James’s posting goes on to include a story about another Linden Labs employee’s encounter with Stephenson where he appeared dramatically under-enthused with the idea of a real-world answer to his fictional Metaverse. Worth checking out.