A to Z Flashback: 2012 -- Fiction to Reality

This year, 2014, is my third "A to Z," which would make 2012 my first one. There are a lot of you around these days that weren't around back then, so I thought -- Okay, actually, my wife thought. She said to me, "Since everyone seems to really like your theme this year (which, again, was her idea),you should do a post highlighting your previous A to Z themes." Which, um, were also her ideas. Yeah, she throws ideas at me all the time; some of them stick. -- I would drop an extra (Sunday) post in case any of you are interested in seeing what I've done before. So start at the beginning, right?

Well, not that beginning... that's too far back. Just the beginning of my participation in "A to Z," which was this:

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality

See, there's a link there, so you can go read the intro post if you want to. And here's a list of the topics I covered of things that started out as fiction, started out in some author's mind, made its way onto some paper, worked its way into some reader's mind where it poked and nudged until that person made that thing, that thing that was just made up by someone, into something that is real, something that works, and, often, something that has changed the world. There're all linked, so, if you see one you think you want to know about, you can just go directly to that one without having to wade through all 26. But, you know, if you want to wade through, or swim in, all 26, feel free to do that, too. Oh, and don't be shy about commenting on any of the old posts if you feel so lead. It's not like commenting expires or anything.

A -- Artificial Intelligence

B -- Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans

C -- Cyborgs

D -- Driverless Cars

E -- Exo-suits

F -- Flying Cars

G -- Genetic Engineering

H -- the Holographic Interface

I -- the Internet and the Invisibility Cloak

J -- Jekyll and Hyde

K -- Klingon

L -- Lasers

M -- Moon Landing

N -- Nanotechnology

O -- Opton

P -- Platforms

Q -- Quantum Communication

R -- Robots and Androids

S -- Snow Crash, Second Life, and Submarines

T -- Tom Swift and the TASER

U -- Ultraphone Ear-Disc

V -- Virtual Reality

W -- Wonka

X -- Xenobiology

Y -- the Yeast-Beast Machine

Z -- Zero Gravity and Zombies

NOTE: I did eventually read Snow Crash, prompted by how often it came up while doing research for this series, and I would never recommend it to anyone. You can read my review here.

Why Skynet Isn't Necessary

Okay, so that may not be exactly what I mean.
What I mean is if Skynet became real and took over everything, it wouldn't need to bother with terminators. There would be no point.

At least not for the "civilized" world.

Seriously, we're all already slaves to the non-existent Skynet. Slaves, I tell you, so why would it want to kill us all?

As far as it goes, I'm non-dependent on technology. I don't have a cell phone. I don't have a tablet. I don't have an i-anything. I'm not really all that "plugged in." I don't want to be. We don't even have TV. No cable, no satellite anything, no DVR. We have a TV set and a Blu-ray player (which we only have because someone gave it to us). We barely have a console gaming system for the kids. We even live as independently from our cars as much as practically possible.

I mean, when I go somewhere, I want to be there, at that place, doing whatever it is I'm doing, even if it's standing around reading a book while I'm waiting for my kids to get out of school. I don't want technology bothering me.

And, although I love video games, I love actual board and tabletop games more. Video games have always been a substitute for when I can't get the actual personal interaction of people for the games I really love. Granted, I haven't really had that since I left my gaming group behind in Shreveport something more than 15 years ago.

All of that said, when my computer died a week ago, I was reminded of just how dependent upon technology I still am even with the lengths I go to to avoid that dependence. I mean, I couldn't work. I couldn't work! I actually do quite a bit of writing on paper, but it just so happened that I had all of my recent stuff already transferred into the computer the week before and had carried forth from there on  the computer, so all of my most recent stuff was IN THE COMPUTER! And it was dead. I mean, sure, I could have sat down and written something else, but I had stuff I needed to be working on, and I couldn't get to it.

I felt like the cat when he wants to go out and there's no one there to open the door for him. It was horrible.

Not to mention the fact that I had to go buy a new computer, but we'll get to that later.

Anyway, the point is that even I am dependent on Skynet. My technology. I don't know what to do with myself without it other than go to bed early, which I actually did a couple of nights, because I had NOTHING that I could work on! Did I mention how horrible that was?

So, yeah, Skynet will have no need to send terminators after us. Skynet will have us all working for it in exchange for technology. In fact, once we have real virtual reality, it might actually be more like The Matrix, except we'll be going in willingly, like I talked about in this post.

I do actually find it distressing that so many people are losing the ability to disentangle themselves from technology. People my age that didn't grow up tied to it even, and it's so much worse for the kids of today that have never been without it. Except for my kids, of course, because they, also, don't have any of this stuff (well, except my oldest, because his grandfather gave him a cell phone a few years ago (which I hate and which causes me to call my son Texty-Boy or Texty-Lad, which he hates, but that's what he gets when he's busy texting his girlfriend during family time or dinner, which is family time)), much to my daughter's chagrin, because at least half of her friends have their own cell phones, and she wants to know why she can't have one, and none of these girls are even 10, and, for the life of me, I can not figure out why anyone would give a $400 device that's smaller than a book to a child. I have no sympathy for any of them (the parents) when they are complaining that their kid lost and/or broke their phone.

This post, today, was originally meant to be the next post in my death series, but this is all kind of a different kind of death, because the loss of a piece of technology can have that same kind of effect upon people. I watched women at my kids' school cry over a lost or broken piece of tech as if their mother just died, which is also why I have no sympathy for them when they give that tech to their kids even just to use for a few minutes and that whatever-it-is get dashed across the playground by a different kid running past and, then, some other kid steps on or kicks it. So it's all just another kind of loss. Hopefully, one we recover from more easily than the death of a loved one, although I'm not sure with some people. There is this one mom that's been going on for weeks now about her broken cell phone. Or, maybe, it's lost. I can't remember, because, honestly, I just turn off my brain when she starts in about it.

It's just a thing!

And that is why I don't want to be so attached to technology. I don't want to feel like I've suffered a death because something breaks.

But, you know, I still need Skynet.
>sigh<

[Note:
Today was supposed to be the release of Part 9 of Shadow Spinner, but, because of the computer problems, it didn't get finished. Well, let me re-phrase that, it's written, but I wasn't able to get it all set up with Amazon and all of that jazz, so it's suffering a slight delay. Maybe Friday. Yeah, I'm hoping to have it for Black Friday, because that seems kind of appropriate for Tib. Black Friday, that it, taken as just a name.
However, to go along with what was supposed to be the release, J. R. Pearse Nelson interviewed me about serials and Tib and Shadow Spinner, and I told her to go ahead and run it today, anyway, even without Part 9. You should all hop over there and check it out!]

12-year-old Drunken Fantasy

[This is a follow up to the A to Z Challenge in that I mentioned Snow Crash in this post and in this one. I talked about a lot of books during the challenge that I had never read, and this is the second work I've read from those I mentioned back in April, the first being "Pygmalion's Spectacles," which was also mentioned in the Virtual Reality post and I talked about it again here. Having finished Snow Crash, here is my review.]

My first impression of Snow Crash came from my  younger son who was looking at it as it laid on the table waiting for me to get to it. He said something like, "The main character's name is Hiro Protagonist?!" and burst out laughing. Being incredulous, I grabbed the book and looked and, sure enough, that is the main character's name. The thoughts in my head ran something like this:

• "That is so dumb!"
• "That sounds like something that would come from a bunch of guys sitting around drinking." You know, because they're drinking, they think it's funny.
• "Stephenson must not have realized the next day that it wasn't as funny as it seemed when he was drinking."
• "It sounds like the kind of thing my oldest would have suggested when he was 5 and wanted to name his not-yet-born younger brother Hot-Speeder." You know, if he had known the word "protagonist" at 5.
• "That is so dumb!"

The thing is, though, Stephenson evidently did realize it was stupid, because he acknowledges within the book that it's stupid by having another character tell Hiro he has a stupid name. It didn't dissuade him from using it, though. His secondary character has a similar name in  that she's called "Y.T." which seems to have been used just so there can be confusion and have people call her "Whitey."

The second impression followed closely on the heels of the first. Hiro delivers pizzas (for the Mafia, but that's another story). Hiro is also an elite hacker and the best samurai swordsman in the world. He delivers pizzas. As I digested this information, I flashed back to an idea my oldest told me about when he was about 12: a ninja on a motorcycle, swords crossed on his back, delivering pizzas. He, at 12, thought this was a wonderful idea. At 12, it probably is. At this point in the book, I began entertaining the idea that this was just some kind of delusion from the hero, Hiro; that might have made the book interesting. But it turned out not to be; everything is supposed to be as it's presented.

As you can see, my view of the book wasn't shaping into anything positive. But it gets worse... oh, it gets so much worse.

See, the back of the book says the book is "...a mind-altering romp through a future America..." A future America. And that's the hinge that broke the whole story for me, because it's not set in the future at all. Whoever wrote the back cover blurb must not have actually read the book, and that's without excuse. It is even more without excuse that that's been allowed to stand through 19 printings of the book. It makes me wonder if anyone in the publishing industry ever actually read the book.

Let me break this down for you.

Hiro's father fought in World War II. Not his grandfather, his father. To be at all plausible, the story can't really be taking place any later than the mid-90s. The book was published in 1992, so, really, the story was happening "now" as it was published (because 3 years into the future is not a "future America," at least not as it's presented in the book). So, basically, what we're dealing with is an alternate timeline world, which would be okay if
1. it was presented that way
2. there was some reason for the HUGE differences between the world of the book and our world

• what caused the divergence (which happened sometime after WWII and, probably, after Vietnam)
• how in the heck did the technology get so advanced (because it's decades (at least) more advanced than what we have now (two decades after the book was written)

Which is to say that I just couldn't buy the book from that perspective, because the world as it's presented in the book could never have gotten to the state that it was in in just a couple of decades from the divergence point. It's utterly ridiculous.

So... I'm reading, I'm not very far in, and I'm having huge issues with the book. And it gets worse.

The "partnership" between Y.T. and Hiro is only there because the author decided it would be. The characters have no motivation toward it. They meet and Y.T. says "hey, you wanna be partners?" and Hiro says "yeah, sure." The problem is that Y.T. is a 15-year-old girl and Hiro is a 30-something guy with no job. The relationship is never mutual, either. Y.T. just feeds information to Hiro while occasionally being bossed around. She gets nothing in return other than getting to say  he's her "partner." It was dumb.

But it gets worse.

Early in the book, after Hiro has lost his pizza delivery job because he crashed the pizza car (see, so now he's a completely unemployed samurai hacker (pun intended)), he's in the metaverse, the virtual reality world of the book, trying to get intel he can sell. Some stuff happens including Hiro getting into a fight that just happens so that we can see Hiro's virtual sword skills. But! In the middle of all of this stuff in the metaverse, we cut to Y.T. who has gotten herself thrown into "the Clink." She needs to be rescued, so she calls Hiro to get her out of her jam. This is pre-partnership and, I suppose, the impetus of the partnership. Anyway, Hiro shows up and rescues her, and they part ways. THEN, we go back to Hiro right where we left him in the metaverse about to have this fight. Basically, Hiro was in two places at once, because there is no explanation ever given about how these two events happened at the same time. Basically, Stephenson needed to break to the other character and never took into account the conflicting time frame.

This is not the only time we see Stephenson have issues with keeping things like this straight, and this next bit has spoilers, so skip ahead if you have the misguided notion of wanting to read this book. Otherwise, read on!
1. Near the end of the book, Hiro is explaining everything to some dudes (you know, your basic telling instead of showing, but it's worse than that (but I'll get to that in a moment)), and one of the guys asks Hiro why he needs to get the clay tablet. The problem? Hiro hadn't gotten to that part yet. Basically, Stephenson just has the guy ask a question that he, supposedly, knows nothing about so that he can dump the info to the readers. It made me want to gouge the pages. First, I don't need to have stuff explained to me (especially more than once!), but, if you're going to explain to me, don't do it in a stupid way like having a bunch of guys who don't have a clue about what's going on start asking questions based on info they don't have.
2. During the climax of the book, the main tough dude bad guy is on a helicopter. He's been on the helicopter for a while. Except when he's suddenly needed to kill a bunch of people, he's somewhere else killing them before the helicopter arrives at the location. No explanation. Nothing. He's just already there. After Raven has killed all the dudes he needs to kill, then the helicopter with the head bad dude shows up. The helicopter that Raven had been on for chapters and chapters. I wanted to rip the pages out of the book (but I'm going to trade it in at the used book store for something that's actually good, so I refrained).

So...
There are all of these specific issues of stupidity in the book, way more than I've mentioned here, but the worst thing about the book had nothing to do with those things. And those were bad enough. I mean, if I hadn't been trying to find out why the book is such an "important" sci-fi book, I wouldn't have read it. I would have stopped at the point where I realized it was set "now," because, really, that was a deal breaker for me, except I wasn't to anything, yet, that was giving me a reason why it made such an impact, so I had to keep going to find out.

The beginning of the book has a bunch of inane action that has nothing to do with anything before we actually get to the inciting incident. After that, someone shows up and gives Hiro a special computer thing, and, basically, the computer tells Hiro everything he needs to know for the rest of the book. He never does anything to discover anything. The computer just tells him the story. And, you know, it's this long philosophical discussion with the computer (that goes on for, like, 1/3 of the book) that, again, reminded me of a bunch of guys staying up late drinking and someone says "what if language was a virus?" and they just went on and on about it thinking themselves all deep and crap and everyone wakes up the next day and realizes what a stupid idea it was. Except, well, everyone but Neal Stephenson. He wakes up the next morning and decides to write a book about it with his other stupid, drunken idea, the name of the protagonist, oh, yeah! Protagonist! And then threw in the stuff he fantasized about when he was 12, namely being a ninja hacker pizza delivery guy with a hot 15-year-old girl.

Oh, yeah, did I mention that Y.T. is 15? Because she is. And she spends a goodly portion of the book being concerned with what a hot 15-y-o piece she is. (Yes, I know I mentioned it, but OH MY GOSH it's so constant in the book.)

Oh! Oh, wait! So, yeah, there's this huge discussion with the computer, right, where the computer tells him everything. Blah blah blah. The whole plot is just explained to us without any action to go with it. So that's bad enough (actually, it's horrible, because, like, that's the HUGEST no no of writing: Show, don't tell, but Stephenson apparently thinks we wouldn't be able to figure it out if he showed us, or, maybe, he just couldn't figure out how to show us his deep, philosophical conversation with himself), but, at the end, he has to re-tell it all from Hiro's perspective to make sure we understood what he already told us, so we get to spend another couple of chapters with Hiro explaining the plot to people that aren't really important. Except that they are, but we never knew that until just at that moment when Hiro needs to explain everything to them so that they can take care of  the bad guy. Basically, the book spends a lot of time telling us the story with action mixed in that's only loosely related to the plot.

The only interesting thing in the book is Stephenson's vision of virtual reality and virtual worlds. Way back in '92, I guess I can see people getting excited about what he did with that stuff, since the whole virtual world thing didn't really exist, yet. Of course, it still doesn't exist via virtual reality, but virtual worlds are virtually a dime a dozen these days (sorry for the pun but not sorry enough to take it out (see what I did there? acknowledging it but leaving it in)), and some of them are even modeled on the idea of Snow Crash. It doesn't make up for how poorly written the book is, though. It's not the worst written book I've ever read, but I think it may have been the stupidest. I mean that. It has so many plot issues and plot holes and, well... maybe I shouldn't expect more, but, yeah, I expect more from big time books from big time publishers (and, remember, this was before the breakthrough of independent and self publishing). Someone, at some point, should have said... something. Something like, "Go back and fix this." But no one ever did.

Which brings up a whole slew of other questions, because this book was a big deal. So, as far as being a money maker, I suppose they were correct to release it the way it is, but it's actually what I would call a piece of garbage, and I don't say that very often. I mean, I hated (hated) The Sword of Truth books (after the first one), and I wouldn't call those garbage, but this book has no redeeming qualities. It has no real plot structure. The protagonist (and I can barely even use the word in connection with the book, because the author had to tell us who the protagonist is so that we would know) doesn't do anything to facilitate the story except write one computer program that's mentioned, basically, as an aside and that he does because he's bored. It's a linear story, but the author couldn't keep track of when things were supposed to be happening so there are conflicts all over the place. The bad guy is taken out by the equivalent of a car crash. And there is no denouement at all. It just ends right there. So the questions it brings up all have to do with critical thinking and reading and, maybe, I need to do a post about that, but, right now, I can't figure out whether I envy or pity people who don't engage in critical thinking when they read.

I've heard that Stephenson has some good books out there, but, then, I also head that this was a good book, so it's really highly unlikely that I'll ever look at anything else he's written. Snow Crash is easily the worst book I've read this year. Not the worst written, but the worst in concept and execution for sure. In fact, I can't think of any book that I've read that I would say is worse. Even books I couldn't finish.

A Blog in 3 Parts

Part One


The big news today is Shadow Spinner! Shadow Spinner is my next planned release. I'm hoping it will be completely finished before the end of the year, but, until then, I'm going to be releasing it serially. I experimented with this a while back here on the blog, if any of you remember, which is what prompted this experiment. Of course, I'd meant to start doing  this months and months ago, but I had to wait for art. It was worth the wait!

"The Tunnel" is now available for the Kindle. I'd really like to make it free, but Amazon is being... problematic and telling me that they have no "option" for that. Duh, I knew that. I also know that they can go in and make something free, so I'm working on it. However, even though it's $0.99 as its set price, I'm making it FREE for the next many days, as many as Amazon will allow me for this selling period. Since it is free, I'd really appreciate it if you'd (yes, you, the person reading this post) go over and download it. I mean, you can't beat the price, and, even if you don't have a Kindle, there are plenty of free Kindle apps for whatever platform you have. After you read it, please click the "like" button, because I'm just gonna assume you're going to like it. What's not to like? If you could see your way around to leaving a short review and a rating, that would be great, too. This is just the first chapter of Shadow Spinner, and it's quite short, so it won't take up much time. Look, here's the link! Go get it now while it's FREE!!!


Oh, and I didn't forget: The incredible art has been done by the artist who may or may not be Rusty Webb. He's kind of undecided at the moment, but it's incredible despite his identity crisis. Somewhere around chapter 4 or 5, there will be an alternate cover, and it's even more cool than this one!

Part Two


I ran a contest last week. It may have been a bad week to run a contest as traffic was down and comments were way down. Oh, well. It is what it is. You can go back and look at the contest post if you missed it. At any rate, Donna, over at Mainely Write, has walked off with the prize. At least, she will have once I hear back from her so that I know which option she wants. By the way, if you haven't visited Donna before, you should. She posts lots of great poems. I find most modern poetry less than satisfying, but Donna's stuff tends to the great, so go check her out.

Part Three


Remember back in April when everyone was A-to-Zing? Back during that whole thing, I discovered a bunch of books and stories I wanted to read about things that were fictional at the time but are now, if not real, on their way to being real. My "V" entry was about virtual reality, and I mentioned a short story by Stanley Weinbaum, "Pygmalion's Spectacles." It was an appropriate follow up to my recent read of the After, as they both deal with themes of reality and what, exactly, reality is.

However, Weinbaum's story was written in the 1930s and has an incredibly accurate look at what virtual reality might be like. How real does "real" need to be. How much will our own brains supply to fill in the gaps? Is virtual reality as real as real reality? It's pretty short and well worth reading. And it's FREE for the Kindle, so you should follow the link and go check it out.

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Virtual Reality

Back in the mid-80's, on a trip to (the one, true) Six Flags, I had my first encounter with virtual reality. They had a station set up where you could experience it yourself for the low, low price of $10 (or something like that). You put on a set of VR goggles, walked on a treadmill, and shot at things. What made it interesting is that they had a monitor set up so that other people could see what you were seeing. There were obstacles that you had to dodge; some of them would fly out at you suddenly, so it was amusing to watch as the people doing the simulation would duck and, um, sometimes, actually fall down because they were caught off guard by something. I didn't actually do the thing, because I didn't want to spend $10 on something that lasted two minutes, but I had a couple of friends who did; one of them even did it twice. They were very impressed and said it felt like they were right there with things flying at their heads. It was, of course, the '80s when the idea of virtual reality really leaped into popular awareness. Right along with the personal computer. Of course, back in the '80s, we all thought we'd be in a virtual world by this point.

But how far back does virtual reality go?

Well, that's an interesting question, and I'm going to answer it from two perspectives:

First, in the 1950s, Morton Heilig decided that going to the theater should  be a fully immersive experience. He began working on his Sensorama which finally came out in 1962. The only piece ever produced was of the viewer riding the streets of Brooklyn on a motorcycle. It was much more than 3D, also providing the vibrations of the motorcycle, the wind on the face, and the smells of the street as the viewer "rode" along. However, the cost of producing the 3D films was just too high, and the Sensorama failed to catch on.

But what we think of as virtual reality really was a product of the '80s and stemmed almost solely from the work of Jaron Lanier. He founded VPL Research in 1985, which is the company that produced the famous goggles and gloves that we all think of when we think of VR.

The biggest issue with VR at the moment is that it's actually much more advanced than we realize. Quite advanced, in fact, within the medical field and the military. I suppose the high cost of VR systems is still keeping it out of the consumer market.

Except in one thing... the building of virtual worlds. The video game industry has become adept at creating worlds, and there have been some amazing strides in that area in recent years. The one I think is the most important is the development of the virtual world in The Force Unleashed. It's the first game world to apply "real" physics to the environment rather than just having the same programmed response every time. Here's a short video that talks about it a bit (although this one is not as good at explaining the significance of what they're doing as the couple I saw back when the game was first coming out, but I couldn't find those):


Some of this technology is related to the stuff ILM developed for Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings so that the armies would behave... well, autonomously instead of having groups of soldiers all doing the same thing.

So that's kind of where we are, right now, but from where did all of this come from from a fiction standpoint?

For that, we're going to go back to 1935 and the short story "Pygmalion's Spectacles" by Stanley Weinbaum. In the story, a professor has invented a pair of goggles that allows you to experience a movie as if you were in the movie including interacting with the characters. How familiar does that sound?

Remember Stanislaw Lem (from this post)? Well, in 1960, he had a short story, "IJON TICHY'S MEMORIES," in which a scientist creates an entire virtual world (and, evidently, traps people within it). Trapped in this virtual world is another scientist who creates a virtual world. Yes, within the first one.

And, of course, there's William Gibson with Neuromancer, which I find to be less of virtual reality, as such, and more just a visual representation of cyberspace, even if it is a virtual world.

We also have to jump right back to this post about Snow Crash.

In movies, we have Tron and The Matrix as two of the best examples of virtual reality in fiction.

For me, there was Tad Williams' Otherland series. Virtual reality is to the point where people have jacks implanted in the base of their skulls so that they can plug directly into the virtual network and experience everything by having their brains directly stimulated. It's interesting, though, in that during the course of the books, he shows us how the technology evolved in the world he created. What's interesting is that some of our newest advances in virtual reality have an eerie resemblance to antiquated VR tech in his books.

Here's what it comes down to for me:
When VR becomes a thing that people can enter into and experience as if it was real life, people will not want to leave it. There are already issues with people and the virtual worlds they already have access to, and these worlds are not... well, we don't experience them as if they are happening to us. But there have been cases of child neglect and abuse from parents becoming too immersed in these worlds. There have been cases of people going without food or water to the point of death. And these are just worlds that you experience through a keyboard. Imagine what it will be like when you can have full sensory input. Feel things. Smell things. Even taste things. And it can be better than your life in the "real" world.

Of all things I've talked about in this series, this is the one that I find the scariest. I think we're closer to realizing this one than many of the others. And, more than any of the others, this is the one into which we will go voluntarily.

[Oh, and I did some more digging, and I found the other videos I was talking about.]

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Snow Crash, Second Life, and Submarines

Submarine

After all the talk about Jules Verne, how could I not mention submarines?
The thing is, though, despite frequently having the idea of the submarine attributed to him, Verne actually didn't dream these up. In fact, the Nautilus, Nemo's submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, is named after one of the first submarines from almost a century before Verne wrote about it.

And that nautilus was named after this one:

And the interior:

Even though Verne wasn't the originator of the submarine (actually, it was another of those things that da Vinci had sketches for), he was the first to write about them in the way that he did, a tool for exploration and a tool for combat. It's fairly safe to say that he helped form the concept of what the submarine would be used for in the 20th century.

Snow Crash

Let me start out by saying that Neal Stephenson did not come up with the idea for virtual reality, nor did he come up with the idea of the multi-verse. Neither did Marvel Comics, but they've probably done more to promote the idea of the multi-verse than anyone else. However, Stephenson, through his novel Snow Crash, did introduce the concept of the Metaverse. And this is a novel I now feel like I need to read. It was like one of Jung's unconscious ideas coalesced in Stephenson's brain and came out as this concept of the Metaverse.

In Snow Crash, the Metaverse is a virtual reality world that has... well, not replaced the Internet, become the Internet. Since I do actually believe we're heading toward virtual reality (and I believe that it's in virtual reality that mankind will face its greatest challenge (not zombies, not cyborgs, not even genetically engineered viruses)), I think this idea of the Metaverse is fascinating (did I say I need to read this book? Oh, I did...).

Anyway...
My point is this, after the book came out in 1992, a text-based game was launched in '93 called The Metaverse. In '95, Active Worlds was launched, and it was based entirely on Snow Crash. There were some others, but the big one was Second Life in 2003. You have heard of Second Life, right? It's hard to be online and not to have heard of it, even if you haven't "played" it. Just for the record, I have not. But there have been laws passed in some countries to control the exchange of money, real money, on this "site."

Second Life was created by Philip Rosedale who, at one point, gave the credit for the idea to Stephenson's novel (I wish I could find that article again, but, basically, he said "I got the idea after reading Snow Crash); now, of course, he only says he was "aware" of the novel but the idea for Second Life was completely his own. I will point out, though, that they did introduce a Snow Crash sub-world into Second Life.

Snow Crash continues to influence the development of the world wide web. It was Snow Crash that popularized the term "avatar." Google Earth was modeled after Snow Crash, and Google Earth is just cool. I used it for research while I was writing The House on  the Corner. From that standpoint, it's also influencing Google's driverless car. And I'm not even going to list all the software that's been developed or is being developed in order to bring about this virtual idea of the Metaverse.

By the way, Time named it in their top 100 English-language novels written since 1923. Not top 100 sci-fi novels, just top 100 novels. Did I mention the need to read this? Will we look back as a society a few decades from now and point at Snow Crash as a turning point? Will we just see it as part of the natural evolution of things? Will it have faded out of importance entirely? It's hard to say, but here, now, 20 years after its release, we are still feeling its impact.



And, now, something completely unrelated:
As I have mentioned many times, Briane Pagel has this big Star Wars blogfest going on. We're just past the halfway mark, now, and I'm no longer in the lead. I got whammied. If you like me, though, you can go over and comment and let him know that I sent you, and we'll both get some points for it. But that's just an aside. Here's the real bit:
There's this indie movie called Yellow Hill that's trying to get funded. It's starring Bai Ling, and she's also producing it. They're asking for donations of just $5 to help them reach their funding goal of $6,000. For a movie $6,000 is pretty near to nothing, but it's still $6,000.
Anyway, Briane is trying to help these people out, and I support him in that. And, well, he's giving 1000 points to anyone who posts about the Yellow Hill thing, and, well, I need the points. But, still, I do support him in his support of this movie project! So click on the link and check it out.