
“Snowcrash” to be HBO series, compete with actual early Metaverses for viewers - Kroeler
https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2019/12/neal-stephenson-snowcrash-metaverse-magic-leap-hbo-series.html
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madrox
My fear with any Snowcrash adaptation is that it will feel like John Carter of
Mars (or Warhammer Online [1]). John Carter was a groundbreaking novel, but
its ideas became so adapted and universally understood that revisiting them in
a movie felt ironically like derivative work.

If I have to endure years of my non-cyberpunk friends talking about how
Snowcrash feels like a rip-off of Ready Player One, then I will flip tables.

[1] [https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10/i-hope-you-
lik...](https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10/i-hope-you-like-text)

~~~
ljm
But of course it's HBO so it'll have plenty of softcore porn embedded within
the plot.

Despite the jokes, HBO tend to do a decent job of this stuff. Ignoring the
shitshow that was GoT after season 4. The Wire, The Sopranos, Westworld...
probably better in their hands than, say, Netflix.

~~~
utopian3
I wish they’d spend more time on sub-plots, character development, etc. If HBO
removes all the sex scenes, they could probably squeeze in an extra episode of
actual content per season (I’m being slightly sarcastic).

~~~
ljm
They should really branch out into proper porn spinoffs considering how
masterfully they mix story and titillation. The production value would be
immense.

Game of Boners - Aiden Gillen returns to his brothel to make use of his
Littlefinger namesake.

The Sopranals: Gandolfini enters Bada Bing! through the back door

etc. etc.

Which is to say, HBO actually seem to be quite tasteful with this while also
being gratuitous.

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jasondclinton
I'm glad to see this happen. Suspect that a network exec somewhere said: "Sci-
fi! Dystopia! Rogue AI! Cyberpunk!" and then HBO went through the list of
books meeting that criteria (copying the Game of Thrones formula) and picked a
best-seller to make a screen play out of. The subject matter seems to fit
quite well with the tech malaise we are feeling at the end of the 2010's.

~~~
bduerst
Disney has _Mandalorian_. Amazon has _The Expanse_ and recently picked up
_Ringworld_ for a tv-series too.

Another unnamed network is supposedly currently considering _Red Rising_
series as well.

Sci-Fi dystopia is hot right now.

~~~
gumby
Is Ringworld really dystopian? I mean the ring world civilization(s) did fall,
but Known Space and the puppeteers were pretty much doing OK.

~~~
ghaff
Sort of a problem with a lot of Niven's novels more generally, but they became
travelogues to a large degree. I agree not especially dystopian (or
interesting).

I liked his short stories a lot more.

~~~
closetohome
I always loved that about them. Not all sci-fi needs to crawl into its own
navel and reveal the condition of Man. Sometimes it can just create and
explore a fantastic universe.

~~~
ghaff
I thought it worked better in shorter formats though. (And I was a huge Niven
fan.)

~~~
closetohome
Sure, I can see how that style could drag a little in long-form.

------
martythemaniak
Wow, so exciting. This has got to be one of my favourite books of all time.

The first time I read around the year 2000, I enjoyed but I essentially
thought "That was neat, and funny, but man did he miss how things would turn
out! haha". If you read it today, you might be shocked by how many things it
has gotten right.

~~~
cydonian_monk
I had the same reaction. I first read "Snow Crash" and "Brave New World"
around the same time (circa-2000), and was happy that both missed the mark.
Looking back at them now I feel like the modern world has become a blend of
the worst parts of both.

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Mediterraneo10
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
> 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
Ditto, I think that'll sell well in a world where millennial are killing
$THINGS

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omarhaneef
While Snow Crash is one of the all time great sci fi novels, it famously has a
huge plot hole: although Stephenson saw a lot of things about the future with
remarkable accuracy, he did not foresee the ubiquity of the cell phone. A
simple cell phone would have undercut the main plot.

Now that we know what we know, how will they account for it?

~~~
Analemma_
L. Bob Rife is a telecom mogul; presumably there will be some handwave about
how he's manipulating the phone network to keep anyone from interfering with
his plans.

~~~
omarhaneef
I bet some variant of this will be their solution.

~~~
wizardforhire
Spoiler alert:

“Insert integer”g

------
etaioinshrdlu
This book featured adversarial inputs to the human neural network long before
deep learning was cool.

~~~
jacquesm
Epileptic seizures can be triggered, that's the only actual adversarial attack
on the human neural network that I'm aware of that actually works, and is more
common than you might think:

[https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/photosensitive-
epilepsy](https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/photosensitive-epilepsy)

~~~
schoen
You could say that all perceptual illusions are adversarial inputs for the
human senses. They're just not damaging ones.

In a lot of adversarial input stuff for AI, you're trying to get the AI to
misclassify something, not necessarily to damage the AI or even change its
learning at all. In _Snow Crash_ the perceptions were definitely damaging to
the perceivers, but I don't think you have to go nearly that far to have
adversarial inputs!

~~~
jacquesm
True, but it was just the Snow Crash like ones that I had in mind. There are
also adversarial attacks possible on all the other senses once you understand
how they work at a physical or pre-processing level. You can make something
cold feel hot, trigger speech patterns to go off by pre-setting them with
auditory patterns, cause people to hear sounds that aren't there and so on.
Given how many of these pathways are buggy it is quite impressive how well the
brain can make sense of its surroundings. Mimicry in the animal kingdom is
another 'adversarial input' that has potentially damaging effects on the
perceivers (hunger!) but it is very much a defensive mechanism so that
probably should not count either.

~~~
wizardforhire
True nothing like snowcrash has yet to be created to any of our knowledges. Of
course... if it was... how would we be able to respond to this thread! But
this is whole other rabbit hole to go down that in light of some recents posts
on the front page today doesn’t seem too fun.

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3pt14159
I'm so excited for this. Snowcrash is one of the best pieces of Science
Fiction I've read. It's up there with Permutation City and Stories of Your
Life and Others.

~~~
ascavalcante80
I haven't finished it... I started to listen Whool, but yeah it's a really
great book. Geek, nerd piece of art.

------
Keverw
Interesting, didn't know HBO was going to be doing online only shows now like
Netflix, Apple and Amazon.

Snowcrash is the book that inspired Philip to create Second Life. Then he
moved on to create High Fidelity, but they are now pivoting more for virtual
meetings and business use it looks. One thing I kinda don't like about the new
virtual worlds, they are disconnected spaces while Second Life tried to have a
sense of continued space, but never seemed to get as popular as Facebook and a
region can't hold more than 100 avatars at once but even 50 is a limit in some
places.

I feel SL was early for it's time though, they started working on it in the
late 90s and opened in 2003. High Fidelity seemed more focus on HMDs then
keyboard and mouse but I feel that is still a bit early too but it's an
interesting space. I have some ideas on my own too I've been thinking about
exploring, but still a lot to learn and then getting funding at some point
when a more solid plan.

~~~
MivLives
I used to play a lot of second life when I was younger. It was interesting to
see what happened to everyone I used to play with.

Everyone became a programmer,or a 3d modeler. Something about having a
programming language and the ability to make things strapped to what was
essentially a chatroom.

I wonder if your comparisons to Facebook are really fair. I always assumed
Secondlife was trying to be something closer to IRC or Discord today then
something like Facebook. It's not just a series of events to read but
something active to engage with.

~~~
Kroeler
The co-founder of Second Life eventually became a VP at Facebook, where he
drove the acquisition of Oculus:

[https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2014/08/confirmed-facebook-
purchas...](https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2014/08/confirmed-facebook-purchase-of-
oculus-rift-second-life-cory-ondrejka.html)

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ryanSrich
I support any network taking on more Sci Fi. I'd give almost anything to see a
proper Foundation series done by HBO. Or culture series, or a Dune series, or
you name it. Imagine a gritty interpretation of Fire Upon The Deep done by
Christopher Nolan. There's not nearly enough Sci Fi movies.

~~~
philipkglass
Amazon is adapting Consider Phlebas, the first book in the Culture series:

[https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/consider-phlebas-iain-m-
ban...](https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/consider-phlebas-iain-m-banks-amazon-
novel-dennis-kelly-1202706327/)

------
mbrubeck
I'm curious if they'll remember that Hiro Protagonist is multiracial (Black
and Asian) and that this plays a role in the plot.

~~~
munk-a
As played by Scarlett Johansson[1]?

1\. Please do recall the casting in the live action GitS movie.

------
erik_landerholm
I hope it doesn't suck. It seems like every few years a network tries to make
a sci-fi series, it bombs and then it's years before anyone tries again. I
would love to see Revelation Space (by Alastair Reynolds) get the budget of
the mandalorian or huge big screen budget, but alas, that will never happen.

------
chocolatebunny
So far Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex is still my favourite cyberpunk
TV series. I really want something to dethrone it. If HBO gives Snowcrash the
Westworld treatment then I am hopeful but I'm still uncertain.

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MoronInAHurry
Blogspam of [https://www.engadget.com/2019/12/14/snow-crash-tv-series-
hbo...](https://www.engadget.com/2019/12/14/snow-crash-tv-series-hbo-max/)
which is itself blogspam of [https://deadline.com/2019/12/snow-crash-sci-fi-
drama-series-...](https://deadline.com/2019/12/snow-crash-sci-fi-drama-series-
hbo-max-michael-bacall-joe-cornish-paramount-tv-1202809103/)

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Dowwie
Science fiction is my favorite genre and have enjoyed a lot of Stephenson. I
think that Snow Crash could be great as an HBO production and when it does
well we can see Cryptonomicon, the Diamond Age, and others follow.

I can't wait to see the Raven character..

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aidenn0
I wonder how well this will work. While the book exists on several levels, it
worked really well in the 90s as the logical, but absurd, conclusion to
cyberpunk. The cyberpunk aesthetic feels very dated today though.

~~~
joejerryronnie
Uh oh, don't tell CD Projekt Red

~~~
aidenn0
_The Witcher_ series was very much not my type of game (I didn't like the
_Elder Scrolls_ series either), so I'm unlikely to try _Cyberpunk 2077_. I
think it has a good chance for success though because while cyberpunk is not
necessarily big right now, it _is_ a subgenre of dystopian SF, which seems to
be on the upswing.

However, while HBO's _Watchmen_ is well timed because of the huge popularity
of the MCU, there's not currently any similarly well-known cyberpunk body of
fiction right now.

It will be interesting to see how they adapt it though. It's probably one of
the more "ready for screen" books that Stephenson has written, but even there
it relies heavily on internal-monologue and brute writing style more than it
does on great plotting.

Of course if you are going by my theory of dystopian SF being the thing right
now, _The Diamond Age_ is probably a better fit, plus it's already populated
with a few orgy scenes, which seems to be a plus for HBO. I suppose there are
casting issues with the plot centering so much around a young girl though.

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nieve
Anyone adapting Snowcrash needs to have a sense of the absurd and OTT along
with the ability to play it completely deadpan. Angela Robinson brought us
D.E.B.S., so I have some hope.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Yeah I imagine something along the lines of Transmetropolitan, but without
obviously alien stuff.

But like, odd, goofy, punk rock, etc.

------
InTheArena
My hope is just that a a Baroque cycle series makes it to the screen.

------
ggm
Watch them ruin it.

~~~
Pfhreak
The book is a lot of fun, but it's also not a sacred text. It's a story about
a pizza delivery driver who will be murdered if he delivers pizza too late and
is also a hacker getting bound up in a story of Sumerian brain programmers run
amok. (And somehow these brain programmers also can infect someone's blood?)

For all of its foresight, the book is goofy and dated as hell. If it's going
to come to screen there's no way the adaption doesn't either:

1) Update some of the goofier stuff (upsetting the fans)

or

2) Leave it all in, in all its 80s action movie glory. (Which won't look all
that great in the modern zeitgeist.)

I'm already expecting people will be disappointed with whoever they cast for
Hiro, for either being not Black enough (or too Black) or not Korean enough
(or too Korean). Similarly, do they outfit Y.T. with a retrofuturist 80s
interpretation of what it means to be a skater punk? Or do they update it to
be a 2020s interpretation of what it means to be a future skater punk? There's
no answers to these that satisfies everyone. Someone will inevitably say it
was 'ruined' no matter what the show runner does.

~~~
slg
Any book that names is hero/protagonist Hiro Protagonist doesn't take itself
too seriously. I think both the producers of this adaptation and the fans
would be well served to do the same.

~~~
cronopios
And don't forget that the female lead character is Yours Truly!

