Message #3072

From: Vasily Vladimirovich Vylkov <vasily@gatech.edu>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Snowcrash and Permutation City
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2015 13:08:22 -0800

That Snow Crash book was more than a little over-the-top Tarantino
spaghetti western B-movie style bombastic, but I think I will also give
Stephenson the benefit of the doubt – that it was a stylistic choice to
write that way, and not necessarily amateurish. (I do remember being
bewildered at first, at how blatantly unrealistic some of the action was!
: )

On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 8:00 AM, David Vanderschel DvdS@Austin.RR.com
[4D_Cubing] <4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

>
>
> Melinda’s comment got me curious about Second Life. I had never paid much
> attention. Then I found a contradiction of Melinda’s claim from Second
> Life creator Philip Rosedale himself, here:
> http://freakonomics.com/2007/12/13/philip-rosedale-answers-your-second-life-questions/
>
> Q: Have you ever read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson? I don’t know much
> about Second Life but it sounds similar to the Metaverse in the fiction
> novel.
>
> A: When Snow Crash came out, I was already really intent on the idea of
> creating a virtual world like Second Life — I had been thinking about it
> and doing what small experiments I could since I was in college. But Snow
> Crash certainly painted a compelling picture of what such a virtual world
> could look like in the near future, and I found that inspiring.
>
> I guess I am only quibbling about the definite article. He did find it
> inspiring, but he had already been inspired; so it was not *the*
> inspiration.
>
> Unlike Melinda, I did not find Stephenson’s writing to be amateurish.
> However, I did take it to be deliberately absurd and satirically comical.
> I liked Snow Crash a lot, laughed a lot. I still occasionally recommend it
> to people.
>
> Regards,
> David V.
>
> On 2/9/2015 7:10 PM, Melinda Green melinda@superliminal.com [4D_Cubing]
> wrote:
>
> Snowcrash’s metaverse was the inspiration for Second Life which I helped
> develop for a couple of years.
>
>
>
>