The original manuscript of Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson – the book that coined the term “Metaverse” – will be auctioned by Sotheby’s, according to a page on its official website. The auction is part of a February 23 series called “Infocalypse” that includes six physical and six digital items related to the famous book.
The original manuscript is in lot 2 of the series. It is “wrapped in original Xerox 4200 paper”, secured with tape, and contains “corrections and annotations throughout in Neal Stephenson’s handwriting in blue ink”. It also has the title of the book written on the spine with a marker by the author.
A “revised composition manuscript” is also up for auction in lot 4. This is a later version replete with additional handwritten annotations and revisions by the author.
Attention Snow Crash readers and fans!
Infocalypse, an open edition collection of digital art created to mark the 30th anniversary of @nealstephenson‘s novel Snow Crash, which coined the term “Metaverse”, will open 27 February.
Find out more: https://t.co/3a4DfSrdBg https://t.co/nL1HRYboyf
— Sotheby’s Metaverse (@Sothebysverse) February 23, 2023
Other physical items to be auctioned as part of the series include the original painting used as the cover for the 1993 paperback edition of the book, a leather jacket that was to be used in a promotional video for the graphic novel, slides used for the concept from the graphic novel and a real sword inspired by the one wielded by the book’s protagonist.
In addition to these physical items, the series will also contain digital art NFTs inspired by the concept of graphic novel which preceded Snow Crash.
Snow Crash, published in 1992, was set in a dystopia in which most humans live in small warehouses, according to the publisher’s description. It followed the exploits of the protagonist, Hiro, a pizza delivery man who has to fight bandits to deliver his pizza. Hiro spends all of his free time in a virtual world called “The Metaverse”, where citizens flock to escape the misery of everyday life. But a computer virus was causing the residents of the Metaverse to become “nothing more than a shivering cloud of digital bad karma.” The novel’s plot revolved around Hiro’s attempts to figure out how to stop the virus.
The book sold more than 125,000 copies, according to the Washington Post. Since the book’s publication, Stephenson’s term “metaverse” has increasingly been used by VR enthusiasts to describe the emerging virtual world created by VR technology, and in recent years it has become a buzzword. highly sought after fashion.
The rise of the metaverse has created new career opportunities for some and has helped reshape Web3 gaming.
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