You’re a bestselling author, but do you have your own NFTs? Neal Stephenson has a new flex.
Want a post-apocalyptic dystopia? I’ll give you a post-apocalyptic dystopia, said novelist Neal Stephenson, who has jumped into the NFT game with some glitchy Y2K-looking art.
Stephenson authored the Y2K classic Snow Crash, a story credited with “predicting” the metaverse, and will be launching a series of “Infopocalypse” NFTs today, 14:00:00 ET computer-time, in concert with illustrator Tony Sheehan, software developer Sterling Crispin, and expensive place to shop Sothebys.
The generative artworks cost US$250 are based on Dioxin Posse, the graphic novel that preceded Snow Crash.
In Snow Crash, Hiro, a gifted “hacker,” lives in a post-U.S. citystate delivering pizzas IRL and virtually ruling the capital-m Metaverse, which is being threatened by a virus/drug called… Snow Crash.
I thought William Gibson invented cyberspace [ETA: ah, Stephenson just invented the word metaverse], but regardless, there is something truly futuristic and bleak about investing your hard-won pizza-delivery money in artworks that look qualitatively like something you can pull up on Giphy when sending a text, and can seemingly knock off with a simple Crtl+C Crtl+V, as we did above. Literary Hub is rich! Rich!
That said, it’s no bored apes, and I’m all for supporting authors. Get it!
