Snow Crash: HBO Max adaptation of Neal Stephenson's 1992 cyberpunk novel | Hacker News Reader

Snow Crash: HBO Max adaptation of Neal Stephenson's 1992 cyberpunk novel

cbr.com

218 pointstosh192 comments

I am so unabashedly excited for this to happen. I don't care about the habitual cynics. My only apprehension is that the director will try to relieve the absurdity by making it comedic, when the best way to handle it is to just have it be openly ridiculous without apologizing for it. Magical realism sets a good example for how to accept ridiculous, wondrous, and absurd things in stride.

Even if it 'sucks', I don't care, I'd watch this as a backyard play and be happy.

I was pretty psyched for the Catch 22 adaptation, but that was terrible. A big part of the books narrative is how every chapter is out of order. It starts in the middle, and ends at the end, but the story progresses by revealing future and past events as you go through it. I watched the first episode of the adaptation, saw perfectly linear story telling, immediately lost interest and never bothered with the rest. Which is a shame, because it was big budget and had a great cast. But it hasn’t left me with much faith that weirder books should expect decent screen adaptations.

Exactly - it gets better later though. Does this loop thing where the end leads you to the beginning of the show. It was enjoyable, had its moments...

Agree. If they play it like “Mad Max: Fury Road”, it has the potential to be a masterpiece.

you liked fury road?

you didn't?

It was critically and commercially successful, most people liked it.

97% on the Tomatometer: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mad_max_fury_road

IMDB Top 250: https://www.imdb.com/chart/top

10 Academy Award nominations, 6 wins, made lots of money, on lots of top-of-the-year and top-of-the-decade lists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max:_Fury_Road

Approximately everybody liked it. It's fine if you don't, but you shouldn't be even vaguely surprised that others do.

Easily the best Western action film I’ve seen in a decade (maybe best period, I’d have to think about it) so... yes? I mean just using action for anything other than spectacle, which it does constantly for just about the whole run-time, would put it in rare company, but then the spectacle is also great. Action aside “is well-constructed“ plus “respects the audience” aren’t even individually common traits, especially in an action flick, but it manages those, too.

[edit] to be clear that doesn’t mean everyone has to or should like it, of course, but it’s possible to recognize the things a work does right and understand why a lot of people might like it as a result, even if it’s not to one’s taste, and so not to be surprised when people like it. It’s certainly possible to recognize when one likes something that’s kind of terrible—I like lots of things to which that apply. These perspectives are useful particularly when making recommendations to others.

I didn't either but I've only watched it once without much focus, because I expected it to be designed exactly for that. I've heard we're missing something.

I didn't enjoy it on the first view either. A friend of mine totally loved it. He pointed out that I should keep a watch on how your eyes are lead through the movie. If you follow the hints you will always look at the right place on the screen.

Obviously this happens unconsciously on it's own. Watching fury road you will never feel lost in the action but always directed towards it.

I found that fascinating, but tbh I will never love this movie as said friend does.

> Watching fury road you will never feel lost in the action but always directed towards it.

Miller directed the movie off storyboards and not scripts, leading to a lot more difficulty and spontaneity. Good recent article [1] on the rivalry between Theron and Hardy during filming, they mention being frustrated at this switch in direction but your comment reminded me about how storyboards capture that visual leading like scripts rarely do.

[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/05/charlize-theron...

> My only apprehension is that the director will try to relieve the absurdity by making it comedic, when the best way to handle it is to just have it be openly ridiculous without apologizing for it.

The Fifth Element did this _excellently_, and yet there hasn't been a similarly themed movie since AFAIK.

French romp but Sci-fi

Oh man, the tone of that movie is excellent. Really sorry Valerian ended up such a dud. Snow Crash with a high quality 5th element vibe would be pretty amazing.

Valerian had so much potential, and its intro sequence is one of the best I've ever seen.

I still enjoyed it though, it's no so bad that it's unwatchable, ,just a let down from what it could have been.

I don’t keep up with sci-fi culture so I watched it not knowing how bad everyone thought it was. I actually really liked it in the same way I liked fifth element. I also enjoyed watching Prometheus for the same reason.

I feel when you’re aware of the zeitgeist it messed a ton with your expectations.

The Fifth Element is one of the few movies where, back when cable was a thing, when it was on "TV" you could watch it no matter where you started. It's weirdly charming, in all of it's absurdity.

Just like Shawshank Redemption.

I wonder if there's some narrative parallels there somehow, since Shawshank is definitely what I would call Oscar Bait and Fifth Element is really just a cult sci-fi flick.

hell ya. love the positivity. keep featherin' brother.

If they get a bad writer, he will read the plot summary on wikipedia, go over to tvtropes.com and pick out some rough matches to the plot summary and start writing. I would not be surprised if this is how Man in the High Castle got converted into a T.V series.

Something stylistically along the lines of Southland Tales would work I think.

Late comment. There is an audio book of Snow Crash that strikes the right tone (a bit flat?) and the humor of the work is not lost. Makes for the right amount of background noise for some coding activities if you've already read the book.

I am not looking forward to the TV show because it will be a different experience. (I watch very little TV these days anyway.) I will probably just avoid it. Altered Carbon had some success but I believe the second season is terrible despite it being my favorite book.

I greatly dislike Snow Crash: it feels like slogging through Leviticus, plus an astronomical amount of suspension of disbelief.

However.

There is no doubt in my mind that Snow Crash has the finest first chapter I have ever had the pleasure of reading. You should buy the book just for the first chapter.

> it feels like slogging through Leviticus, plus an astronomical amount of suspension of disbelief

You sure you're not confusing it with Anathem? SnowCrash was a quick read for me, but Anathem made me hate reading and I don't think I even finished it.

I loved Anathem, one of the few books I can say I absolutely devoured.

Reamde on the other hand...

Anathem was the last passable novel before Neal Stephenson started writing "stories" around a sci-fi concept, rather than writing stories. A throwback to Zodiac, perhaps. Snow Crash and Diamond Age were his best works.

Diamond age was glorious (although I think possibly Stephenson's worst ratio of beginning:ending quality), but I adore Cryptonomicon.

I enjoyed the whole of the Baroque Cycle as well.

Diamond Age has my favorite concepts of any of his books, but the plot is pretty forgettable to me. Like I can't even remember most of it and I've probably read that book 5 times.

The characters are fairly weak as well.

I tried several times but could never get through Diamond Age. Snow Crash is one of my all time favorites and Zodiac was stellar, but that one just never clicked for me.

I liked Reamde, but it's an atypical Stephenson book. Full of action, fast paced, pretty short on exposition, although there are some diversions about handguns and intercontinental aviation navigation.

How far into Anathem did you make it? Anathem has a glacial beginning - the introduction is perhaps 200 pages long. But once you've survived that and the plot starts, it's quite compelling and pays off the glacial introduction. That said, it took me three tries to make it through the introduction. World building a society of mathematician-monks on another planet is tough going indeed.

It's funny, I had the opposite reaction.

The first part was really a great coming-of-age story and was strangely comforting. The world is crazy, but there is a place for people who want to pursue knowledge.

The second part felt like an interruption. I'm usually completely unable to and disinterested in guessing where a plot is going, but I could have summarized the second part without reading it and that made it drag (still decent, still fun at times, but I wish either the twists had been better or that the author had relied on them less).

An interesting take for sure. I too read it as a coming of age story - also strangely comforting - but see the part after the plot proper begins as an allegorical coming of age story as well, recapitulating (and I think I can say this without spoiling the back half) the development of our understanding of mathematics and the natural world post-Newton. It's a bit like he transitions from a personal coming-of-age story to a societal coming of age story: what happens when you grow up and realize that the world is incomprehensibly weird?

That really reframed my whole understanding of the story, great!

At the phrase “societal coming of age” I balked, but I guess the second half is putting the question “which society”, or rather which kind of society can inherit (that is, accept responsibility for) such knowledge? The grossest contrast is between the secular and mathic societies; but the remarkably well recreated dialectic between the Platonists and Sophists in the dinner conversation between the Incanters and Rhetors in the last Lucub... converging on Husserl and phenomenology...! that was golden (one of a few nuggets).

Still I think the question of which society can “come of age” and inherit the world in its full, weird, complexity, is drawn back to the relationship between Orolo and Raz, because that is where the real spark of inspiration (and sacrifice, and fraternity) flies, and, improbably, catches fire.

Who doesn't love 40 pages (more?) of winding a clock as a hook? :)

Agreed, though, that it picks up a tad more after the clock winding and other front matter.

For what it's worth, when I first started Anathem, it was a slog and I put it down a little ways in. A few years later I tried it again and absolutely loved it. If you're a Stephenson fan, don't cross it off the list just yet.

Anathem I hated the first reading. I’ve now read it seven times, enjoying it more each time, taking time to try and understand it more and more each times. My most recent read of it was incredible, and it’s easily my favourite of his novels.

I'll see your Snow Crash opening chapter and raise you an Excession.

You can't compare Stephenson and Banks. Banks is actually a good writer.

I don't really enjoy Stephenson's prose. It's often plodding, rarely beautiful. Thankfuly, apart from its lacklustre ending, Snow Crash largely compensates through sheer entertainability. It's unapologetically fun in a genre which tends to take itself far to seriously.

In good hands, I really think it can make a very good show.

Heh, sort of agree. It might well be enjoyable if played for laughs. The problem with Stephenson is I think a lot of people (not necessarily including Stephenson) take him far too seriously...

It fits a pattern of great books that overdo some sort of theoretical exposition. I think I skimmed or skipped a good chunk of

The language stuff in snow crash (actually I may have read it all I can't remember, but I thought it went on a bit)

The conspiracy stuff in Foucault's pendulum

The Talmud stuff in Unsong

I enjoyed all of these a lot though, especially snow crash and unsong

Brothers Karamazov spends a lot of time on serfs and Russian clergy.

> it feels like slogging through Leviticus

I genuinely laughed out loud when the article called the book "accessible". I enjoyed the book much more than you did, but it is nearly 500 pages long and full of long, in depth, and dry discussions about a variety of obscure topics like linguistics and ancient Sumerian mythology. That isn't for everyone.

Compared to anything post-Cryptonomicon, it's incredibly accessible. The digressions into ancient sumerian mythology are broken up fairly well with action scenes. It's not like it spends 3 pages describing a technique for eating breakfast cereal...

I literally bought 5 boxes of Capt'n'Crunch to try to figure out what the hell he was talking about. He spent so long trying to get us to grok the process and experience the joy too.

I tried, Neil, I really did.

But I came up with bupkiss. It just cuts the roof of your mouth, Neil. There is no magic in them. No joy, just oral soreness.

Also, the card deck cypher is really cool, but when your little cousin comes over and then ruins the cypher to play solitaire, yeah, that sucks.

That he got you to try it is perhaps the best praise you could give.

Mostly nostalgia bait, they're little sugar bombs for kids... who go apeshit for anything sugar. Turns into a comfort food -- my dad still occasionally splurges on sugary breakfast cereal.

Cryptonomicon’s the only one of his four books I’ve read that I thought held up for the whole length. Anathem was interesting but spent too much time treading water, then fizzled out. The Diamond Age was one of my favorite first thirds of a sci-fi book that ended up being one of the most frustrating books I’ve finished. I’ve rarely been angry at a book but that one did it, so, that’s something I guess. I’ve read an actual book of Sumerian texts in translation so my Can Tolerate Boring cred is legit, but the mythology sections of Snow Crash—which are a lot of the book—were a real slog. Cryptonomicon? Consistent and fine throughout, and even has a real ending that might have been thought out from near the beginning.

Zodiac is quite good. It's early from him so it has a rough spot or two, but it's a fun time and doesn't linger too long.

Might check it out. Snow Crash is my second favorite of his that I’ve read—despite not enjoying a good chunk of it—largely on account of its shortish length.

I agree that Cryptonomicon was more consistent; I just didn't like what it had to offer.

Sure, and my breadth of reading of and connection with Stephenson‘s work, especially considering his popularity, are such that I wouldn’t claim anything like authority on the matter. Just offering another view in case anyone’s in here looking for reading advice or recommendations, for which I think I have just enough experience and perspective to offer something that might help someone, at least so far as defending Cryptonomicon as, to the right reader, a highlight among Stephenson’s books, and maybe not just for crypto nerds (I wouldn’t count myself as one). Lots and lots of people really like the three of his books that struck me as so-so to poor, so plenty of folks surely think I’m wrong there.

Snow Crash could definitely make a good series. Of the three I’ve read but didn’t like much, I’d say it’s the one I’d be most likely to enjoy as a show even if it barely deviated from the book, in fact. Hell, it has a better shot in that format than Cryptonomicon would. And anyway, Cryptonomicon’s more speculative elements are probably not aging very well since I read it—too much of it’s become ordinary and mundane.

> Cryptonomicon’s more speculative elements are probably not aging very well since I read it—too much of it’s become ordinary and mundane.

Indeed. I call this the Serial Experiments Lain effect.

I'm /still/ trying to read Anathem.

My biggest problem with Snow Crash was at the end of the book. The author has done this in other books too, where you have a very detailed story but then it feels like the end gets rushed. Kind of like another 200 pages of novel get squeezed down to 12 pages.

This is absolutely par for the course for Stephenson. He's written at least 4 books like this, as far as I can tell.

Seveneves in particular is 700 pages of incredible, next-level worldbuilding, then the potential for 3 more 300+ page volumes compressed into 180 pages. It's like at the 700 page mark the "wrap it up" light comes on, and he hastily bookends it.

Stephenson is great at starting stories. Arguably he does this several times in each book.

He can't write endings for shit, though. (Every book of his that I've read - Anathem, Seveneves, Reamde, Cryptonomicon/Snow Crash/The Diamond Age, and more - all fail to come to a satisfactory ending. But I keep reading, because the rest of the books are good...)

Cryptonomicon and Anathem get endings of a sort... later :)

Would you mind expanding on this?

I've read both books and am curious what you mean.

I haven’t read anthem, but his latest is in the cryptonomicon universe....ties up a couple loose ends...or at least shows some repercussions.

Right. It does a similar (albeit smaller scale) thing for Anathem.

I thought his most recent (Fall, or Dodge in Hell) was a followup to Reamde, not Anathem or Snow Crash?

And I was pretty sure Cryptonomicon led into Snow Crash and then The Diamond Age...

The Baroque Cycle seems to end well IMHO.

It is the very finest first chapter I've ever read.

Any tv/film adaptation is playing with the highest possible difficulty score for its opening minutes.

In fact, I'm not sure they could do better than acting out the entire first chapter with a voiceover to tie the transitions together.

Iirc the first chapter was a short story that he later expanded. I enjoyed the rest Of Snow Crash (way back when) but found everything else he writes to be incredibly boring.

I have similar feelings about the book. "an astronomical amount of suspension of disbelief" is a good way of putting it. There's too much detail and too little explanation, and so I felt like I couldn't see the forest because the trees were in the way.

Here's a HN comment I wrote shortly after reading it last year:

> Snow Crash is so bizarre. It launches you straight into the story with no explanation, starting off with some crazy pizza delivery man in a rocket car with swords and an electric zapper thing for people who don't pay the bill. The whole book is like that--it never explains how, why, or when, leaving you to piece it all together yourself. The entire time I was reading it, I was waiting for a 30000 feet view of the world. But then it ended, never having fully explained itself.

> I've never read anything else quite like it, and honestly don't know what I think of it. Are all of Neal Stephenson's books like that?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19704665

In case you haven't read anything else, and for other people here, yes his books are projects.

I really liked Seveneves though. And The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. has been good so far!

Interesting. I've loved most of Stephenson's books and Cryptonomicon easily holds the title of most re-read book in my collection.

Seveneves, on the other hand, I absolutely loathed in basically every regard. My loathing for it makes it memorable enough to be my most hated book (there are plenty of books out there that are 'worse', but are also unmemorable -- Seveneves is viscerally memorable)

the end of seveneves is what fucks it, it's a great book until the last third/quarter.

I actually like the ending of Seveneves - not as great as the first part but still pretty good.

> The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. has been good so far!

If you give up reading when it gets to the Halloween party, you’ll be sorted. The ending is disappointing.

To your last comment, I bought Snow Crash, based on a lot of recommendations, and hated it, for the stated reasons. It completely put me off Neal Stephenson. Then, much later, I relented and got Cryptonomicon, and it is one of my favorite books ever.

I have since dabbled a bit with Stephenson, and amazingly his other books fall along the same divide for me. Zodiac is amazing, the Victorian sci-fi series (Diamond Age?) are unreadable. One book, Seveneves, the first part is amazing Neal Stephenson, the second is lazy, naive and dumb Neal Stephenson. Super puzzling, almost as if he has (really bad) ghost writers.

I have since gone back to Snow Crash (could not finish it the first time), and with some overbearing, it is not entirely unlikable.

That's funny because I love The Diamond Age, I like Snow Crash and thought Cryptonomicon was mediocre at best. I also never made it to the second half of Seveneves because I disliked the beginning so much.

Clearly there are two styles of Stephenson books, and we like the opposite ones.

[edit]

Maybe I should try finishing Seveneves to see if I like the ending?

I was captivated by the first half of Seveneves and simply endured the second half. The very end was like, “meh - I see what you did there” but to get there took great feats of endurance.

Hear, hear. The Diamond Age is probably my favourite:

  The Diamond Age +++
  Snow Crash ++
  Quicksilver/The Confusion/The System of the World ++ (I think it makes sense to rate them as a series)
  Anathem +
  Seveneves -
  Cryptonomicon -
  Reamde --

Fall, or Dodge in Hell: hate to admit it but I haven't read it yet. It's sitting right next to The Rise and Fall of DODO, which is also waiting to be read. And I should probably read Zodiac at some point, but it hasn't seemed urgent.

I'm not hugely fond of the earlier books but I loved Cryptonomicon and all of the later novels apart from Reamde - Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pretty good in my view and ties up some loose ends from earlier books in satisfying ways.

I still think The Baroque Cycle would make a wonderful sprawling multi-series show (Jack Shaftoe being one of my favourite fictional characters).

If you didn’t know....and I don’t want this to be a spoiler, but you figure it out in the first few pages...Fall is a direct and some what spiritual sequel to your two lowest rated....that being said it waves in a good bit of the snowcrash absurd stuff as well.

I roughly agree with your ratings and would rate Fall/Dodge in Hell at a ----.

yeah, I too did not like Fall/Dodge in Hell. However, the first section, about internet hate/bot culture I liked.

You're probably thinking of The Baroque Cycle, which is pre-Victorian.

Not OP but I think they are talking about Diamond Age. It's set in futuristic Victorian society.

"series" definitely suggests they meant Baroque Cycle since it is 3 books, even if "Victorian" misses the mark by a few hundred years.

Diamond Age is a single book, and one of the "phyles" (cultures / pseudo nation states) is called the Neo-Victorians

>Are all of Neal Stephenson's books like that?

He got better over his career, but the short answer is yes.

The Big-U and Interface were fantastic.

No one else is mentioning Anathem, so I'll plug it here. It's a glacially paced math-fiction book that gets pretty good around page 800 or so. I enjoyed it, but can definitely see why others wouldn't. In any case, I read it years ago, but IIRC it does eventually more or less deliver on the 30,000 foot view.

> slogging through Leviticus, plus an astronomical amount of suspension of disbelief.

Plus?

touche.

The audiobook version of Chapter 1 is simply sublime. I can listen to it repeatedly and always laugh out loud and marvel at its mastery of language, emotion, and satire. It's as if Mark Twain took a time machine to the future and called you after lunch to tell you about it.

Snow Crash is one of those books that I envision so vividly that I feel like I've already seen the movie adaptation. I have nearly equal parts horror and excitement about the idea of a video adaptation. (Perhaps not equal parts-- it's probably more horror than excitement...)

I felt this way about the first Lord of the Rings movie. I was young when it came out , very excited, and totally hated it. I’ve softened since then - and genuinely like Peter Jackson - but those movies never quite jived for me.

I am in the same boat, but unsoftened - for me, the movies ruined the books, because no matter how hard I try to dispel the bland images of the movies from my mind they overpower the once awesome images I envisioned when reading the LOTR books. I can still read the Silmarillion and enjoy the fantasy though.

I feel like Jurassic Park is on the other end of the spectrum, where seeing the original movie greatly enhanced re-reading the book(s).

And I never watched Ender’s Game... but I have a hunch, based on clips and reviews, that doing so would sully the book. Given the modern direction of big-budget cinema just being ridiculous action sequences I try to avoid movie adaptations of good books. Arrival is the only recent film I can think of that was better than the book (short story) it was based on.

Edit: spelling

Now I'm curious: if you read A Song of Ice and Fire after watching Game of Thrones, would that sully your view of the Unsullied?

Neal Stephenson is not bad (unlike the Altered Carbon person), he can actually write, but he's so mind-numbingly boring. He takes one good idea and stretches it out while explaining it 20 different ways to make sure you absolutely get it. Plus, he simply doesn't have interesting things to say. His best books are essentially fan-service to nerds. As this series is -in all probability- going to be.

Now Sprawl trilogy, dial me in. That's what I call cyberpunk. Uncompromising presentation, ideas that pummel you, a future that feels so current yet so far away. And the implications, the insinuations of what Gibson is methodically describing. Absolutely brilliant. All of that means that there is practically 0 chance this is going to be done right. So I'd rather never see it butchered. Read the books people. Focus on the social implications, the environments, the language and culture, the meta-story. The VR and cool tech are the icing in a much more meaty and philosophically heavy series.

Maybe it’s because I read it as a teen, but I thought Snow Crash was fairly lively and comical for Stephenson ... at least compared to Cryptonomicon.

There's a Stephenson who likes action and guns and swords and cars and stuff, and a Stephenson who aspires to be Stanislaw Lem but in English. Snow Crash was as close to parity as I've ever seen them. The latter has been increasingly in the ascendant since then.

If we're going to bring up Gibson, I hope they also adapt Bruce Sterling's finest work- Schismatrix- set in transhuman space like Altered Carbon, but in a society that is truly alien, imagining a future where cyberpunk angst exists even in the vast cosmos.

The thing you have to remember about Snow Crash is that it did for cyberpunk what Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta" did for grunge music: use the hallmarks of the genre to parody its contradictions and self-indulgence. It's very much a book of its time, and might not be as well appreciated were it released today.

Richard K Morgan goes for different impact from Stephenson. A lot of it is about the world building, and the impact on people and culture that the little details of some technology or planet would have. Stuff like the Harlan's Day celebrations with balloons released for angelfire instead of the fireworks, the Meths growing increasingly out of touch with everyday people, the evolved weapons systems becoming indistinguishable from consciousness.

While Neuromancer was awesome because it introduced so many new concepts, and moreover delighted in doing so, I feel like the 2 sequels lost their awe of the world they were in, which was a real letdown.

Neal Stephenson is not boring, but you have to look for the ridiculous under the surface to understand what he's doing. Everything is a caricature, and his story is about the interaction of over-the-top stereotypes or tropes. Snow Crash has the main character "Hero Protagonist" who develops a feud with an Eskimo ninja, saves the world from Zombie Robot TV Evangelicals, with the help of the Mafia (who have pivoted to pizza delivery). Then he fills it in with more tropes in a fractal fashion all the way down.

I have a soft spot for Iain M Banks's work, even if I find it a bit... slow at times. Neal Asher takes something like The Use Of Weapons and turns it from space opera into gritty action. Maybe not as refined, but that's really not what it's trying to achieve.

In these times with the popularity of Westworld, Altered Carbon and the imminent release of the Cyberpunk 2077 game, we live in a golden era of cyberpunk-themed near future scifi. I hope that if they ever adapt the Gibson sprawl trilogy of books to a TV series, they don't ruin it.

Altered Carbon was disappointing trash. In the end, it was just a sitcom with a cyberpunk backdrop.

What part of Altered Carbon struck you as a comedy?

Abeula.

(and it was glorious)

That episode is a mighty study in contrasts!

The part where far far into the future, the protagonist(?) takes out a SWAT(more like 75th rangers?) team that has him surrounded with cover with the tactics of firing from the hip. The funny thing is that it all started so well. The apartment scene is almost believable.

Altered Carbon was just cyberpunk eye-candy. There was no technology explored in a meaningful way besides the stacks.

I liked the first season, but the second season was absolute garbage.

I didn't like it, but I don't recall it having gags or a laugh track.

Season 2 was so overly dark and broody that it was boring.

The second season was bizarrely unwatchable.

It is a particularly egregious case of the book being better than the series (and maybe even faster to finish).

It keeps the "cool" action parts while simplifying the world building and plot complexities down to a lowest common denominator that robs it of all nuance and subtlety of character relationships and motivations.

Amazon picked up the Ringworld franchise too for a series.

Altered Carbon actually disappoints me, a bit. I loved cyberpunk back in the '90s, but watching something like that now feels almost... dated? The Asian fetishism, the cartoonishly evil corporate overlords, the pageantry of making everything so deliberately cool, in a sort of '80s way. At least Snow Crash had interesting and contemporaneous things to say about anarcho-feudalist suburbia.

I love the heck out of Snow Crash, but I think it was one of the last hurrahs of Cyberpunk, and part of its success was that it described a future that was disgustingly uncool. It wasn't a world of chrome skyscrapers bedazzled in holograms and surrounded by sexy cyborgs in Italian three-piece suits. It was trashy - a world of ugly walled-village box-cutout suburbs full of minivans and roided-up teenagers and pizza-delivery vehicles.

Snow Crash is a product of its time, since the characters all exude the excessive coolness of the '80s (which came from its origins as a comic, I imagine) but it also created the more modern setting. Modern dystopian lit wallows in the banality of evil.

Retro-futurism has been attempted recently and done quite well, though the examples I'm thinking of (Blade Runner 2049 and Alien: Isolation) are both far more spartan, utilitarian, and darker than Snow Crash. There's even cultural elements associated with the 80s to early-90s that will either have to be modernized or accepted as an anachronism the bimbo boxes, the Texan televangelist, Ed Meese and Ronald Reagan on currency, the Vietnam vet character.

> Altered Carbon actually disappoints me, a bit. I loved cyberpunk back in the '90s, but watching something like that now feels almost... dated?

Agreed with the thoughts on Altered Carbon. Worth noting that the books are fairly different from the TV show.

The TV and movie industry continues to ruin the literary integrity of almost everything, despite budgets that allow great production values. Every story gets reduced to one of the conventional formulas. They couldn't even remake decent versions of the "The Andromeda Strain" or "The Day the Earth Stood Still". Did you ever see NBC's "The Martian Chronicles?", or the two versions of "Brave New World" (soon to be joined by a third version)? There are only so many Stanley Kubricks out there (currently out of stock) who are capable of doing these kinds of stories well.

Let's hope that Villeneuve's Dune will prove you wrong.

Yet Sky was able to make true-to-the-book Pratchett adaptations. I wonder why others can't follow suit?

I'd love to see an attempt at a Schismatrix series.

A classic cyberpunk novel, I'm greatly looking forward to torrenting this once it's out.

I'll never willingly give AT&T (which owns Warner/HBO) a dime of my money, and you shouldn't either. They're an eager participant in the surveillance state (since 1985(!)).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarnerMedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepting_v._AT%26T

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairview_(surveillance_program...

https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-spying-relies-on-atts...

I'd watch it in a heartbeat, but sadly, this book has been optioned more or less continuously since it was released in 1992. Another option isn't really news, at least not until the production is greenlit and they start filming.

If they could get Jason Momoa to play Raven I would definitely give it a shot.

That is brilliant casting.

Not bad. I always pictured a kind of embiggened Danzig in this role.

Why is this exclusive to Max? Seems like they’re just diluting their brand to me—I don’t know which product to purchase to get their new content.

HBO, Warner, AT&T, or whoever is making the decisions have been absolutely awful at branding. This will now be the third streaming service that has the HBO name on it. I would bet that the number of consumers that could actually describe the differences between the three is extremely small. As it stands now, my initial instinct is to question the quality of this show and the commitment to supporting it if they are making it exclusive to Max rather than airing it on HBO proper.

This has always been the challenge between HBO GO and Now. There were legacy contract obligations that historically prevented these from becoming one app. It's always been such an issue that every app store listing headline just disambiguates between the related apps.

I assume this still factors in to the decision to now have four US apps: HBO Max (the new one), Max Go (Cinemax), HBO Now (pay with credit card), & HBO GO (cable subscription).

The good news is, there is no separate, lower-tier team producing content for Max vs. HBO proper. The content team just has way more money to invest (from AT&T) after the acquisition.

I think they’re moving towards pushing streaming first. I think cable tv’s days are numbered.

Trying not to get too excited, but damn, I've wanted to see this brought to life for so long.

"Development hell" is the technical term for where this one has been for many years.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_hell

The first book I ever read from Neal was Cryptonomicon and I absolutely LOVED it. I think I heard about Van Eck phreaking at some point, heard it was in the book, and was intrigued. I read Snow Crash after and was blown away. It's so different from Cryptonomicon but the tangents are fantastic.

When I think about all the books I've read in my lifetime, Snow Crash has given me the coolest and most fun mental images out of all books. I'm 40+ years old, and when I'm stuck in traffic, I still think about latching on to cars in front of me and escaping the grid I'm sitting in.

Now we just need an adaptation of Revelation Space and my life will be complete.

Now that I can get behind.

They could do an entire 10 seasons on just 1% of that series.

The series I really want is a Baroque Cycle series. With Virtual Backgrounds, I think it could be really really immersive.

As much as this might be an impossible sell, I’m inclined to agree. Strongly suspect Baroque Cycle would actually be more watchable than it was readable.

I got through the series and it was well worth the slog, but that was at a time in my life when ploughing through 50 books in a year came naturally and I had time to burn. If I started now (30s, have kids) I’d burn out early in The Confusion—but being able to compress things a bit into a more easily consumed medium would help.

> The series I really want is a Baroque Cycle series. With Virtual Backgrounds, I think it could be really really immersive.

I recently finished the Baroque Cycle after having bounced off of it a few years ago - this time around I appreciated it so much more.

It's his masterpiece, as far as I'm concerned. I'd love to see it as a series, but good lord... how long would it have to be to actually do it justice? How many scenes of Isaac and Daniel talking about geometry or philosophy? It's so difficult for me to imagine somebody actually making such a sprawling thing because I feel like the attention span of modern viewers could not tolerate it.

I feel like we could only be left with an elided "adventures of Jack Shaftoe" version which gives short shrift to the court drama and scientific conversations, resulting in a partial and unworthy adaptation.

I don't think Court Drama would be hard. The science stuff would be hard, but a unique challenge.

Plus, I want to see Jack in India.

Of all of the Stephenson books I think Zodiac or Cryptonomicon (both somewhat grounded) would adapt the best - Snow Crash has this dyed in the wool early 90s escapist VR vision of the internet that doesn't really make sense today, along with a ton of religious overtones and weird, rapey bits.

I was with you until you got to the end. Remember, it's HBO.

HBO Go, HBO Max, HBO Now. How many HBOs do we need?

Does anyone have an example of a book they love that was turned into a movie or TV series that they also loved? I find it is generally not the case.

A Clockwork Orange... the movie was OK, but the book was much much more enjoyable IMHO.

Lord of the Rings... I would say I enjoyed the movies a lot.

Altered Carbon... I liked the book a bit better, although the writing wasn't the greatest.

Watchmen... the graphic novel was much better and enjoyable than the movie.

I haven't read Watchmen, but the movie is very very good. The others you mentioned are just OK, true.

I read the comic and I get why people complain about the movie... but taken on it's own it's decent.

It’s not exactly an adaptation, but the recent miniseries sequel to Watchmen (the graphic novel, not the movie) is, implausibly, outstanding and very much feels right, as a continuation of the story.

Have you watched the watchman tv show yet? Never read the books or watched the movie but this series caught me so off guard. It was wonderful and strange. At least strange from pre 2020 standards. If squid fell from the sky tomorrow I’d just brush it off at this point.

Fight Club. The Expanse.

I really like this book when I started it but by the end I just didn't feel invested anymore. All of the long conversations with the Librarian felt like a club to hammer in a bunch of complicated exposition. I remember thinking quite a few times during those passages: "how in the world would you pull off a movie version of _this_?"

That said, I will absolutely watch this.

I read that in the mid 90s I think and don't remember it very well. But that's not because it isn't memorable. It's just because it was a long time ago.

I had a lot more time for books back then. There was no YouTube.

I wish we didn't have to wait until next year for the Cybertruck.

Question. What genre came after cyberpunk? Are there any innovative science fiction authors in 2020?

YAY!1!!

/me summersaults to 'Vitalic - Poison Lips (Live)' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBgHSJg7oKc 4min48sec

So, does HBO Max mean I need to subscribe to a different thing if I already have HBO? It's so confusing. I have HBO via Amazon Prime channels and it's not at all clear if this will be available there or not.

If you already have HBO Now, then no. You're already going to get HBO Max on launch.

If you're subscribed to HBO via your cable provider, then you need to rethink your life choices (I mean, rethink your purchasing decision, because you'll be missing out on a ton of content).

With the right treatment Snowcrash should be fun! (e.g. J.J. Abrams or Luc Besson).

Personally, I'm holding out for Alastair Reynold's Revenger books/series directed by someone thoughtful like Peter Jackson.

> Snow Crash’s prose is richer.

Do you have any relatives in Afghanistan?

Just a caress, but it might as well be a two-handed blow from Satan's electric ax handle.

I am (geniunely) struggling to parse/interpret the comment, and I've tried for a while... any elaboration/explanation would be appreciated :-/

Both are direct quotes from Snow Crash, illustrating the prose comment.

Ahh, thx; I recognized the 2nd but not the first and assumed they were a related message as opposed to a quote.

Can you please rename “L. Bob Rife” to Ajit Pai?

Larry Ellison would be more appropriate. He already has the yacht fleet and the mind control systems, too.

This is kind of an aside... but a couple of years ago I sent an email to HBO begging them to adapt Dune.

The response I got was funny and expected. They basically told me to join the union and write a script. Then we could talk.

I guess my point is you think Hollywood is full of great writers. That idea might be generous.

Every industry is begging for creatives that will increase their productivity.

Netflix has billions of dollars of debt and not a single show I consider worth remembering.

Stranger Things.

The one show I remember. And I didnt even watch the latest season :(

I can think of a couple of Netflix series that I'm anxiously waiting for another season:

- Umbrella Academy - Ghost In The Shell -

Now how about The Diamond Age!

http://enwp.org/The_Diamond_Age#Proposed_television_adaptati...

I'm so sad Diamond Age never happened.

Excellent, time to sell my mint copies of 1st pressing hardcovers.

"no firm release date". Ah, thank goodness.

If they make a worthwhile adaptation, it will usher in a revolution. If they want to keep their advertisers, they'll water down the anti-corporate cynicism.

HBO doesn't have advertisers.

It was about time!

TLDR; No firm release date.

Kind of a pointless article, not really anything new info since Cornish was announced as the director back in 2012 and HBO took over from Paramount

I admit, what I primarily remember from reading this book was how it turned my stomach that Stephenson included an explicit semi-nonconsensual sexual encounter between the underage punk heroine and the brutal villain.

I guess that fits HBO’s modus operandi? Anyway I’m sure I won’t be watching. shrug

So I read Snow Crash years ago and loved it (although endings aren't Stephenson's strong suit) but I'm not sure how well this will hold up today on screen.

Cyberpunk was thinly-veiled xenophobia about the Japanese and this was really the zeitgeist of the 1980s. Granted the ideas of virtual reality, what we now know as the Internet (to be fair, the Internet already existed in the 1980s in nascent form) and personal enhancement were fairly new ideas at the time but we're now living in that future and it is of course nothing like the dystopia predicted.

It's really no coincidence that the heyday for all this was the 1980s (Blade Runner, Neuromancer and so on). I wouldn't be surprised if this is what the project is stuck on: interpreting and translating this story to the small screen in a modern way.

The concern was about the superiority of Japanese technology and corporate structure; it's not xenophobic in the sense that they represent a corrupting force, it was concern for a potentially dominating force.

It's not unlike the British being concerned about the rise of the American Empire; it's not xenophobia so much as it is fear of losing.

> Cyberpunk was thinly-veiled xenophobia about the Japanese

I'm surprised by this point of view since, in my opinion, Japanese cyberpunk media is easily the best.

Any recommendations? I have only seen “ghost in a shell”.

The ones that come to mind first are Akira, Serial Experiments Lain, Patlabor (particularly the first movie), and Paprika.

I love the others (especially Lain is underappreciated!) but haven't heard of Patlabor so will check it out, thanks for the recommendation!

In no particular order:

Roujin Z, Manie-Manie Meikyu Monogatari, Tamala 2010, Memories, Trava - Fist Planet, REDLINE, Cyber City Oedo 808, Dallos, Genocyber, Noein, Texhnolyze

Endings aren’t Stephenson’s thing - except for Baroque Cycle which absolutely nailed it.

Really? I couldn't even finish the third book. I found it incredibly tortuous.

It’s worth the investment. Most his books keep their currency.

I always viewed it as a critique of capitalism—sure you can get a bionic arm, but you had to sell it in the first place. All inherent value has been exploited and resold, including at times reality itself.

> Cyberpunk was thinly-veiled xenophobia about the Japanese

This comment might apply to Gibson's works (although I'd dispute even that, Japan is generally presented in a positive light), but Snow Crash doesn't really feature Japan at all. The setting is American through and through, and the main character is part-Japanese mostly just to make "Hiro" a plausible name.

I like this quote [1]:

> Since the late 1970s, a key idea in Western science fiction has been that Japan represents the future. Japan's "weird" culture is a figure for an incomprehensible tomorrow.

which I found here [2] (titled "Cyberpunk Cities Fetishize Asian Culture But Have No Asians").

Cyberpunk cast (Asian) megacorporations as the architects of a dystopian future with American cowboys (essentially) fighting back (see [3]).

[1]: https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-do-westerners-fetishize-japans-f...

[2]: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mb7yqx/cyberpunk-cities-f...

[3]: https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/57/nixon57art.htm

And yet the streets of Bladerunner were full of asians; and for many written works, the ethnicity of those on the street were whatever you imagined them to be.

When reading Vice/Gizmodo/Kotaku/etc: assume they are projecting.

I recall reading long ago of Gibson overtly expressing that he used Japan as the Other. He knew that if he actually studied the culture and learned the language that it would become as prosaic as anywhere else. He wanted to keep the dream that it was a place of the future. If anything, I don’t think it was xenophobia as much as it was embracing cultural alienation.

> Cyberpunk was thinly-veiled xenophobia about the Japanese

In both Stephenson (Snow Crash doesn't even feature Japan or Japanese much from memory) and Neuromancer, it really strikes me as more of fetishization than xenophobia. At the time, Japan was seen as (and maybe was?) ahead of the curve in sociotechnological development so it's natural to have them prominent in near-future sci-fi at the time.

> Cyberpunk was thinly-veiled xenophobia about the Japanese

No, it was a not-at-all veiled dystopian vision of neoliberal capitalism as both domestic and global policy trend, along the lines of Thatcher, Reagan, the evolving WTO regime, etc.

> but we're now living in that future and it is of course nothing like the dystopia predicted.

“Nothing like” is a pretty big exaggeration, though certainly Cyberpunk largely didn't address how the retreat of state control over corporations would turn the state into a powerful vehicle for corporate power, preferring to paint corps as overtly replacing the State. Plus, the technology was too optimistic in lots of ways.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com