Three SF Novels of the Early Nineties: Snow Crash, Virtual Light and Vurt

The early nineties were a fertile time for futurists, eyeing the new millennium at a time of rapid technological advances and refining the ideas of ‘cyberpunk’ into a more nuanced vision. William Gibson was already established as one of SF’s leading visionaries by the time 1993’s Virtual Light began his second major trilogy. The breakthrough novels of Jeff Noon (Vurt, 1993) and Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, 1992), saw them join the decade’s most influential writers. 

These books share a central theme of an escape from dystopian futures into alternate worlds, and display an interest in altered states, shared hallucinations and virtual realities. In Vurt and Noon’s related novels, the titular magical realm – a shared hallucination or fantastic place – is reached via ingesting feathers. Snow Crash posits a form of virtual reality as a fully-formed location (the ‘Metaverse’), populated by avatars, as an alternative to daily life. Virtual Light begins the ‘Bridge’ trilogy, grounded in a recognisable California shaped by corporate technology, with a view through virtual reality glasses.

Neuromancer and Gibson’s other early work (the ‘Sprawl’ trilogy) charts the vast uncharted territory of data-information he designates as ‘cyberspace’. The ‘Bridge’ trilogy (Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow’s Parties; 1993-99) is set in a more identifiable near future than Neuromancer and the cyberpunk novels and stories which built Gibson’s reputation. The author himself described these novels as “my take on the 1990s” but commented that “lots of people assumed I was still writing about the capital-F future.”

Combining elements of post-apocalyptic and dystopian imagery with a characteristic eye on the effects of technology, Virtual Light follows marginalised characters through a fractured California. San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, no longer used for vehicles but colonised by the disenfranchised, is the book’s emblematic location. The novel grew from Gibson’s short story, ‘Skinner’s Room’, commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for a 1990 exhibition, Visionary San Francisco. Architects Ming Fung and Craig Hodgetts created an installation envisaging the transformation of the Bridge in response to the story.

Untitled (The Bridge, a shanty-town on the remnants of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge) by Ming Fung and Craig Hodgetts in Visionary San Francisco

The disintegration of the social structure, the privatisation of public bodies (and spaces) of Virtual Light are taken one stage further in Snow Crash, also set in California. The central characters, as in Gibson’s work, are trying to find a niche in this unforgiving society, working in security, as couriers, or operating as hackers. Here, the state has almost entirely ceded control to corporations which own portions of land as autonomous commercial republics, or ‘Franchise-Organised Quasi-National Entities’. Private citizens, or those who can afford it, live in the anodyne gated communities of ‘Burbclaves’, guarded by their own security forces.

Where Gibson’s plot revolves around a stolen pair of Virtual Reality goggles (the Virtual Light of the title) but remains in a familiar landscape, Stephenson’s Metaverse is “a computer-generated universe”. Information and power are concentrated in the Metaverse, where the digital/neuro-linguistic virus of the title is unleashed with consequences for the ‘real world’. Visitors to this virtual world are represented by their avatars, while still constrained by spending power and status. In recent months the Metaverse has become particularly topical, a process accelerated by the need for ‘virtual’ spaces in a world locked down by Covid-19. Big tech and media conglomerates see popular multi-player games such as Fortnite and Roblox as potential platforms, where concerts and films can be hosted (and paid for in digital currency), building on earlier virtual reality concepts like Second Life. Many articles on the goal of creating a Metaverse explicitly reference Stephenson and Snow Crash. 

A rendering of Snow Crash's Metaverse

Informed by developments in virtual worlds and rave culture’s hedonistic escapism, Noon conjures an imagined, transitory utopia from the lawless, rain-swept streets of a near-future Manchester. Vurt’s action follows Scribble, Beetle and the gang of ‘Stash Riders’ riding their van in search of the differently-coloured feathers which unlock the key to other worlds. The dream-scape of the ‘Vurt’, like the Metaverse, has its casualties, brings real dangers, and poses philosophical questions reminiscent of Philip K. Dick alongside its escapist thrills. Less preoccupied with technology than pharmacology, Vurt draws on post-rave subcultures in its depictions of the various human and mutant variations which fall under the intoxicating spell of the feathers, enigmatic portals to alternate worlds. Noon’s creation has also lent itself to virtual role-playing games.

Vurt: the role-playing game

Noon has ‘retro-engineered’ a sequence of novels in the Vurt series and spoken of his affinity with the electronic music scene, especially the techniques of re-mixing in what he calls ‘dub fiction’. The depictions of a rave/techno drug-based subculture supplement the theme of escape; nightclub characters Inky MC and Dingo Tush (the man-dog, “presented by Das Uberdog Enterprises”) illuminate a phantasmagorical Manchester. Snow Crash too draws on elements of dance and indie music which were already blending and metamorphosing in pop culture at the time. The vivid depictions of Vitaly Chernobyl & the Meltdowns’ experimental ‘nuclear fuzz-grunge’ gig under the freeway, and the stylings of ‘Nipponese rap star’ Sushi K, show Stephenson’s wry humour. 

Where Gibson’s earlier ‘Sprawl’ trilogy was peppered with pop-cultural references from William Burroughs to Steely Dan, Virtual Light is more restrained, content to include the iconoclastic band Chrome Koran. However Idoru (1996), the next novel in the series, focusses on the computer-simulation pop star Rei Toei, an Artificial Intelligence idoru or ‘idol’; Gibson continues to weave music-based themes into his work, not least in All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999), which completed the ‘Bridge’ trilogy. 

All three books share a preoccupation with misfits and outsiders navigating a grim urban landscape, struggling to find a place in an increasingly alienating society, often only to be found in alternate or virtual realms, drug-induced or computer-generated. Nearly thirty years on, we appear to be increasingly living in the world/s they anticipated.