On the subject of class and privilege, in the novel it's a group of scrappy young programmers who create and control the Metaverse. How different will it be when, say, a large corporation like Apple, Samsung, or Facebook is in control? What do you think of the prospect of a Zuckerberg-controlled Metaverse?

[Low laughter and a very, very, very long pause] I would say that anything that gets invented has got results, and some of those are predicted and some are not. There’s no fixed process for predicting the results and controlling what happens. At some level, it boils down to people’s capacity to act as socially responsible, ethical individuals.

One of the things that’s been interesting to observe with the rise of social media is the way in which the same technologies that initially seemed to be uniting us have in fact driven us further apart. Do you see virtual reality as ultimately contributing to the same political polarization that we’ve seen divide Twitter and Facebook?

Well, first, I should make full disclosure that I totally did not see that coming. Even a few years ago, to say nothing of 25 years ago, I really didn’t see the whole social-media bubble thing coming and didn’t—even when I became aware of it—didn’t really get its significance until November 8, 2016. So, that one I missed. The way that the Metaverse is designed—keeping in mind that this was pre-Internet as we know it, pre-Worldwide Web, just me making shit up—there’s only one Metaverse. You have to go there, you can’t set up your own.

I’m tempted to say that if it really existed, it would be less vulnerable to some social-bubble formation than what we have now where anybody can create their own Web site or social-media feed. The thing that’s not intuitive that makes social-media bubbles so deceptive is that you don’t see what you’re not seeing. So, it just invisibly, behind the scenes, filters out all the stuff that you’d rather not see, and you’re not aware that filtering is taking place. That’s the thing that causes bubbles. It’s not the filtering, it’s the fact that the filtering happens invisibly.

You mentioned the election. Do you think that the current political climate—and maybe even the literal climate, what with Trump pulling out of the Paris climate accord—is creating increased urgency for an escapist VR experience?

If you think of it as an escapist thing, then my knee-jerk answer is that we ought to be doing the opposite. What I’m seeing in the wake of recent political changes is more people stepping back from escapism and trying to get more involved. I would certainly hope that when we enter uncertain and dangerous times, that people’s response to that is not to close their eyes and pretend it’s not happening but to find ways of making things better.

When you see the clear influence your work has had on newer popular-genre stories like last year’s “San Junipero” episode of Black Mirror, or Ernest Cline’s book Ready Player One, what does that feel like?

It’s not a thing that I spend a lot of time thinking about. Circling back to focus on previous works, I think, is just never a healthy thing to do. One of the drawbacks of doing everything electronically now is that back when I shipped paper manuscripts, I would print the thing out. I’d wrap it up and I would go to the FedEx box and I would put the thing in the big slot and I would sort of look at it for a second, and then I would shove it home and I would hear the clunk of this giant manuscript slamming into the bottom of the box. And then it was done. And I would just turn around and walk away and start working on the next book.

Ready Player One, unfortunately, is going to beat Snow Crash to the movie theater. Steven Spielberg’s adaptation is hitting theaters next year, while the Snow Crash movie has been in development for, well, 20 years. Producer Frank Marshall said very recently that Snow Crash could go into production as soon as this year. Do you have any updates you could share?

I was down there a week ago talking to the people who are working on it. It’s definitely a thing that’s being worked on in a serious way, and I like the people who are working on it. Frank and Kathy Kennedy have been associated with the property for, almost since the day it came out. I’ve always felt comfortable having them be the potential producers of it, because I’ve always known that they would treat it respectfully and do a good job of it, and I continue to feel that way. So, yeah, paying attention and [being] interested to see what happens but also trying to leave them alone to do their jobs and not be a pest.