How much do you know about the metaverse? If you’re already an avid fan of virtual reality, augmented reality, and the full spectrum of emerging immersive technologies, then you might already be aware of some of the essential books related to these topics. If you’re just getting started, however, there are some amazing books that every future metaverser should read. Whether you’re interested in how this emerging space has influenced our real world or how we can continue to develop it into new areas, these five must-read books about the metaverse will give you plenty to think about.
Ernest Cline’s debut novel, Ready Player One, is an absolute must for any virtual reality fan. Ready Player One takes place in a dystopian future where everyone escapes their harsh realities by living in a virtual world known as OASIS. In many ways, OASIS resembles today’s metaverse projects like High Fidelity and Sansar.
Snow Crash is a 1992 novel by Neal Stephenson that explores virtual reality, cyberterrorism, and other modern subcultures. It was nominated for both a Hugo Award and a Locus Award in 1993. Like many of Stephenson’s books, Snow Crash employs numerous technological concepts and developments, while remaining accessible to mainstream readers with little or no scientific background.
This classic science fiction book takes place in a near future in which humanity has colonized Mars. This book contains a ton of interesting, beautifully imagined depictions of space travel, all based on real science. It’s also, perhaps unsurprisingly given its title, a great read for anyone interested in terraforming and human settlement of other planets.
Diaspora is a great example of what a real decentralized social network could be. While Diaspora isn’t entirely decentralized, it was built to solve many of those problems with social networks today. It gives users complete control over their data and privacy, but also makes sharing easy and completely customizable.
One of Neal Stephenson’s early works, Cryptonomicon was published in 1999 and is actually a series of two books. While you can certainly enjoy it as a stand-alone novel, its roots lie in Snow Crash and particularly Diamond Age. It is set during World War II and describes a quest to obtain fictional German military Enigma codebooks that have made their way into Australia.
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