According to a page that can be found on the official Sotheby’s website, the original manuscript of Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash, the novel credited with coining the phrase “metaverse,” is set to go on sale. The auction is part of a series called “Infocalypse” that will take place on February 23. The series will feature physical and digital assets tied to the well-known novel.

Lot 2 of the series contains the original manuscript that was written. It is “wrapped in original Xerox 4200 paper,” sealed with tape, and has “blue ink annotations and corrections by Neal Stephenson in his hand.” Additionally, the author has inscribed the title of the book on the spine of the book with a Sharpie marker.

In addition, there is an “updated typesetting document” up for auction in Lot 4 of the sale. This is a later version that has been revised and supplemented by the author with additional handwritten annotations and alterations.

Other real-world items are also being sold at auction as part of this series. These include the original painting that was used as the cover of the 1993 mass-market paperback edition of the book; a leather jacket that was to be used in a promotional video for the graphic novel; slides that served for the concept of the graphic novel; and a real sword inspired by the one wielded by the protagonist of the book.

In addition to these tangible artifacts, the series will also include digital art nonfiction (NFT) tales that were created in response to the picture book idea that came before Snow Crash.

The dystopian novel Snow Crash was first released in 1992 and takes place in a world where most people reside in overcrowded storage facilities. The main character Hiro is a pizza delivery man who needs to fight against thieves to deliver pizzas to customers. The story narrates his adventures. Hiro doesn’t have much of a social life as he spends all of his free time in a virtual world known as “the Metaverse”, which is a place where people go to get away from the stress of ordinary life. The inhabitants of the Metaverse, however, are transformed into “nothing more than a shivering cloud of negative digital karma” due to a computer virus. Hiro’s journey through the book to discover a cure for the virus is the driving force behind the action of the story.

According to the Washington Post, the book has amassed sales of over a million copies on the North American continent alone. Since the book’s publication, VR enthusiasts have increasingly used Stephenson’s term “metaverse” to describe the developing virtual world that is being created by VR technology. In recent years, the term has become a buzzword that is frequently searched for online.

The growth of the metaverse has given some people new job prospects and has contributed to the transformation of Web3 games.