Neil Gaiman has been a hero to at least two generations of geeks, with his successful fantasy novels (American Gods is just about to become a high-profile TV series), intelligent comic strip creations (Sandman has been very close to becoming a major Hollywood movie for a couple of years now) and of course his work on the BBC’s Doctor Who.
But his chances of reigning over a third generation of nerds might be limited by the fact that he can’t get to grips with Virtual Reality. The immersive discipline that will almost certainly be the entertainment medium of the mid-21st century leaves the 56-year-old author cold.
“I will come to this with a 56-year-old head and lots of ideas about the ways that other things are done,” he told the Recode podcast. He goes on to explain that while he sees the appeal of placing viewers in completely imaginary environments, it’s a field he will happily leave to a new generation of creators.
“They (the VR developers) were like, ‘Do you want to do something with this? and I said, ‘No, actually, I don’t.’”
With two books - Cinnamon and Free Country: A Tale of The Children's Crusade due to be published next month alone the pop-culture polymath shows no sign of slowing down but he has in Virtual Reality at last found a cultural kingdom he cannot conquer.
