Building a reality around a book...

I'm currently in a course titled "furniture investigations"
we will be developing a concept for our piece of furniture from a book of significance to us. the book i'm using is Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. i am now to be refreshing my memory of this book, developing a reality around it, and from that extruding a story that shall serve as a touchstone for my design concept. i am not entirely certain about how to go about the reality/story development - in part, because NS does such a comprehensive job of elaborating the world in the book.

for now i'm hitched on a quote from the book:
condensing fact from the vapor of nuance

i'll see what if anything comes of this quote - and if the reality/story will evolve outside of the book, or perhaps, from within