A really fun, thrilling romp through an alternative California where centralized government is far on the sidelines, people live in private security-protected suburb developments, and franchise-like corporations provide the services government used to. Many people conduct their business and leisure in the Metaverse, a virtual reality world created by hackers and powered by a man who wants to control it all.

Written in a hip, punk style with attitude to spare, the two main characters are Hiro Protagonist, a super hacker and swordsman, and his business partner Y.T., a spunky 15-year old skater-courier girl. Together they unravel a plot that relies on ancient Sumerian myth to strip mankind of any individual thought.

The book was released in the early 1990s and yet feels fresh and new due to so many of the author's concepts about the internet and privatization of society coming true. This a thrill-ride of a book with multiple high-octane action scenes and is just a blast to read. ( )

This is the first Neal Stephenson novel I have read, and it's a joyful mess of a story.

It's a cyberpunk novel from 1992, and the way it portrays the internet (making it a virtual reality interface) still feels relevant and entertaining today, although some details are off (particularly how Stephenson seems to assume that full access to it will be basically reserved to a technological or social elite, and that most information will cost money). It's also fast-paced, epic and, above all, it has some very interesting speculative ideas about the nature of language and Sumerian mythology. It also has some sharp satire of globalization before it was actually a thing.

Why is it a mess? Well, it is not clear what it wants to be. It has a lot of action, but plot advance often comes in the form of talking heads speculating about ideas. The action part and the deep speculative part just do not seem to mix very well, and although I enjoyed the first I would have liked more of the second. Y.T.'s involvement with the plot is a bit far-fetched. It's just like the author decided the story needed a female protagonist to act as a counterpart to Hiro. And she's a great character and her parts of the novel are a lot of fun to read, it's just that her relationship with the main plot is quite forced.

Despite the problems, the novel was always interesting and entertaining to read. Often a flawed but ambitious effort can have more to offer than a more polished but safer one. So for that reason, even though I probably should give it four stars, I'll give it five. ( )

realtà virtuale, virus cibernetici, virus biologici ( )

Wahnsinnig viel Wissen - über Programmieren, Geschichte, die Bibel... - kombiniert mit einer grandiosen Voraussicht. Leider manchmal etwas zu ausführlich und die Szenen im Metaverse teilweise arg brutal. ( )

Great read

Fascinating world and very nerdy a book that i didnt want to put down. A great story that kept me engaged and excited to find out what happens next. ( )