Snow Crash

Re-read this after a number of years, and I must say it held up much better than I expected it to, especially for something originally written so long ago. Long before there was anything like Second Life or any of the elaborate MMORPGs we have today, Stephenson conjured up a digital world for his characters to play in. This gives him the title of techno-prophet, in my book. Ultimately, though, it is the characters of Hiro Protagonist (best character name, ever) and Y.T. and Stephenson's not-entirely-dystopian-but-certainly-not-utopian future that draw me in and hold me even a second time around.

The first chapter will hook you, line and sinker. It's somewhat ironic that the first chapter is so off-the-wall and hilariously awesome that the rest of the otherwise superb book pales in comparison.

Otherwise, this book does an excellent job of simultaneously lampooning and paying homage to [book: Neuromancer] and the entire cyberpunk mythos. That, mixed with its tongue-and-cheek writing style and deeply detailed central theme of Sumerian linguistics will quickly enthrall the reader.

If you read this and [author: William Gibson]'s Neuromancer (the book that started Cyberpunk), you've filled up on your minimum cyberpunk quota.

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 show more 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. show less

After reading some of the negative reviews of Snow Crash, I guess I'm one of the rare birds who liked it precisely because of Stephenson's exposition of ancient religions and linguistics embedded in the story. Stephenson's prose is dense - another check - and very engrossing, even when he digresses upon this sci-fi meme or that one. Most of the time, I enjoy his humor, and some of the 1990s slang he uses is recognizable to those who remember those times; although, in some cases, it can make you cringe the same way as seeing bell-bottom jeans actually being worn proudly in public might.

Example: "But those dudes inside of the chopper were harshing that chick major." [Italics included in the original.] Here, a form of the adjective harsh show more is used as a verb meaning "to abuse" or "to vex or annoy." This usage usually applied to a person under the influence of alcohol or drugs who would complain about someone "harshing my mellow [buzz]." Also, the use of "major" as italicized was part of the same skateboard/surfer/grunge music culture of the 1990s. There is a lot of jargon like this throughout the book so I can see some readers rolling their eyes, but I think it works, unintentionally, in parallel with one of the novel's subtexts of historical linguistics.

Okay, moving on to a synopsis of the story, we have a slice of life tale disguised as a cyberpunk thriller where two main characters share the limelight: a pizza delivery guy with a backup job as "freelance stringer for the CIC [Central Intelligence Corporation]", and a 15-year-old skater chick who works as a courier. (A stringer is a news gatherer, a merchant in stolen information, a hacker. "Courier" is spelled "Kourier" in the book.) After an unlikely meeting, these two become partners and find themselves caught up in a potential world apocalyptic adventure involving an unknown street drug called Snow Crash and large violent organizations vying for power. These orgs defy easy description outside of Stephenson's world, and that is part of the allure of his book. Personally, I find his world-building abilities to be on par with Paolo Bacigalupi's and almost (almost but not quite) as good as Philip K. Dick's.

Stephenson's optimistic tone works against the seriousness of his story, and is, perhaps, another reason why some Snow Crash detractors seem to dislike it: it's as if he isn't taking the whole thing seriously. Either way you look at it, though, he is full of great ideas and his writing is smart, lively, and instructional in a wow-I-never-would-have-thought-of-that kind of way.

Also, I would not recommend Snow Crash to kids or maiden aunts due to violence and a lengthy bit of erotica near the end. show less

Rereading this for the first time since some time in the nineties just as Zuckerberg rechristens Facebook as Meta and it turns out there are actual Sacrifice Zones in the US is a slightly disorienting experience, not many books that seemed zeitgeisty in 1993 can do it again so spectacularly in 2021. All sorts of aspects of Stephenson's cyberpunk satire diverge widly from actuality, in that 'the future imagined at a particular time tells you more about that time than about the future' way, but all sorts of aspects, themes, pieces of tech, ideas, beam through with a kind of mutated relevance. Probably tells you a fair bit about masculinity, too, and what was considered cool and alpha and righteous and bad-ass at the time and which seems show more to have been the basis of a variety of different computer game archetypes. Most chilling aspect is the fascist/feudal micromanaged work practices of the Feds, which assorted young preppy techbros apparently read at a formative age and decided to run with for their warehouses, coding mills and assorted industry-disrupting strategies. Before a certain type of guy was missing the point about Fight Club, I think they may have been missing the point about Snow Crash. show less

A Fantastic Cyberpunk Romp That I Should Have Read 30 Years Ago

So finally I got to Snow Crash. This has been on my want to read list for so long that I had almost forgotten about it. I'm not going to lie about it, I had in my mind that this was probably an action science fiction story that took place on some icy planet. Ummmm, no.

What I discovered is somewhat difficult to describe. A few chapters in, I at first I thought Snow Crash was going to be an updated Cyberpunk version of Williams S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch -- weird, tangential, and highly imaginative -- and it was, yes indeedy, but more so in the early chapters than the latter. Early on I was bombarded in every sentence by action, and sound, and speed, and just one amazing show more spectacle after another. Sometimes I had to put the book down to catch my breath (almost). So it hooked me, and hooked me good. But then it tended to slow a bit, and I wanted more of a coherent story that I could follow.

You can read the book jacket to get the basic overview of the story (which I did not do before starting my read) but for those of you who don't, here it is in a nutshell. Hiro Protagonist (yes that's his name) is a pizza delivery man for a pizza chain that is owned by the mafia and overseen by the all knowing, all seeing Uncle Enzo. And they take deliveries very seriously. Uncle Enzo personally visits any patron who receives a pizza after the 30-minute delivery window. Keep in mind this is a worldwide pizza chain.

But pizza delivery is only what Hiro does in the real, physical world. He spends most of his time in what Neal Stephenson calls the metaverse, which is what we today call Virtual Reality. In both the metaverse and in reality, Hiro is a sword wielding expert and one of the best computer programmers in the world. He meets, and ends up teaming up with, Y.T. (that's her name and it stands for Yours Truly) who is a skateboarding courier who "poons" (harpoons) moving vehicles to pull her and her skateboard wherever she needs to go.

In the Metaverse Hiro becomes aware of a virtual drug dealer of sorts that is pushing a new drug called Snow Crash. For the sake of brevity I must skip over so much of this story here and just tell you that Hiro and Y.T. work together (but often physically separate in the story) to figure out what Snow Crash is and how to stop it from destroying both the metaverse world and the physical world. Please note, when I say I am skipping a lot, I am skipping like 99 percent of all the action.

So that is the story contained within Snow Crash. The beauty in Stephenson's book lies in its vivid descriptions and imaginative foresight. Oh did I mention this book was written in 1992? Because it was. A time when most of us didn't even have personal computers. Oh sure today we all have at least a general idea of what VR is, but in 1992 we still thought ATM machines were neat.

I feel like this book was written for me, but me when I was a teenager, not me at 50. I see why it is heralded as a science fiction masterwork, but at 50 and in 2020, I can also see the areas in which it is now dated. Nowhere in the book is the word internet mentioned. Neither is mp3 or smartphone. These concepts are in the book, but the words we use today to describe them are not. This missing terminology gives the writing a nostalgic feel (nostalgic in 2020) which of course would not have been present in 1992.

I think computer programmers -- like serious programmers, not hobbyists like me -- will really enjoy this novel. For people like me, and people my age, you may have flashbacks of times when you used Netscape Navigator and Myspace and AOL (jk I never was an AOLer). The book is beautifully written and if you hang with it long enough it does get much more coherent as it progresses and leaves you satisfied at the end.

I can't give it 5 stars because I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea, but this book is definitely better than 3 stars. So, I'm going with 4. If you are a computer guy you may experience a 5 star book though.

4 our of 5 stars show less

Summary: Hiro Protagonist is the greatest swordsman in the Metaverse, an online world that he helped create. In reality he’s totally broke. But when an online virus that has its roots in Sumerian mythology starts affecting the real world, Hiro must strap on his swords and do what he can.

Review: This is my first book by Neal Stephenson and if this is any indication of his writing, I’ll definitely be back for more. Snow Crash, even though it's seventeen years old, is a vivid, intelligent, wildly creative piece of science fiction that divides Los Angeles into franchised districts and utilizes a wide array of nifty technology, my favourite being Y.T’s dentata. The book starts out running and doesn’t stop. It has an impressively show more diverse cast (I love that Hiro is half black, half Korean!), and it’s not afraid to be smart. I’ll freely admit that I didn’t understand all of the ideas and jargon, but I respect that.

However, the already intense plotline started popping steroids two-thirds of the way in and suddenly I had trouble keeping up with what was going on. Reading some other reviews, I saw that many people felt the middle section onwards where the sci-fi starts intersecting with Sumerian mythology and linguistics was too dense. That part didn’t bother me. I have background education in religion and linguistics, so I’m the target audience for that kind of stuff. I eat it for breakfast and come begging for more. But the other stuff, the fighting and the breakneck action, made my head spin and not always in a pleasant way. The ending is also not as what I would have preferred. It focused a lot on Uncle Enzo and Y.T, and not so much on Hiro and Juanita, who were my favourites.

But don’t get me wrong: these aren’t huge complaints. A different novel might have bucked under the flaws. But with Snow Crash, the world, characters, and ideas were exciting enough for the aforementioned flaws not to make a huge dent, only a small one. My overall opinion of Snow Crash is overwhelmingly positive.

Conclusion: A wower of a science fiction adventure that shows me how energetic and creative Neal Stephenson can be. The concluding action got a little too confusing, but the book as a whole is strong enough to be excellent in spite of it. show less