Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

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Snow Crash

June 1, 1992 / 480 pages / Fiction

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# 43

Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison -- a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cyber-sensibility to bring us the gigantic thriller of the information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's Cosa Nostra Inc., but it the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous... you'll recognize it immediately.

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I picked this up based on the prominently high reviews, but I felt rather disappointed. The plot is pretty boring and nonsensical, requiring more suspension of disbelief than I could muster. I wish I could have read this in the 90's when the ideas and technology weren't so dated.

Grade: C– / anton / Sep 3, 2013

Overhyped. Monumental as a pioneer in cyberpunk and for influential ideas, but as a book it's pretty terrible.

Grade: C– / luminous / Sep 3, 2013

This book is soft science fiction dealing with evolutionary psychology, linguistics, and ancient civilizations, comparing the human brain to a computer with the language portion the equivalent of the BIOS. The standard cyberpunk tropes are well-used though loveable (the fast-talking, leather-clad, rebellious female sex-symbol, the despondent, reality-shunning hacker-nerd). Snowcrash reads like comic book on steroids, and is as much fun as that sounds.

Grade: B+ / Andy / Sep 4, 2013

I don't know exactly what to say about this book, so I guess I'll start with the bad. Snow Crash, we learn in the afterword, was originally intended to be a graphic novel. In retrospect, this explains a lot. While I liked the book, it is on some level more style than substance. Granted, it is really stylish. The best part of the book, I think, is the world. The novel is set in a relatively near future America in which corporations rule the nation in a very literal sense - they hold territories

Grade: B / presheaf / Feb 14, 2014

This was an amazing book, I couldn't put it down. The author either really did his homework researching language or is one hell of a B.S.'er. Highly recommend.

Grade: A / VonBrandtner

/ Jan 8, 2014

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