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Snow Crash

by Neal Stephenson

3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 · rating details · 101,994 ratings · 3,898 reviews

Alternative cover to ISBN 0553380958.

Paperback, 470 pages

Published May 2000 by Bantam Spectra (first published May 1st 1992)

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Oct 09, 2011 Simeon rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Written in the present tense, which is awkward and unengaging, a brimful of technological deus ex machina removes all tension from an already slow plot-line.

The characters are interesting, hence the two stars, but even they felt lacking and emotionally disengaged from their own story, which had the futile makings of something original.

The ending is atrocious, preceded by wastelands of chapter-length explanation, and a fairy-tale misinterpretation of Neurolinguistics that seems to have been writ...more

38 likes · like · see review

Feb 04, 2013 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

The behemoth that more or less peaked cyberpunk while simultaneously taking the piss out of it in slaphappy fashion. Even William Gibson never afterwards quite wrote or treated these themes the same: witness Virtual Light and the remainder of the Bridge Trilogy, which tried to incorporate the humorous style that Stephenson IMO wielded to far better effect herein. Snow Crash just has so much going on—and all with the breathless pace and visual flair of the video games the author must surely have...more

25 likes · like · see review

Apr 27, 2012 Erich Franz Guzmann rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Erich by: Book Club

Shelves: dystopian, favourite, fiktion, science-fiction, cyberpunk, time-magazine-award, 1990s, humoristische, libere, politik, satire, speculative-fiction, book-club, computer, mystery, sword-and-sorcery, 63-top-books, own, adventure, author-male, author-favorites, award-nominee, bizarre, conspiracy, crime, detektiv, dramen, drug, esoteric, anthropology, archaeology, groteske, wissenschaft, violentia, wanderlust, thriller, technik, suspense, surrealism, superhero, philosophisch, nordamerika, mythology, meisterwerk, male-protagonist, fantasy, kultur, npr-top-100-sf-fantasy

me lu lu mu al nu um me en ki me en me lu lu mu me al nu um me al nu um me me mu lu e al nu um me dug ga mu me mu lu e al nu um me...

49 likes · like · see review

Jul 24, 2012 Kedar rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: league-of-extraordinary-badassery, favourite-books, read-in-2012

Hey Mr. Stephenson, Metaphors be with you! Sorry, couldn't help using the cliche!

OK, let me start by listing some of my favourite things from the book:
- Raven
- Technology and it's maniacal usage in the book
- Humour that would go well while drinking with buddies
- Uncle Enzo's Mafia philosophy
and last but not the least
- Technology and it's maniacal usage in the book

My favourite characters in a descending order:
Raven > Uncle Enzo > Ng > Librarian > Hiro > Y.T.

So here is a summary of...more

23 likes · like · see review

Dec 01, 2009 korty rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Cyberpunk’s next generation pretty much began here. Written by someone who -unlike William Gibson- actually knows computers, this anime in novel form is one of those rare SF books that is read by many non-SF readers.

On a personal note, this is probably the only book I’ll ever read whose main character is half black and half Japanese, just like me! When I first read it, I was working at a pizza place, just like the protagonist, and I actually got fired around the same time I got to the point of...more

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Oct 03, 2009 Rob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone

Shelves: all-time-favorites, science-fiction, own, 2009, time-all-time-100, 100-paperbacks

When I first read Snow Crash, I thought to myself: "This thing is paced like a comic." Funny then to later discover that the novel was written after a comic book attempt at the same story fell apart.

Snow Crash is the paradigmatic Stephenson novel. Grabs you quickly, thrusts you head long into world that's so preposterous that he can't possibly be making it up, and the drags you along kicking and screaming until you're left startled and somewhat confused at a precipitous ending.

But don't let that...more

27 likes · like · see review

Apr 03, 2013 Nottyboy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: annoying nerds

Shelves: lame

Juvenile nerd power fantasy in a nutshell

I'm a big fanboy of the cyberpunk genre. I should have liked this book. Instead, I can honestly say that hate this book-- and I also feel bad saying that about someone's work, because it's almost like saying you hate someone's baby.

Maybe it was all the hype I was exposed to before reading it,but I just could not shake a deep feeling of annoyance throughout 90% of this book. I found myself rolling my eyes a lot. And when I wasn't doing that, I was asking...more Juvenile nerd power fantasy in a nutshell

I'm a big fanboy of the cyberpunk genre. I should have liked this book. Instead, I can honestly say that hate this book-- and I also feel bad saying that about someone's work, because it's almost like saying you hate someone's baby.

Maybe it was all the hype I was exposed to before reading it,but I just could not shake a deep feeling of annoyance throughout 90% of this book. I found myself rolling my eyes a lot. And when I wasn't doing that, I was asking myself things like: "Do people really think this is the Cyberpunk cream of the crop? How many pages to go?"

The first obvious problem was the prose. Apparently some people's funny bones get tickled by similes comparing military bases to boils on someone's ass, metaphors about valleys and geological cunnilingus, and clever wordplay like calling refugees "Refus" (Refuse, har har har, get it?). To an elitist douchebag like me it just sounds juvenile and unimaginative. Combine all that with clunky, corny writing, and it's just downright lame. I could have also done without the "Unix In A Nutshell"-like explanations of EVERYTHING that drag down the flow of the book even more.

The other big problem was that I did not care about any of the characters. Hiro was annoying as hell because it's obvious that he's just a nerd's fantasy of what he wishes he could do. Y.T. also got on my nerves. She could have disappeared in the middle of the book and I would not have missed her. There was nothing likeable or interesting about either of them. Ironically, among all the cartoony, shallow characters, the only ones that had some sense of deeper humanity were Ng and Raven.

Another letdown was that the book's ideas were not that great, which did not help the plot. I just did not buy the whole "neurolinguistic hacking" angle as it was used. People becoming brainless zombies from watching some binary code on a screen, or listening to some Sumerian "namshub"? That is so far removed from the fields of NeuroLinguistic Programming and memetics, that this might as well have been a Dungeons & Dragons novel. I get it. Brains are just like computers, so they can get viruses, binary code, 0's and 1's, blah blah blah. Seriously, I can suspend disbelief, but you can only take a metaphor so far before it starts to look stupid.

Finally, for a book that's supposed to be a belly busting satire, the humor in this book is rather lame and nerdy. I read people talking about how this book made them howl with laughter, but almost everything fell pretty flat for me. The only section that got a half-assed 'heh' from me was the government policy on the use of toilet paper, but by the second page the joke had already become stale.

All in all, I doubt that I will buy another book from this author. Judging from what little I've read in Cryptonomicon and Diamond Age, there is little that has changed for me to warrant another look.(less)

12 likes · like · see review

Paul Wilcock I'm about two-thirds of the through Snow Crash at the moment and this review feels spot on. I'm really not enjoying it all that much.

The character of...more
Nov 22, 2012 09:29pm

Nottyboy Yeah. I guess making Hiro multi-ethnic was well-intentioned, but its execution, like almost everything else in the book, was ham handed and unsubtle....more
Dec 21, 2012 06:17am

Dona Thank you for this review. I was excited about reading this book since I heard SO many good things about it, but when I finally got to sit down with i...more
Jan 23, 2013 05:30am

Jun 16, 2010 Jackie "the Librarian" rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adultfiction, classics, sciencefiction

Here's what I think: This is not just a book about computers, although the shiny veneer of the Metaverse, and computer avatars, and Hiro Protagonist's (yes, that’s the name of the protagonist in the story) career as a hacker might make you think it is. But there’s a lot more going on here, beneath that flashy action-adventure SF stuff. This is a complicated, messy book, and not that easy to follow. But, it's fascinating and I WANTED to understand everything, so as soon as I got to the last page,...more Here's what I think: This is not just a book about computers, although the shiny veneer of the Metaverse, and computer avatars, and Hiro Protagonist's (yes, that’s the name of the protagonist in the story) career as a hacker might make you think it is. But there’s a lot more going on here, beneath that flashy action-adventure SF stuff. This is a complicated, messy book, and not that easy to follow. But, it's fascinating and I WANTED to understand everything, so as soon as I got to the last page, I was tempted to turn back to chapter one and start over.

And wow, is it flashy, with its future world as neon-lit and noisy as a Las Vegas casino. On one level, this is a story about a hacker and a 15-year-old futuristic-skateboard-riding courier girl who team up to save the world from a religious cult on one hand, and a mutant motorcyclist Aleutian who has a nuclear bomb and a grudge on the other. It’s all very hip and edgy, with sword fights, commercialism run amok, and an interesting look at virtual reality as imagined by the author twenty years ago. I was on sensory overload trying to process everything.

But on another level, this is a book about language, and brain structure, and viruses, and religion. AND computers! And what the heck, mix in some Sumerian mythology, too. :)

What if you didn't have to learn language, what if we all were born able to communicate with each other? And what if that kept us from developing and progressing as a species? And what if the development of all the myriad of languages humans now speak happened because of a virus?

What if language ITSELF, and the concepts spread through the use of language, are viruses? And what if there were religious cults, worshippers of an ancient Sumerian deity, whose purpose was to spread those viruses?

Put all those levels together, and you’ve got Snow Crash. No, I didn't give it five stars, because it was all just a little too much. For me, of course. And there's no character development. And it's messy. But still, wow.

For fellow SF literature nerds out there, I suggest a compare and contrast with Samuel Delaney’s Babel-17, another SF classic that explores the impact of language on human behavior.(less)

48 likes · like · see review

Oct 11, 2011 Greg rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-fantasy-and-other-dorky-shit

This book felt like a really good idea. One of those really good ideas that you know will make a good novel (or whatever it is you think about making), and you have all these other really good details so you add them to your good idea. And you come up with some more characters and they are really good and some awesome organizations and maybe have another good idea or two and you just keep adding them on, like paint in some Clement Greenberg adored jizz-fest of painting, layer upon layer and more...more

24 likes · like · see review

Jan 27, 2013 Apatt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, sf-top-20

I'm just updating this review I posted in 2011.

Since reading this book I have read two more Neal Stephenson novels namely The Diamond Age and Anathem. Of the three I think Snow Crash is the most fun book. It is not as deep or thought provoking as the other two (Anathem especially) but the most wildly entertaining. I can still remember the "the greatest pizza delivery scene in world literature" and YT's "harpooning" cars as if I was there.

The experience is like reading about being in VR while be...more

8 likes · like · see review

Feb 18, 2009 Meg rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: every human male (and the coolest of the females)

Recommended to Meg by: Erich Guzmann

I have a little SAT analogy to help you understand how awesome this book is: Snow Crash is to Books as The Matrix is to movies (with only the absolute BEST parts of Tron and Da Vinci Code thrown in). I'm not talking about all the commercialized Matrix-saga and the weird hype... I'm talking about the first time you sat in the movie theater and saw that chick in the Matrix spin around in suspended animation and kick the crap out of a bunch of cops and thought, "What the #@*%??? COOL!" That's prett...more

46 likes · like · see review

Aug 12, 2012 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Most cyberpunk novels were written before the transformational effect of the internet on telecommunications. There has been a subsequent overwhelming impact on the web, technology and information as well. The first thing most people do when they get up in the morning is check their email. In 1992 the computer age was just starting to peak as a communication and information source. In that same year Neal Stephenson introduced his novel “Snow Crash”. The novel was based on a near future dystopian...more
Most cyberpunk novels were written before the transformational effect of the internet on telecommunications. There has been a subsequent overwhelming impact on the web, technology and information as well. The first thing most people do when they get up in the morning is check their email. In 1992 the computer age was just starting to peak as a communication and information source. In that same year Neal Stephenson introduced his novel “Snow Crash”. The novel was based on a near future dystopian fantasy vision which only slightly differs from the reality of the year 2006. Snow Crash is about a young daring pizza man who decides to play superhero in order to stop the perpetrators behind the mass distribution of a harmful drug called Snow Crash. The reader is taken through a nonstop adventure into an alternate realm accessible through ones computer terminal. The action is never-ending featuring amazingly vivid futuristic scenery How real the depiction of the future Stephenson predicted at the time comes to light in today’s internet controlled society. Many of the predictions mentioned in Snow Crash are as real as imaginable and remain credible in the fact that they apparently came true.

Snow Crash is one of the most famous cyberpunk fiction novels ever written . It takes place in the metaverse a setting not very different from "the matrix" a fictional computer enhanced realm accessible by anybody with a working computer “The people are pieces of software called avatars they are audio visual bodies that players use to communicate with each other in the metaverse”(Stephenson#36).Entering Stephenson’s metaverse has strong simulation to a very popular transformation taking place among most video game formats. Virtual reality video games where you can see a 3d depiction of yourself playing the game “Your avatar can look any way you want it to up to the limitations of your equipment" (Stephenson#36). In this statement we see Stephenson’s almost prophetic extrapolation of computer technology, The ability that exists in the hands of web designers today present an almost holographic appearing avatar very similar to those that existed in “Snow Crash” that gave the user the opportunity to adjust his appearance any way he deemed fit. At the time this novel was written we were only able to experience games like missile command and asteroids, there was nothing publicly available even remotely resembling what’s available to us today

Technoculture is the combination of the most fascinating and important developed trends in technology that most affect our culture as much as the web “Linking the act of creativity with he telecommunications machines that now facilitate and mediate human contact”(Geyh#509). Paula Geyh editor of the anthology "Postmodern American Fiction" speaks of the recent developments in technoculture. In her book she emphasizes the impact that telecommunications has had on people.

“Snow Crash takes on a common cyberpunk theme that of the implications of the information explosion caused by new technologies such as global fiber optic network”(Meyer#1).
A pioneer of his time Stephenson scratches the surface, in taking the computer idea a step further visionary style and understand through foresight the implications of new technologies and their inevitable expansion and improvement over the years,realizing that as with all inventions the computer must improve and expand most authors could never imagine what would have happened. “Stephenson is a computer programmer and his detailed deskriptions of how the metaverse works and how people through simulations called avatars can enter it provide a more solid basis for his fiction”(Meyers#1).

All in all a great read and worth the effort.

(less)

7 likes · like · see review

Jul 02, 2008 Sandi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Sandi by: Re-reading

Shelves: sci-fi, 2008, california-lit

I read “Snow Crash” when it first came out in paperback nearly 15 years ago. Then, I had a really hard time getting through it. But, I kept thinking about different concepts in it over and over again. I never forgot the bimbo boxes—slang for minivans driven by suburban housewives. Talk about a book telling the future!

Upon re-reading the book, I now understand why it was so difficult. First, there’s that tricky slang problem. Stephenson invented a lot of slang for the book and that made reading...more

20 likes · like · see review

Mar 06, 2012 mark monday rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: futuristik, i-gave-up, rain-man-reviews

derisively laugh to me for opportunities of full and cringe-worthy and tedious equally be to found i which, Against A Dark Background beloved the disliked who jackass of kind the am i that mind in keep also should you, seriously review this take you before but. FAIL. hipness insouciant of display a with audience its dazzle to designed lie a - lie brazen some of middle the in worship i someone catching like was it, one this with was i disappointed how express can't words. nowhere go but brilliant...more

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Aug 11, 2008 Kristjan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Cyber Punks

Recommended to Kristjan by: GR Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Club

Shelves: science-fiction, pulp-fantasy, book-club-selection, audiobook, reviewed

Narrated by Jonathan Davis

I really enjoyed the quality of the narration; Mr. Davis does an excellent job rendering the voices of the various characters within the story.

This was a fun read for the most part ... although the heavy exploitation of various stereo-types might be offensive to some, it really is the key to most of the humor in the story; at least Mr. Stephenson is an equal opportunity satirist in creating his dystopian society. The story pokes fun at corporate franchises, Christians (...more

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Sep 08, 2008 Nick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who like details and I don't mean the magazine.

Recommended to Nick by: Ginny Seaman

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I've decided to review this book as I read it. Sort of like live-blogging but not as pretentious or douchey sounding.

First and I guess foremost you have to understand that I read slowly. Like if people knew how slowly I read they would be like "that guy's retarded, and I don't mean in the offensive way that my friends are retarded." So I've been reading it for a week now and I'm not quite a hundred pages in and this is what I've learned so far.

The main character's name is Hiro Protagonist, which...more

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Jan 31, 2008 Bill rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

This is one I had been meaning to read for years, and from all the raving reviews I had set myself up to expect something exceptional. I'm not going to say I was disappointed. I guess from the nature of all
the raves I shouldn't have expected anything other than what it was: rollicking, techy, punky, lots of action. If these are your ingredients for a must-read, then by all means get off your butt and read this now!
Stephenson's cyberpunk vision, the Metaverse, is bang-on to what you would expect,...more

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Apr 13, 2009 Chloe rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Chloe by: Samuel

Shelves: scifi-fantasy, dystopian-fiction, i_am_in_love

A friend just gave me back my ages-old copy of this book, three years after I had forgotten that I had lent it to him. I am overjoyed to have this back in my possession. So much so that I feel compelled to immediately reread it. That is just how good this book is.

***Post reread***
The problem with reading Neal Stephenson is that you can not help coming to the realization that, no matter how hard you try, how dedicated to the craft you become, you will never write anything as fully formed, as intr...more

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Jun 20, 2007 Aerin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, well-that-was-awesome

This book is an all-around good time. Breezy, fast-paced, well-written, badass science fiction. Stephenson's vision of the near future has held up remarkably well in the fifteen years since this was written; it's a ridiculously over-the-top cyberdystopia that somehow still manages to be believable. The linguistics geek in me adored the Sumerian language subplot (an ancient mystery! about words! ooooh!). I don't remember a whole lot of the main plot, except that there were lots of chases and swor...more

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May 06, 2012 Patrizia O rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporanei, fantasy-e-fantascienza, autori-autrici-usa, recensioni, club-del-libro-gdl

Avete bisogno di una famiglia che vi stia vicino? Potete rivolgervi a Cosa Nostra: Il loro slogan è molto rassicurante: “La mafia. Avrai sempre un amico nella Famiglia! col patrocinio della Fondazione Cosa Nostra.” Sappiate però che si tratta di una famiglia molto esigente e Zio Enzo (il capofamiglia) potrebbe non essere tollerante verso i vostri errori.

Volete una casa con annesso cane da guardia bionico, così discreto che si fa vedere solo se la vostra incolumità è a rischio? Allora l’EQNOIF (...more

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May 04, 2009 Ben Babcock rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-read, from-library, science-fiction

I entered the Metaverse ignorant of the fact that Snow Crash was first published in 1992 (i.e., pre-Internet). Hence, it took some time for the book to endear itself to me, because my reaction to the Metaverse, a virtual reality, was filtered through my experiences with the Internet. As such, I first found Neal Stephenson's depiction of virtual reality as camp, reminding me much of Net Force and its ilk. In other words, Snow Crash presents a dated version of cyberpunk. I had to compensate for my...more

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Mar 15, 2010 Lisa Vegan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, novel, speculative-fiction, gr-groups-buddies, reviewed

I don’t feel like rehashing the plot. For the curious, it, or parts of it, can be found in the book’s description field, at Wikipedia, in other Goodreads members’ reviews.

This was my first cyberpunk novel, and while I liked much of it, I don’t think this subgenre is my favorite.

Unusually for me, I’ll start with the negatives.

I didn’t feel satisfied by the ending. There was such a build up to it, but I thought it fizzled a bit, and I ended up being disappointed. Also, the story dragged at times;...more

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Jan 22, 2011 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: sci-fi fans/cyberpunk fans

Recommended to Amanda by: A colleague

Snow Crash is definitely unlike anything I've ever read. The novel is fast paced with moments of dialogue and original writing that made me laugh out loud (okay, perhaps just chuckle quietly in appreciation). I appreciate the book's originality and can only imagine how surreal it must have been to read it when it was originally published in 1992 (by today's standards, the technology that plays an integral part throughout the book is eerily familiar, especially given the book's context). While I...more

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Aug 03, 2007 Liam rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A wonderfully complex and imaginative book unafraid to take on some major themes. When I started it, I was slightly put off by its uberhippness (the two main characters are a samurai-sword wielding hacker and a fifteen-year-old skater chick), but the brilliance of the book soon pulled me in. Written in 1992, the book imagines a world in which people relate as much in virtual reality (the "metaverse") as they do in real life. The government has all but disappeared, and the authority in any given...more

3 likes · like · see review

Aug 11, 2007 Beth rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: time-100-best-novels

I love this book so much, I read it twice (and I hardly ever do that). Who couldn't love a book with a main character called Hiro Protagonist, with a business card reading "greatest sword fighter in the world"? But that's only the beginning. Assisted by the coolest skateboard-riding teenage-girl heroine in all of literature, Hiro spends most of his time in the virtual reality environment called the Metaverse, tracking down a deadly computer virus. That is, when he's not listening to his favorite...more

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Apr 28, 2012 Audrey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Audrey by: Foom

Shelves: fiction-non-romance

This book traveled a bit of a rocky road. I trudged through the grueling first 50 pages, zipped through the next 150/200, yawned my way through the next 100/150, then settled back to watch it all come together in a ludicrous yet fun final 100 pages or so. So yeah...it had its ups and downs.

Once I got accustomed to the world that the author created, I quite liked watching the characters as they interacted in the world and with the world. It was entertaining, and the characters had fun POVs. Howev...more This book traveled a bit of a rocky road. I trudged through the grueling first 50 pages, zipped through the next 150/200, yawned my way through the next 100/150, then settled back to watch it all come together in a ludicrous yet fun final 100 pages or so. So yeah...it had its ups and downs.

Once I got accustomed to the world that the author created, I quite liked watching the characters as they interacted in the world and with the world. It was entertaining, and the characters had fun POVs. However, I found myself wanting to throw in the towel when the book began spewing pages and pages (literally pages) of encyclopedic information that, while ultimately plot-assisting, at the time were yawn-worthy and really really really dragged down my experience. This information was presented in the guise of a back-and-forth question-and-answer conversation between the main character and an all-knowing piece of software called the "Librarian." I skimmed that hundred pages or so, and it made pretty much no difference in my comprehension because - lucky me! - there was a five page summary of it later on when the main character explains it to one of the secondary characters right as the big time action is about to unfold. So, yes, the hundred or so pages of background info was boiled down to a five or ten page summary of how it all gels together.

I think this was an overall fun read with an unpredictable story told in an easy-to-read-and-follow tone. However, the overabundance of info-dumping bogged down the story and really diluted my enjoyment of the general zaniness.

P.S. Oh, it also kinda squicked me out because the book makes it clear that a 15-year-old is sexually active. I mean, realistically I know that happens in real life, but it's weird to have it "on the screen," if you will. (view spoiler)(less)

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Jul 22, 2012 Doug rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia, scifi

This book reads like a Car topped out a 180 MPH that hits a steep hill and slows down because nobody is hitting the gas.

Look, I love me some Sci-Fi. I love all the gizmos, ludicrous speeds, and boldly goings. Yes, the attraction to the genre is reading about all these amazing concepts. 'Snow Crash,' without a doubt, has brilliant ideas and runs with it: Sumerian Mythology contains code to hack into the Human mind...Ok, I'll read about this!

BEGIN "Pomp and Circumstance"
However, Sci-Fi doesn't ge...more

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Feb 01, 2008 Julia Gay rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi, neveragain

This book is awful. Never ever read it. It's mastubatory shit written by a self-absorbed pseudo academic with a lolita syndrome or ephebophilia. I can't really decide which. Read Neuromancer instead.

8 likes · like · see review

Feb 17, 2012 Drew rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: time-magazine-top-100

This book is great, if you can bring yourself to ignore its central premise, which I won't spoil here.* And it's surprisingly easy to ignore, aside from a 20-or-so page infodump near the middle of the book, because there's so much other good stuff: a giant raft full of desperate refugees and religious fanatics; skateboards whose wheels have retractable spokes that make riding over obstacles and potholes easier (who hasn't wanted one of these?); TRON-style virtual motorcycle races; a Mafia boss n...more This book is great, if you can bring yourself to ignore its central premise, which I won't spoil here.* And it's surprisingly easy to ignore, aside from a 20-or-so page infodump near the middle of the book, because there's so much other good stuff: a giant raft full of desperate refugees and religious fanatics; skateboards whose wheels have retractable spokes that make riding over obstacles and potholes easier (who hasn't wanted one of these?); TRON-style virtual motorcycle races; a Mafia boss named Uncle Enzo who's for some reason one of my favorite sci fi characters; swordfights, boat chases, and other unashamedly kickass action scenes; guard dogs' souls transported into supersonic attack robots; and, of course, the occasional nice turn of phrase.

When I read this type of book, I tend to focus on small details that seem eerily prescient, rather than big ones. Yes, Stephenson did come up with a reasonable guess at what the Internet may well one day resemble. But I'm less interested in that than I am in, say, the concept of Gargoyles. Gargoyles are agents - I think they can have any number of different jobs or tasks or goals - who go about in public, in the real world, attached umbilically to their computers. Thus, they can instantly access any number of different resources, like their Google Earth equivalent, or their Wikipedia equivalent. And do. Very similar to a person in our world who will whip out their smartphone at the slightest provocation, whether to settle a dispute, to text message someone not present, or, hell, to make a move in Scrabble, depending on how interesting present company is. This parallel isn't the clever part, though; anyone could have probably guessed that this would eventually happen. The clever part is that in Snow Crash, everyone thinks these Gargoyles are assholes. Just like in real life!

*Actually, fuck it: the gist is that ancient Sumerian was basically assembly language for humans, allowing them to be controlled by incantation, and Sumerian is making a comeback in the form of a religious cult. As lame as it is ridiculous. But don't let it stop you from reading the book.(less)

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Aug 14, 2012 Michael Burnam-fink rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, 2012

On a scale of 1-5, Snow Crash is a solid "Hell yeah!", an instant classic, and one of my favorite books. Sure, it's not perfect. The long expository passages on Sumerian mythology drag. YT's character is problematic. And the book doesn't so much end as stop. But that aside, the hyper-kinetic writing is like nothing else. Sentences pop and sparkle like luminescent gems. The ironic tone is spot on, the satire of America as a capitalist, post-rational, franchise purgatory unfailing and all too fami...more

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About Neal Stephenson

Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known primarily for his science fiction works in the postcyberpunk genre with a penchant for explorations of society, mathematics, cryptography, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired Magazine, and has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (funded by Jeff...more

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“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.” — 403 people liked it

“Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds.” — 150 people liked it

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