Snow Crash

by Neal Stephenson

This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world.

The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it.

“Sometimes I wonder who’ll come after me,” he says. “Oh, we have plenty of excellent people in the next generation. But after that—well, I don’t know. I guess all old people feel like the world is coming to an end.”

“No surprises” is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world’s most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto.