Miévillians discussion
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Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson: SNOW CRASH
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Snow Crash Thread 1: From start to end of Chapter 10
Yeah, I actually noticed the similarities between Snow Crash and The Matrix. Altering between two different planes of existence, at first being duped into believing that the "Metaverse" is the real world.
He does use a lot of intimidating words, like Esprit or Semi-Autonomous, but I'm actually surprised with the lack of cyber info dump and terminology that this book is supposed to be notorious for. Most of it I found straightforward, and easy to understand.
He does use a lot of intimidating words, like Esprit or Semi-Autonomous, but I'm actually surprised with the lack of cyber info dump and terminology that this book is supposed to be notorious for. Most of it I found straightforward, and easy to understand.
Hi Callum! How nice to see you here! We're a bit slow getting started with our Snow Crash discussion, because Christmas delayed us all, it seems, and we're still finishing up with a discussion of Foucault's Pendulum elsewhere.
Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, I was rather busy over Christmas and New Years as well. I was only able to read one chapter of Snow Crash over a thirteen day period.
Ah, Foucault's Pendulum, I actually never heard of it. :P
Ah, Foucault's Pendulum, I actually never heard of it. :P
FP was written by Umberto Eco, the same person who wrote The Name of the Rose. They're old-ish books, from around the eighties and nineties. You might be aware of The Name of the Rose since a film was made of it, though the film missed most of the nuances of the book.In any case, back to Snow Crash: an aspect that I'm really enjoying and which seemed to be missing from Anathem (which I never finished), is the humor.
The science of pizza delivery, CosaNostra Pizza University, and pizza delivery smart boxes, for example. I haven't read much of Terry Pratchett yet, but so far aspects of this is reminding me of Terry Pratchett's humorous (and often comically silly) style of social commentary.
It's been many years since I've read this one, but I still remember the fateful pizza run. What better way to introduce a character than to show him cool and composed under absurd pressure, juxtaposing his current profession with hints of the person he once was, the image he cultivated?After all, swords need no demonstrations, right? ;)
Heheh, I'd love to know what happens to the Deliverator if that pizza takes thirty-ONE minutes to deliver!!! GASP!!!
Actually, taking into account that the first edition was published in 1993, the guy is pretty prophetic. I can't remember how well advanced smart card technology was back then (I doubt they even existed), but he's pre-empted the idea in any case, (even to the projection on the car's windscreen) with his smart box, not realizing the scale of how small computers would go into the future, but he's got the general idea; and the same with the fingerprints/retinal prints etc. except that these days we don't have to do them with ink anymore, of course.
I found myself surprised to see a reference to Abkhazia, which conincidentally unilaterally declared its independence from Georgia only a month after this book was published. I don't know how much unrest and displacement of people there was before the Abkhazian war in late 1992, but that's an even more impressive feat of preophecy, I think.As far as the state of computing goes, I'm not sure if it's that strange to have heads-up displays and smart cards and so on. The latter were invented in the 1960s and saw some use by the 1990s, and with personal computers becoming not only powerful but increasingly common in the early 1990s, I suspect it probably isn't that much of a stetch to extrapolate. Even wireless data transmission (which as a kid I thought of as science-fiction) was quickly becoming tractable, with digital mobile phone service being rolled out around that time.
It would be an interesting exercise, though, to go through the book and note all the advanced computer technology which is obvious or a given today. Even end-point fibre-optic service is a reality these days!
Nevertheless, he's quite on the cutting edge of where things were then, and I must say that I rather enjoy his silly sarcasm.
Hmmm, I might be a bit oversensitive, but some of it sounds a bit racist, (or bigoted, whatever the correct term is for when you diss ethnicities) actually.
Really? Could you quote something you think sounds racist?
J. wrote: "Really? Could you quote something you think sounds racist?"Well, like I said rather "ethnicist" than racist for want of a better term, or bigoted, but firstly, all the comments about the 'mafia' and then :
Abkhazia had been part of the Soviet fucking Union. A new immigrant from Abkhazia trying to operate a microwave was like a deep-sea tube worm doing brain surgery. Where did they get these guys? Weren't there any Americans who could bake a fucking pizza?
You don't find that sounds a bit off?
I think it's less racist than bigotted, yeah. The pizzaria is staffed with nothing but Abkhazian immigrants, none of whom are good at their jobs, and an association is made: Abkhazians are shit at making pizza. The same thought process would doubtless ensue with teenagers, computer programmers, octogenerians or crack addicts, if they consistently fail at cooking a pizza. It's not the sort of behavious one would expect of a hero, but I suppose no one's perfect.
Well, what you've described there, is exactly how racism works, isn't it, J.? ;)But I must also point out that he text I quoted, doesn't say : "Abkhazians are shit at making pizza.
It says: " A new immigrant from Abkhazia trying to operate a microwave was like a deep-sea tube worm doing brain surgery. " , and that is a slur. It's not really difficult to operate a microwave oven, is it? After all, 9-year olds do it. ..and our protagonist is comparing all 'immigrants from Abkhazia' to deep-sea tube worms.
And similarly to the Abkhazian slur, the association that all Italians are gangsters and mafioso.
Was he really suggesting that all Italians are mafiosos? I was more of the impression that CosaNostra Pizza was in fact owned and operated by the mafia, as the name suggests...
J., I was talking about an impression in general:It shows Uncle Enzo in one of his spiffy Italian suits. The pinstripes glint and flex like sinews. The pocket square is luminous. His hair is perfect, slicked back with something that never comes off, each strand cut off straight and square at the end by Uncle Enzo's cousin, Art the Barber, who runs the second-largest chain of low-end haircutting establishments in the world.
Uncle Enzo is standing there, not exactly smiling, an avuncular glint in his eye for sure, not posing like a model but standing there like your uncle would, and it says
The Mafia
you've got a friend in The Family!
paid for by the Our Thing Foundation
I have to admit I was startled by the Abkhazia comment as well, but then something like that gives an instant picture of the world we are barreling into, no doubt there. I rather like it when things are stated clearly, no pussy-footing around, no fake pc talk.
Hey, Ruth, nice to see you joining us!Of course, I do think it is probably the protagonist talking (or thinking) there, and supposedly not the author, and one would probably expect the character to have a bit of a 'street' mouth, and to be a bit on the other side of pc.
"The science of pizza delivery, CosaNostra Pizza University, and pizza delivery smart boxes, for example. I haven't read much of Terry Pratchett yet, but so far aspects of this is reminding me of Terry Pratchett's humorous (and often comically silly) style of social commentary. "
Yeah, I'm catching a lot of commentary as well, where basically everything is commercialized, even law enforcement. A lot of the content is quite accurate, which is what I found funny. I also noticed the book isn't slow to remind us the darker aspects of the metaverse, but what I like is that Stephenson never overloads on the unpleasant aspects while never really shying away from it either.
For example, Y.T. wears a dentata, which is a subtle reminder that the metaverse is full of rapists, which unfortunately isn't very hard to believe. There's also the aspect of less subtle portrayal of cyber-theft and other crimes committed over the metaverse, which is a surprisingly accurate portrayal of development even today.
Yeah, I'm catching a lot of commentary as well, where basically everything is commercialized, even law enforcement. A lot of the content is quite accurate, which is what I found funny. I also noticed the book isn't slow to remind us the darker aspects of the metaverse, but what I like is that Stephenson never overloads on the unpleasant aspects while never really shying away from it either.
For example, Y.T. wears a dentata, which is a subtle reminder that the metaverse is full of rapists, which unfortunately isn't very hard to believe. There's also the aspect of less subtle portrayal of cyber-theft and other crimes committed over the metaverse, which is a surprisingly accurate portrayal of development even today.
Callum wrote: "where basically everything is commercialized, even law enforcement.."Not to mention Intel.
Btw, we millenariums have our own versions of the metaverse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinect
Heheh, and, since he can build his own streets and stuff, it sounds like he's in a graphically superior version of Minecraft. XD
The novel also eloquently makes the point why a gateway like Twitter with its 500 million users (and the internet in general with its (in our world) almost 5 billion users) is such a fertile ground for advertising.
Traveller wrote: "Heheh, I'd love to know what happens to the Deliverator if that pizza takes thirty-ONE minutes to deliver!!! GASP!!!"Nobody knows—there's only rumor.
Prophetic technology: I don't think there were RFID's (radio frequency ID) back then, but that's what would be needed to track those pizzas. They're ubiquitous now. They're what would make the alarm sound if you were the sort of person to try to shoplift or sneak out of the library with a book.
The racism isn't restricted to Abkhazians. His attitude to Japanese is pretty poor too—witness the swordfight that begins the next section. I don't think Uncle Enzo and Cosa Nostra Pizza is really quite the same. I can guarantee you that organized crime really is into Pizza (though perhaps not controlling the large pizza chains), and popular culture does have the mafia trying to stress their origins and retain their ties to Sicily (which seems to be born out by current journalism).
I loved that concept of dentata. I don't recall whether we ever get an actual description of it. I rather hope not.
Minecraft, Traveller? It's Second Life! I think ReaMDe is more Minecraft :)
Right near the beginning, it says "Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model." I have seen too many unintentional jokes like that in e-books, but it does seem too clever for an accident. Americans have been obsessed with their cars pretty much since the invention of cars, so a roll model must be more important than a role model.
Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong, which we won't really meet for a few chapters yet, sounds awfully like the convenience store chain from Gibson's Bridge trilogy. I see many references to Stephenson as "post-cyberpunk" (as silly a concept in my mind as post-modern), but in this case it would seem Gibson borrowed from Stephenson.
No, but I don't think you could build your own worlds in Second Life. Second Life came (is it still around?) pre-fabricated.Good catch re the roll.
I've also seen him listed as post-cyberpunk, which is strange since this book seems a bit at the early end of things... But wait, Snow Crash is his first book, so it must be in referral to his later works.
I'll have to check out the exact literary meaning of the term. (Which I'm sure Lit Bug would have done had she been with us now).
Oh, and what he describes in Reamde is for real, its not fantasy, that really happens with online gaming. The strange, strange world of online gaming.The Minecraft game that I mentioned, is basically like a kind of 3-D cyber-lego. It comes with all these building blocks, in which the player literally builds their own world. The result is not very visually sophisticated, but it's a very basic construction set that even kids of 6 years old can utilize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft
Oh noooo... now you've made me look up Second Life, and I see its still there and greatly expanded since I tried it out a few years ago....I.Am.NOT.going.to.look....
*Trav kicks back against the vortex threatening to suck her in...*
Traveller wrote: "Oh noooo... now you've made me look up Second Life, and I see its still there and greatly expanded since I tried it out a few years ago....I.Am.NOT.going.to.look....
*Trav kicks back against the ..."
I was actually looking up references to Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, trying to see if I could make that Gibson connection, and ended up at some Second Lifer's blog…. But, yeah, you can build on it. Not your own worlds, but that's the deal with the Metaverse, too. They provide the basics, and you build on it. Ready Player One is similar, too, but there's almost no foundation there—it's probably more like Minecraft.
The Street seems to be unlike real-world things like Second Life in that a) it is cutting-edge and b) it's the "killer app" of the network of their day. I may be wrong, but I think that for most people, Second Life is just a curiosity (if people are aware of it at all) and it's not particularly cutting-edge.Traveller is, I think, right in comparing The Street to Minecraft, which has more mass appeal for the simple reason that there's some purpose to it. It's not clear to me how extensible The Street is, or if it's anything like Minecraft in that respect, but perhaps it's popular for the same sort of reason.
World of Warcraft would probably be another decent analogue: it is/was very popular, was something for which many people bought new computers around its initial release, and is used as a place where people (particularly young people, but not exclusively) will hang out and waste time. It's not a generalized virtual world, though, of course.
Perhaps some day we'll see a true implementation of the idea, without it being boring like Second Life. :P
J. wrote: "Perhaps some day we'll see a true implementation of the idea, without it being boring like Second Life. :P"
When last did you check out Second Life though, J.?
I didn't load it up now bec. our network is a bit bogged down with downloads and things atmo, but from what I saw on the front page, I almost got the impression that they've now issued people with construction sets much like those of The Elder Scrolls, which has resulted in people building their own extensions, or was that just wishful thinking on my part?
World of Warcraft is, I think closer to the scenario in Reamde, in that it's a role-playing game proper, even though it generates money for various parties in real life.
I do agree with you about one thing, that relates to both the Snow Crash metaverse and Second Life. Why should people stick to 'reality' when they can, in a simulated world, make anything, be anything that they could possibly dream up? I mean, in cyberspace we can let our wildest dreams run loose, hence the popularity of videogames; the fascination lies in very fact that they are unlike reality.
It's been three or four years, so I couldn't say. Something worthy of investigation, perhaps.I wasn't suggesting, by the way, that World of Warcraft is like The Street in substance, but rather that they are akin in impact. We seem to be in agreement that the apparent popularity of The Street would be unlikely without a built-in draw, so I don't think we'll find an exact analogue.
Then again, if a Second Lifer were to write a guide to the Internet with a strong slant toward Second Life, perhaps you could convince people it's possible...
btw, from the wikipedia Second Life page: 'Although he was familiar with the metaverse of Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash, Rosedale has said that his vision of virtual worlds predates that book, and that he conducted early virtual world experiments during his college years at the University of California San Diego, where he studied physics.'So, more to the point, was Stephenson aware of the work that Rosedale had done?
That's an interesting question, Derek. However, regardless, I think that both the cinematography and videogaming industries pushed 3 D graphics technology forward, and the gaming industry other aspects of virtual reality, and then the robotics industry and others have of course also pushed aspects of virtual reality such as artificial intelligence.
The 3-D tech and other aspects of virtual reality used for modern games are quite awesome.
VR is actually getting some traction with the Oculus Rift, from all appearances. As someone who wears glasses and has no interest in contact lenses, I doubt I'll ever own one, but it's interesting that support for the headset has interest from both game studios and players. I wonder if they've finally cracked the VR nut.
J. wrote: "VR is actually getting some traction with the Oculus Rift, from all appearances. As someone who wears glasses and has no interest in contact lenses, I doubt I'll ever own one, but it's interesting ..."While you may need lenses for that particular device, surely it should be theoretically possible to fix the focus on the display so that people who need corrective lenses can use them. I'd say the nut won't be cracked until that's done.
That'd be something. An "Import vPrescription" button in the driver software. I like it!
I really remember loving this book. And reading it again I can see why. I really think that opening scene with the pizza delivery is just a great piece of sci-fi. That scene has stuck with me for 20 years. I think I forgot the rest of the book. As I proceed on, I am not recognizing anything else.I immediately thought Second Life when the Metaverse came up. And as I read more, I'm still thinking Second Life. But I did a little Second Life in the beginning and I haven't done any gaming in decades.
I'd actually forgotten about Second Life when I made my initial comment; you guys are right. Second Life it is!
Stephenson seems to have a vision that future society will become more and more tribalized. I am seeing it here and I saw it even more in The Diamond Age, I believe. There are the mafia, the White Columns, and the jeeks. Hiro and Y.T. argue about which tribe they can hide at based on their ethnic backgrounds/memberships.I suppose he could just be stuck on the idea as a way to create drama but everything else in the book seems to be a vision of the future so....
And did anyone catch who exactly the jeeks are? Are they just cab drivers? Just a subset of cab drivers? There was a line about each cab having livestock in it? This part confused me. Did I miss something?
Thank you, Michele, I meant to ask abut that whole paragraph with the jeeks and livestock and all. One of you guys must have this all figured out.
A jeek is, I assume, a racial slur for a Tajik (a citizen of Tajikistan), by the way. ;)
J. wrote: "A jeek is, I assume, a racial slur for a Tajik (a citizen of Tajikistan), by the way. ;)"Because, if you can slur the Abkhazians, then why not the Tajiks? I thought, in our day, we at least capitalized racially insensitive names. Y.T. confirmed that jeeks were from Tadzikistan before the cab scene, when she was incarcerated at the Clink, and she asks the manager where he's from.
As for whether 'jeeks' are just a subset of cab drivers, it probably depends on how large an area you consider. When I lived in Toronto (30 years ago), and took cabs fairly often, I hardly ever saw a cab driver who wasn't a Sikh. In Halifax, now, a lot of drivers are apparently Russian. I think it often amounts to who are the current wave of ex-pats, who are overqualified for most jobs but unable to practice their previous professions because we won't recognize their credentials. Obviously in the SoCal of Snow Crash, Tajiks meet the first criterion.
The 'livestock' is a complete throwaway line. "Every jeek in Southern Cal is here, it seems, driving their giant, wrecked taxicabs with alien livestock in the back seat, reeking of incense and sloshing neon-hued Air-wicks!"
The racism in Snow Crash appears to be very, er, egalitarian, if you will. Everyone disparages whoever is Other, seemingly without much exception. There's probably a political statement in there somewhere, something about central governments and social engineering, but I'd rather not examine Stephenson's politics too closely: I'm bound to be disappointed.
As for the capitalization (or lack thereof) of "jeek", perhaps it's because it's taken from the middle of the word?
Stephenson sets the attitude of Snow Crash right from the start as he blusters on about Hiro as the Deliverator."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."
Everything is exaggerated, keeping the reader fixated on what the next page will bring. It's what the world would be like if we were ruled by 21 year old hackers.
It's American xenophobia at it's finest. Somewhere along the line feminism didn't happen but women, using their skills and wits usually win the day.
What is the world coming to when your game life is your real life, and your real life is on hold? I love Stephenson's character development. He picks out the quirky details and makes them whole. The Metaverse has me hooked. It's an addiction. A drug. Maybe the people living in the Metaverse have become so fractured because they have forgotten how to get on with real life. I see this book as an alternate reality spoofing our own in a time of it's own making.
Nicely said, Annie!
Yes, nice comments by all, apologies for being absent a while.The book has a lot of amusing anachronisms like the fact that NS didn't conceive of people using digital video formats in the future, but would somehow stick with analogue formats like video tape.
I also found amusing, for instance, the idea that he would know the age of the owners of avatars appearing in the metaverse. How does Hiro know that the person behind a certain avatar is a kid using their parent's computer?
Hmmm, and also, the way images look on your PC screen, is more a function of your own hardware than the software that renders it. True, old software rendered images badly, but there are some strange ideas in NS's metaverse; for instance 'cheap' software that would render a lower resolution and less anti-aliasing, that gives a more pixellated look than the rest of the avatars? Hmm. Plug-ins that have a different resolution to the rest of the software it runs with? Sounds a bit implausible.I understand that he wanted to get across the idea that the metaverse also has a class structure based on wealth; but I guess less customization of a stock avatar model would have done just as well to bring the idea across and would have been a bit more plausible technically speaking.
Nevermind me, I'm just nitpicking again in my little corner.
Those are good catches Traveller. I didn't notice some of those.
Traveller wrote: "How does Hiro know that the person behind a certain avatar is a kid using their parent's computer?"Probably the same way that he has an edge in sword fights, and can run his custom software in the Black Sun (software that would cause the bouncers to show up if almost anybody else ran it)—because he's one of the early programmers. Al Gore knows all about you, too...
I would say the rendering software isn't so much poor-quality-cheap, but — just like Second Life — you can pay good money for fancy avatars, less money for boxy ones, or you can program them yourself for whatever you're willing to spend in time. More pixellation on cheap avatars seems perfectly logical to me. Look at an image at full definition from a modern digital camera; shrink it down to say 200x200; then expand it to the size of the original. The difference in designing an avatar would be very similar: a cheap one would be drawn at 200x200 and expanded to 1600x1600, and would show a lot of pixellation; an expensive one would be drawn at 1600x1600. Really good ones would use anti-aliasing to try to make them look smooth no matter how close-up you get.
Miévillians
Books mentioned in this topic
Snow Crash (other topics)Ready Player One (other topics)
Reamde (other topics)
The Name of the Rose (other topics)
Foucault’s Pendulum (other topics)
Well, just like CM, (or even worse than China, probably!) Neal Stephenson has a reputation for being a philolophile, and that he loves to invent and play around with words.
Well, that becomes evident from the very first word, the first paragraph, the first page of Snow Crash.
Reader, beware, the author is playing with your head...