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Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson: SNOW CRASH
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Snow Crash Thread 4: Chapter 31 to end of Chapter 40
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Y.T. is sent by the Mafia to buy a sample of Snow Crash—cost $1,500,000,000,000,000. Stephenson's not very careful with his use "dollars". He talks about hyperinflation, and how trillions are small change, but later he gets paid 25 million "dollars" — I presume what he calls Kong Bucks, but that isn't stated.We were introduced to Mr. Ng in chapter 30. He drives Y.T. to the drug buy in a truck containing a number of Rat Things, and explains to her that they're dog-cyborgs, powered by radiothermal isotopes (Hiro mentioned the radio-isotopes when we encountered the first Rat Thing).
Y.T. thinks it's cruel to do that to a dog, and Ng says:
“When the Rat Thing, as you call it, is in his hutch, do you know what he’s doing?”
“Licking his electric nuts?”
“Chasing Frisbees through the surf. Forever. Eating steaks that grow on trees. Lying beside the fire in a hunting lodge. I haven’t installed any testicle-licking simulations yet, but now that you have brought it up, I shall consider it.”
I have to admit, it sounds like the Rat Things have things pretty good! And of course Ng really knows what it's like to be a cyborg.
“So maybe Fido is a Rat Thing somewhere, right now.”
“I would hope so, for his sake,” Ng says. — and he is, as we immediately find out, Ng Security Industries Semi-Autonomous Guard Unit B-782, and he remembers Y.T. fondly.
After successfully getting the sample of Snow Crash, Y.T. goes back to Griffith Park, apparently on her own initiative, to check out the people in the camp there, learning that they're all hackers who got Snow Crashed (by the digital version), and were then taken to L.Bob Rife's Raft to be used as human manufactories for the DNA version of the drug. After they're no more use for that, they get sent to the mainland to proselytize.
Meanwhile, Hiro is learning the rest of the Asherah story, and putting together the pieces of L.Bob's plot. Now, I'm still not finished with Foucault's Pendulum, so I'm seeing a lot of similarities here. In Foucault's Pendulum, three editors at a publishing house are reading manuscripts in which new-age mystics make wild connections between unrelated data and come up with globe-spanning conspiracies. I can't help feeling that Lagos, and now Hiro, are doing exactly the same. But I guess even paranoids have enemies, because they turn out to be right.
At this point, Hiro suddenly turns out to have apparently unlimited access to everybody's computer records, without explanation. He uses this to buy a motorcycle and set off on a road trip to Oregon to rescue Juanita, then to case the town where he ends up (though, oddly, he doesn't have access to Mr. Lee's data which would have helped him when he gets there).
I'm not really sure what the point of mentioning the Alaska Highway was, as Hiro never actually gets that far, but in Oregon he finally proves that he can handle a sword in Reality as well as the Metaverse, when he's confronted by a bunch of rednecks who think New South Africa is a wonderful place, except that “There’s no niggers, gooks, or kikes there to beat the shit out of.” which Hiro figures is just cause to cut off the speaker's head.
A couple of small observations on (an)achronisms.
"Y.T. rolls her eyes at this display of tubularity"
Tubularity? I know that fads come around more than once, but tubular lasted about 30 seconds, and I'm not expecting to see it again.
"There is a miniature helicopter underneath it, all folded up. Its rotor blades spread themselves apart, like a butterfly unfolding. Its name is painted on its side: …" AMAZON DELIVERY.
I love Y.T.'s explanation for destroying her mother's computer monitor: "It’s like, if you—people of a certain age—would make some effort to just stay in touch with sort of basic, modern-day events, then your kids wouldn’t have to take these drastic measures."And further to the Foucault's Pendulum reference, above, the Librarian brings up the Kabbalists: "The Kabbalists—Jewish mystics of Spain and Palestine—believed that supernormal insight and power could be derived from properly combining the letters of the Divine Name." I find whenever I start doing group reads on GR, everything connects to everything, but of course, that's what The Plan in Foucault's Pendulum was all about!
I too thought of Amazon when that little helicopter appeared. It's funny that just a few months ago that connection would not have been made by anyone.Another example of science fiction becoming science fact. :)What was done to the dogs which became Rat Things is both cruel and caring, isn't it? There's something of The Matrix in there, too: they're used for a purpose, but they're largely oblivious to it due to their consciousness being lopped into a computer simulation.
I also found it strange that Hiro could suddenly orchestrate a fake motorcycle purchase so quickly and easily. Mind you, perhaps he always could and his morals kept him in check, only his concern for Juanita being able to override his respect for order.
J. wrote: "What was done to the dogs which became Rat Things is both cruel and caring, isn't it? "Definitely. There's no doubt that Y.T. and her boyfriend (whose name completely escapes me) were doing a caring thing when they took in Fido. But as Ng says, keeping a a pit bull locked in an apartment and visiting him just a couple of times a day is no way to keep a dog, either. While he's not what he was, he thinks (as much as Ng can make it so) that he's living pretty much in paradise, now. If I think I'm happy, does it really matter if I'm happy?
For what it's worth, I believe his name (or handle, anyway) is Roadkill. Happy is happy, I would think. The question is whether one would object to the lie one's life is. If a person were kept in such conditions, most people would probably find this immoral, but what of an animal? Would it be okay for a bee (let's say) but not a dog? I'd have to give that some thought.
Roadkill, right. One of the less capable Kouriers, one presumes.I'd tend to side against using dogs like this, but I really think you nailed it as both "cruel and caring".
"Three seconds have passed since she threw the tube into the air."<<- Wow, those seconds must have been in real slo mo... ;)
Ah! That didn't click. Remember, the Rat Thing at the Mr. Lee's, after Y.T. breaks out of The Clink, disarms three or more people faster than the eye can follow. It's not that the seconds pass in slo mo, but that the Rat Things move so quickly. Three seconds seems about right to me for the time it takes the Rat Things: about the time it takes for Y.T. to turn in a full circle. But before all that happened, the UKOD and one of his men both had something to say. They must have spoken really fast, because it looks to me to need at least five seconds, even if they're talking over each other!
Yup! I get the fast movement of the rat things, but remember that humans supposedly move a lot slower, and remember that the helicopter had also already come out of the van and grabbed the vial by the time the guys started swearing at Y.T.Geez, I imagine we're the nitpickiest people on earth.
(view spoiler)
Anyway, it's not important, but since we're already nitpickin'... >:)
Actually, tbh, I didn't get the reference to tubularity. What is that all about?
/me rolls his eyes indulgently at the nitpickers. He then quietly goes to pick nits of his own, hoping no one will notice. ;)
What? It's fun! Especially if you're already on a roll. And now I'm curious about tubularity. It sounds very fallopian. :PPS. I'm suddenly reminded of a joke my son told me:
It goes: "I like to add big words to my sentences so that it makes me sound more photosynthesis." :D
Okay, I've looked up tubular and I see it has a positive connotation. So, I can't really say to someone: " Oh, don't be so tubular, man!"Apparently this is where it comes from:
"TUBULAR has been uttered since the 70's in the surf world. I am from Newport Beach and Zuma and we said it in 78 -- not sure if it was used earlier but we used it by '78 for sure. We used it to describe when waves break like a barrel. In the early 80's the slang spread fast in So Cal beach cities when in Frank Zappa's song "Valley Girl" written and sung by his daughter Moon Unit Zappa makes fun of a girl from Encino (a rich part of the San Fernando Valley) who uses adopted surf lingo / words like "tubular" as a word to mean "cool."
Apparently the word lost currency by the 90's. (unlike the term "cool" ;) )
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "I love Y.T.'s explanation for destroying her mother's computer monitor: "It’s like, if you—people of a certain age—would make some effort to just stay in touch with sort of basic, modern-day events..."Tssk tssk, Derek, you must please make an effort to finish Foucault's Pendulum! The best part is towards the end! But yes, I'm finding it creepily co-incidental how much overlap there is here with FP.
To some extent also with some of CM's novels; the raft => Armada
The linguistic hi-jinx also reminds me of Embassytown.
Here are some interesting articles. I don't necessarily agree with the conclusions, but it nicely highlights some of the issues:
http://dltq.tigblog.org/post/10540
and
http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/...
J. wrote: "/me rolls his eyes indulgently at the nitpickers. He then quietly goes to pick nits of his own, hoping no one will notice. ;)"Nah, this isn't really nitpicking. This is just noticing the continuity errors. I think Stephenson was probably thinking the same thing as he wrote as I was as I read: the actual attack of the Rat Things could be done in about three seconds. It was only when Traveller brought it up, that I realized there was also the two guys talking, which just can't possibly fit into 3 seconds.
I am definitely finishing FP, Traveller. But I'm into the part that should have been edited down at least a hundred pages. The actual development of The Plan is booooring. I think that's just about done, now.
There's a lot of FP that would have benefited from being condensed, but hoo, boy, Eco just had to spout forth about every single bit of history stuck in his noggin.
Sigh. You have to admit that Chuck Wrightson's explanation of how Gurov (or Raven) got hold of an atom bomb, sounds like something one 11 year old boy would tell another 11 year old boy. *-cringe-*Like anybody would just let anybody else run away with a nukesub. Honestly....
"Erm, excuse me, may I quickly borrow your (view spoiler) nukesub to ferry some tribal refugees across the sea? Hey thanks!"
Ya right.
Hhmm, and interestingly, he keeps mentioning "New South Africa" which is actually the term adopted by that country for post-apartheid South Africa as run by a black government, so once again, NS seems to have his international info inside out. (Apparently apartheid was officially introduced in 1948 already, and started to run into strong resistance both internally and externally by the 1980's).I won't even start to try and make sense of what he says about Russia and the "Orths" and Tsarists... geez, like Tsarists could still exist to "stay behind" after 80+ odd years of being killed off and shipped to Siberia. Oi, oi.
And while I'm on the subject, what the hell is NS's beef with Asians? He seems obsessed with them and to especially hate the Japanese, but Tajiks and others aren't treated very well either.
Traveller wrote: "Sigh. You have to admit that Chuck Wrightson's explanation of how Gurov (or Raven) got hold of an atom bomb, sounds like something one 11 year old boy would tell another 11 year old boy. *-cring..."Well, it's over the top, but you have to remember the time. The West was very worried in the early 90s about what was going to happen to the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. Their missiles were spread out through many of the former Soviet republics—I particularly remember Kazakhstan being a worry—and some of their nuclear fleet were in Ukraine (I think Russia still controls all the other naval ports). And there were persistent rumors that some of the former possessions were indeed selling nuclear warheads.
I don't think Stephenson has a problem with Asians at all. I thought I'd dealt with the Tadjiks already—it's totally normal to find the cab industry dominated with particular ethnic groups now (and which group totally depends on the year and the city), so in Hiro's part of SoCal, the drivers are Tadjiks. And because everybody in this America is a racist to some degree, they're called jeeks. Yeah, they're not likable, but who is in this book? Y.T. and Fido. Actually, Mr. Ng's not bad: and he's Vietnamese.
Stephenson probably wrote "New South Africa" before post-apartheid SA adopted the name—he certainly did it before the ANC became the ruling party, as that didn't happen until 1994. But even if he'd known they would use the phrase, isn't that exactly what you'd expect to happen? Reactionaries and radicals alike love to steal their opponents slogans and repurpose them.
Why would Tsarists need to "still exist"? There hasn't been a King in Poland for over 300 years, and there are still people who'd like to restore the monarchy. I just took this are resurgence, not continuing resistance. While the Orthos sound totally normal. They're an Evangelical Russian Orthodox cult. Later in the book, we're told that the church suppressed glossolalia in 381, which is long before the East-West schism. I don't know much about Orthodoxy, but they seem even more conservative than the Roman Catholic church (and were at the time of the split), so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Pentecostals were (and in fact are) repressed in Russia today. If anything, I'd expect it. Evangelical movements often spring up in countries where the dominant religion appears to have an unhealthy relationship with the state, and among nominally Christian nations, Russia is probably top of the list.
Okay, maybe it happened too far back for me to remember properly, but my impression had always been that the nuclear situation was monitored very very closely with disarmament and all that. I do know that people were very touchy on the subject of nuclear war before it took place--one only has to look at spy movies of the time, and the sort of jokes that were made about "The Phone Call" between presidents and the 'button' to give the go-ahead for a nuclear strike.So, people having been as uptight as they were about nuclear weapons (and rightly so) it just seems rather droll that a nukseub would let a complete bunch of strangers on board while they have armed nukes on board. I suppose it does make for a more colorful story.
I guess the NSA thing is part of Stephenson's "catchworditis" as J. so nicely put it. ;) Ha, and the confederates... I'm surprised he didn't pull out the KKK.
Yeah, I know the Orthodox bunch are very conservative; I think the Greek orthodox guys are to some extent affiliated to them; or shall I say, erm, they're from similar roots, and I know a few Greeks who belong, and they are pretty conservative.
Didn't know that about the Polish.
I got a bit confused with the South Africa thing, since Nelson Mandela was freed from prison in Feb. 1990, and I suppose I saw that as the sort of official end of Apartheid.
Traveller wrote: "Okay, maybe it happened too far back for me to remember properly, but my impression had always been that the nuclear situation was monitored very very closely with disarmament and all that. I do k..."I think that's true. If nuclear weapons had actually been stolen and sold, someone would have used one by now, but the rumors definitely existed. It totally fits with the tone of the novel to treat such rumors as fact and then prognosticate from there.
I suppose one should allow a bit of leeway for creative license if the author is creating such fun things as Ng's truck wheelchair. XD...and having a nuke in your motorbike sidecar is kinda rad fun.
I was impressed with that wheelchair. It really belongs in the previous thread, but I loved: "And then I got to thinking, why do motorized wheelchairs always have to be tiny pathetic things that strain to go up a little teeny ramp? So I bought this—it is an airport firetruck from Germany—and converted it into my new motorized wheelchair.”For most of us, a wheelchair would be a "tiny pathetic thing" because we need it to be able to actually enter buildings. But if your wheelchair can actually be your home, why not go big?
Yeah, and at least Stephenson had the presence of mind to explain that he buys all his stuff at drive-through places. And in our world, he would have been able to order all of it over the internet. XD
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Derek has been so nice as to offer to lead the discussion for us, as I've ended up with less spare time than anticipated.
Thanks Derek!
I'll hopefully catch up later. :)