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 it like trying to follow a teenager’s text-messaging conversation. Second, the Metaverse, while undeniable fascinating, was a totally foreign concept to a person who was using a computer with DOS-6, a CGA monitor and no mouse. Third, and probably most importantly, the book is just way too full of exposition. There’s a whole “character” devoted to exposition; a computer construct called “Librarian.” Librarian has a tendency to ramble on and is constantly changing the course of his conversations with the protagonist, aptly named “Hiro Protagonist.”

“Snow Crash” is usually placed in the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction. I think that’s a bit simplistic. It’s so much more than cyberpunk. It’s an action thriller. It’s full of information about linguistics, brain function, religion, corporate greed, government employees, rock & roll, and the Mafia. Overall, I found “Snow Crash” to be a more enjoyable read in 2008 than I did in the mid-Nineties. I recommend it to anyone who doesn’t mind being bombarded with a gazillion disparate ideas.

This book was seriously impressive.

Hiro Protagonist (the name alone is so deliciously self-aware) is a hacker and a pizza delivery driver in real life and some version of a prince / hero fighter in the virtual.
For in this futuristic Los Angeles (still 21st century though), the VR is at least as real and part of human life as RR (regular reality). Especially ever since the economy crashed. Oh and there is no law anymore. In fact, LA is no longer part of the USA at all since the "government" started selling territory to private organizations. Thus, there are quasi-sovereign gated communities and enclaves known as FOQNEs (Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities). One such FOQNE is the Italo-American Mafia that Hiro works for.
One really interesting development in this weird future America was what had become of the Library of Congress after merging with what used to be the CIA. *lol*
It is therefore no surprise that Hiro meets Italian mobsters as much as former love-interests, who code specific elements of the VR, and a special courier, all while uncovering a scheme to "infect" society with a special form of virus that could up-end the world as he knows it.
In an essay in 1999, Stephenson explained that the title of the novel is the term for a particular software failure mode on the early Macintosh computer. So you know what calamity to expect. Especially considering how reliant everyone is on tech and VR here (yes, even more than nowadays).
Anyway, it's not just something that will make the lights go out, it can have very dangerous or even lethal effects on a person's body in RR.

I LOVED the blend of futuristic tech, a dystopian world, Sumerion mythology (Tower of Babel) and more. It seems the author is very good at and interested in blending history with linguistics, politics, philosophy and - here - computer science. I mean, this book was published in 1992 and he coined the word Metaverse. Take THAT, Zuckerberg!

Seriously, everyone was quirky and the world almost disorientingly weird, but I enjoyed every second I got to spend with the characters - be it uncle Enzo or the discoveries made thanks to the library or Lagos.

We even get quite some impressive fighting when Hiro, helped by uncle Enzo and his goons, boards Rife's raft/yacht to free YT and stop Rife's nefarious plans. Not to mention the boss fight (there is no other way to describe it) between Raven and uncle Enzo at the airport. That was some breathstopping action!

In short: this is pretty much a perfect book no matter from which angle you look at it. And it obviously influenced A LOT of other authors who subsequently created very similar stories. Funnily enough, I was reading this while learning of Apple's new product, "visionPro", which in turn triggered me to think of the awesome possibilities on the excited side and the potential negative implications on the dystopian side. Which made for an even more special feel while reading this book. *lol*

While this book is over twenty years old now, it still seems fresh to me. The outpouring of novel ideas, concepts, and zany action combine to make this story into a hysterical experience. I've read a number of Stephenson's later works, but this early one is the craziest, the most outlandish, action-packed, and fun.

The story is crazy on a number of levels. It pokes fun at our institutions, such as commercialism gone amok. Atop of a commercial jail, a sign reads:

n  THE HOOSEGOW
Premium incarcerations and restraint services
We welcome busloads!n

It pokes fun at the rigidity and flooding of regulations at federal institutions. For example, in the federal office building where one of the characters works, there are prohibitions against all types of "pool" activities,

n  but a single, onetime exception has now been made for any office that wishes to pursue a joint bathroom-tissue strategy.n

Americans seem to like "oversized" things, so one character

n  " ... tried prostheses for a while--some of them are very good. But nothing is as good as a motorized wheelchair. 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."n

And, talking about BIG,

n  "What is this, a quadrillion dollars?"
"One-and-a-half quadrillion. Inflation, you know."n

On one level, the book is about Hiro, an African-American, a pizza-delivery/hacker/swordsman guy. Hiro teams up with Y.T., a 15-year-old girl who is a courier. Hiro must deliver every pizza within 30 minutes of an order, or the president of the company will give the customer an all-expense-paid trip to Italy. His super-charged car ends up in a swimming pool, and the girl decides to take the pizza and deliver it on time. She rides a truly space-age skateboard, catching rides by "harpooning" vehicles.

Hiro discovers a "virus" called Snow Crash, that converts ordinary people into babbling religious converts. "Basically, anyone who reads the National Enquirer or watches pro wrestling on TV is easy to convert." But, since the virus is digital/binary, it can kill hackers. Hence, Hiro takes on a mission to discover the source of the virus. Hiro asks,

n  "Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing--is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?"
Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference?"n

Indeed, there is a brilliant segue into the development of Sumerian mythology, linguistics, and religion. What is a virus, actually? Hiro speculates,

n  "The Torah is like a virus. It uses the human brain as a host. The host--the human--makes copies of it. And more humans come to synagogue and read it."n

This is a wild story. If you like satirical science fiction--read this book. If you like action stories--definitely read it. If you like intellectual discussions about linguistics, history, religion, and computer hacking--this book is for you. If you like romance--well, you can find romance elsewhere.

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 pretty much how this entire book reads. I actually had to add it to my "favorites" list. Can't believe I'd never heard of it before?! (my thanks for suggesting it, Erich)

I guarantee there is not a sentient male breathing who won't count this among their top 20 at least. As for you fellow females, if you enjoy a great action romp like I do... and I don't mean the stupid, dime-a-dozen shoot-em-ups, we're talking Die Hard I/Aliens/Terminator 2 (and aforementioned Matrix) caliber here... then you'll love it, too. It has everything: Mafia pizza delivery tycoons, robot dogs, samurai fights, brainwashing hackers, ancient Sumerian gods, hydrogen bombs, hallucinogenic drugs, punk skateboarders... SWEET, as J.T. would say.

My favorite parts: Stephenson's out-of-this-world unique writing style, the analogy of hacking into a persons brain using language in the same way people hack into computers using code, the amazing action sequences, use of the second person (you/we) to directly connect to the reader, the sections written from the robot dog's perspective, the use of binary code-type language in terms like "hacker" and "harpooning" (for example, the hero can both "hack" into a computer AND "hack" your body to pieces with a katana). BRILLIANT!

A couple tiny complaints: There wasn't nearly enough of Raven, the villain. He ranks right under Hannibal Lector and that guy from the movie Serenity to me... everything a villain should be: a sexy, terrifying brute of a nuclear mutant who rips people to pieces with glass knives. Also, Hiro Protagonist wasn't much of a... well, hero protagonist. He did a little too much research and not quite enough slashing people with his katana for my taste. Raven's foil, Y.T., stole the show--TOTALLY. Not like I minded. I'm all for a 15-year-old skater chick saving the world. SWEET!

(Rated R for an isolated sex scene, medium violence, and consistent swearing.)

FAVORITE QUOTES:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest mother****** 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, devoted it to wiping out street crime... Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer had to worry about trying to be the baddest mother****** in the world. The position is taken.

He turns off the techno-**** in his goggles. All it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it's happening to him. Very post-modern.

BMW drivers take evasive action at the drop of a hat, emulating the drivers in the BMW advertisements--this is how they convince themselves they didn't get ripped off.

Interesting things happen along borders--transitions--not in the middle where everything is the same.

[We've:] got millions of those Young Mafia types. All destined to wear blazers and shuffle papers in suburbia. You don't respect those people very much, Y.T., because you're young and arrogant. But I don't respect them much either, because I'm old and wise.

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

Neal Stephenson is a fascinating author. A master of the craft of writing, he is also a completely inept storyteller.

In a world where anarchism and capitalism have seemingly joined forces to dispose of concepts like government and law, Snow Crash tells the tale of the unbelievably stupidly named Hiro Protagonist and his adventures in and out of the virtual reality known as the Metaverse. It is a cyberpunk novel involving everything from computer hacking to linguistics to Sumerian mythology. Like any Stephenson novel, it’s a trainwreck.

But Stephenson can create such beautiful trainwrecks. If you look away from the unfortunate fact nobody has apparently told him how a story works, or how to create a somewhat multi-dimensional character, you can appreciate the marvel that is a Stephenson setting and the love of knowledge that shines from the pages.

This particular novel is a chaotic blend of good and bad, beautiful and ugly, clean and messy. It can be considered a masterpiece with obvious flaws, or an overrated waste of paper with equally obvious virtues. Take your pick.

I did not find this very enjoyable, mostly because I simply didn't enjoy the setting as much, and ran across some pretty annoying flaws. Still, every Stephenson book I read takes him closer to becoming one of my favourite authors, even this one.

Sometimes I find it impossible to choose the next book I want to read. So whenever I have a case of analysis paralysis while staring at my bookshelf, I ask my husband Kacy to pick me a book. Sometimes this works out wonderfully, but most of the time he grabs a longtime resident of our bookshelf that's been left untouched and I force myself to read it. Sadly reading Snow Crash was a case of the latter, just like with Americanah.

This was really disappointing for me! I really wanted to like it after so many of my Goodreads friends have loved it, but I just didn't. It felt really choppy and unfocused to me, and all of the history stuff could have been condensed into a single chapter-- just completely tedious infodumping. It felt very "I am Very Smart" and just ugh.

I somehow still want to read more Neal Stephenson, mostly out of a feeling of obligation. Anyone have recs for a book by him that is the opposite of this one? Thanks.

Βαθμολογία: 9/10

Το Snow Crash ήταν ένα από τα πολλά βιβλία -Επιστημονικής Φαντασίας και μη- που είχα σε μια λίστα με φοβερά και ενδιαφέροντα πλην όμως αμετάφραστα στα ελληνικά βιβλία που ήθελα πάρα μα πάρα πολύ να διαβάσω κάποια στιγμή, και χάρη στις εκδόσεις Μέδουσα το συγκεκριμένο Κυβερνοπάνκ τουβλάκι διεγράφη πέρυσι τον Νοέμβριο από τη σχετική λίστα. Και τώρα που έσφιξαν οι ζέστες, αποφάσισα επιτέλους να το πάρω απόφαση και να κάτσω να το διαβάσω.

Τι επικό έπος ήταν αυτό; Ο συγγραφέας κατάφερε και χώρεσε μέσα σ'ένα βιβλίο ένα κάρο παλαβές και ενδιαφέρουσες ιδέες, ένα κάρο παλαβούς και ενδιαφέροντες χαρακτήρες, με μια πλοκή γεμάτη κουλές αλλά συνάμα συναρπαστικές καταστάσεις. Ο αναγνώστης θα χορτάσει πληροφορία: Σουμερική μυθολογία, μπόλικη γλωσσολογία, κάμποση τεχνολογία του μέλλοντος, λίγο από φιλοσοφία και θρησκειολογία, με λίγα λόγια ένα σωρό ενδιαφέροντα πραγματάκια. Το θέμα όμως είναι ότι όλα αυτά δεν κουράζουν στο βαθμό που θα περίμενε κανείς, διαβάζονται ευχάριστα και με ενδιαφέρον, χάρη στην όλη χαβαλετζίδικη διάθεση της ιστορίας, την όλη τρέλα που διαπνέει την πλοκή και τους χαρακτήρες.

Η γραφή του Στίβενσον είναι πραγματικά πολύ καλή και αρκετά ευκολοδιάβαστη, σε μεγάλο βαθμό θα την χαρακτήριζα και πολύ εθιστική. Οι περιγραφές των διαφόρων καταστάσεων, των χαρακτήρων και των τοπίων είναι πραγματικά μοναδικές και ιδιαίτερες, σε μπάζουν με περισσή ευκολία στην αναρχοκαπιταλιστική Αμερικ�� του μέλλ��ντος, η οποία αποτελείται από περιφραγμένες κοινότητες και ατελείωτες λεωφόρους γεμάτες φραντσάιζ και ιδιωτικούς στρατούς. Πιστεύω, άλλωστε, ότι το πιο δυνατό κομμάτι του βιβλίου είναι ο διπλός κόσμος που δημιούργησε ο Στίβενσον, τόσο ο Πραγματικός, όσο και ο Εικονικός, με το εξαιρετικά συναρπαστικό Μετασύμπαν. Επίσης, οι διάφοροι χαρακτήρες είναι πραγματικά ένας κι ένας, και ας φέρνουν λίγο σε καρικατούρες.

Είναι μερικά βιβλία που πριν τα διαβάσω, είμαι απόλυτα σίγουρος ότι θα με ξετρελάνουν, ότι θα με κάνουν να τα σκέπτομαι πολλές μέρες μετά την ανάγνωσή τους. Ε, ένα από αυτά τα βιβλία είναι και το Snow Crash, για το οποίο είχα υψηλές προσδοκίες, οι οποίες επιβεβαιώθηκαν πανηγυρικά. Δεν το συζητάω, είναι από τα πιο ψυχαγωγικά, ενδιαφέροντα και καλογραμμένα μυθιστορήματα επιστημονικής φαντασίας που είχα την τύχη να διαβάσω. Πάντως, σίγουρα είναι ένα βιβλίο που θέλει την προσοχή, αλλά ακόμα και την υπομονή του αναγνώστη, για να μην χάσει την μπάλα. Τέλος, λόγω των διαφόρων ιδιαιτεροτήτων του, δεν πιστεύω ότι είναι για όλα τα αναγνωστικά γούστα.

This was recommended by a doctoral student at Northwestern University's mathematics program. It was an excellent recommendation. Snow Crash beat everything I'd read by Gibson. Indeed, it beat every cyberpunk novel I'd read up to that time for its plausibility. It is also very wryly and effectively satirical.

6.0 stars (One of my all time favorite novels). While reading this book, I was constantly thinking to myself "WOW, what a great concept" and "HOW did the author think that up." Without giving away too much in the way of a spoiler, I was amazed at the way the author took the work of computers, vitual reality and the metaverse and tied it into ancient religions and philosophy. The relationshipo conceived by the author on that point alone was mind-boggling. Add to that a great anti-hero, a superb villian (actually several villains) and a fun, detailed view of a dystopian future and you have a fun, fun read that will make you say WOW on more than one occassion. A true classic.

Nominee: British Science Fiction Award
Nominee: Arthur C. Clarke Award best SF Novel

I've been dying to read this book for years, but due to my terrible inability to read books not in audio format lately, this one's been on the backlog ... until I recently got Audible and find out Snow Crash is an "only from Audible" exclusive.

This book has so much going for it and that's why it's been something at the top of my list.

Ninja swords, check.
hackers, check.
Future dystopia, check.
pizza delivery, weird, but check.
Virtual reality, check.
Ninja fighting, check.

This also screams 80's, which is when it was written, but I was fully on board with all of the above. I also recently watched Kung Fury and Hasselhoff's accompanying music video, True Survivor, so I was extra pumped for this read.

The beginning pulls you right in. Grabbed me right away and that was so exciting. I was fully engaged at this point. Pizza delivery, 30 minutes or less or the mob boss destroys you. Then Hiro (Hiro Protagonist, which is still a bit too on the nose for what even I know is satire), picks up a pizza that's already 20 minutes into the time period. He meets Y.T. who's also a very cool character and of course, hot as hell.

Wow, so exciting. And that's not the only time. There are a number of great, exciting scenes. If only they could have held any kind of decent pacing, but sadly they started to become the rare gems amid a lot of meh.

I enjoyed the point Stephenson is trying to make that people can essentially be coded by their own languages. I'm not sure I fully agree with it outside the novel, but it absolutely works here. The problem in this books is that the characters are 80's cool, but lack any kind of substance. They're essentially placeholders for an 80's wetdream, but they have no development and definitely no growth throughout the novel.

Then there are the info dumps. First, I guarantee there are a million different ways this information could have been peppered throughout the narrative to keep the flow moving (and cut down as well!), but they are so halting and long and, honestly, largely useless for understanding the concepts, that it really makes this a torture at times ... even on audio.

Speaking of audio, since this is literally the only audio version available (with exceptions I'm sure), it's also very 80's, but this time in the worst possible way. The narrator himself, Jonathan Davis, does a good job. I'm not commenting on him. It's the quality of the sound and the production added in that killed me. They use that 80's, I don't know how else to call it, swipe that attempts to make everything sound futuristic, but only takes you out of the story and reminds you you're listening to some very dated technology.

Not only do they have the futuristic swipe, but they added some mumbling, speaking in tongues, to enhance the story I'm sure, which sounds vaguely racist and ... pulls you out of the story.

I am pretty disappointed overall. This had so much going for it and it's considered a classic, but it's so uneven and the characters are so poorly drawn that I can't say I cared all that much for them. I did worry it might sound a bit dated, but overall I don't think it was too dated for me (other than the actual technology used to produce it).

2.5 out of 5 Stars (meh)

This book has style and furious energy, like all Neal Stephenson, but it doesn't really make sense. Well... if you casually invent the Metaverse while telling a rattling good story, who cares about a logical hole or nine? And the incidental details are terrific. My favourite was the biker who is a nuclear power in his own right, but there were many others.
__________________________________

I happened to look at the Wikipedia article, and was immediately entranced by the plot summary. The anonymous author's deadpan delivery is perfect. For your amusement:

The protagonist is the aptly named Hiro Protagonist (Hiro being a homophone of hero), whose business card reads "Last of the freelance hackers and Greatest swordfighter in the world." When Hiro loses his job as a pizza delivery driver for the Mafia, he meets a streetwise young girl nicknamed Y.T. (short for Yours Truly), who works as a skateboard "Kourier", and they decide to become partners in the intelligence business (selling data to the CIC, the for-profit organization that evolved from the CIA after the U.S. government's loss of power).

The pair soon learn of a dangerous new drug called "Snow Crash" that is both a computer virus capable of infecting the brains of unwary hackers in the Metaverse and a mind-altering virus in Reality. It is distributed by a network of Pentecostal churches via its infrastructure and belief system. As Hiro and Y.T. dig deeper (or are drawn in) they discover more about Snow Crash and its connection to ancient Sumerian culture, the fiber-optics monopolist L. Bob Rife, and his enormous Raft of refugee boat people who speak in tongues. Also, both in the Metaverse and in Reality, they confront one of Rife's minions, an Aleut harpoon master named Raven whose motorcycle's sidecar packs a nuke wired to go off should Raven ever be killed. Raven has never forgiven the U.S. for the way they handled the Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands (see Aleutian Islands Campaign in World War II) or for the nuclear testing on Amchitka.

Hiro, at the prompting of his Catholic and linguist ex-girlfriend Juanita Marquez, begins to unravel the nature of this crisis. It relates back to the mythology of ancient Sumer, which Stephenson describes as speaking a very powerful ur-language. Sumerian is to modern "acquired languages" as binary is to programming languages: it affects the entity (be it human or computer) at a far lower and more basic level than does acquired/programming language. Sumerian is rooted in the brain stem and related to glossolalia, or "speaking in tongues"—a trait displayed by most of L. Bob Rife's convertees. Furthermore, Sumerian culture was ruled and controlled via "me," the human-readable equivalent of software which contains the rules and procedures for various activity (harvests, the baking of bread, etc.). The keepers of these important documents were priests referred to as en; some of them, like the god/semi-historical-figure Enki, could write new me, making them the equivalent of programmers or hackers.

As Stephenson describes it, one goddess/semi-historical figure, Asherah, took it upon herself to create a dangerous biolinguistic virus and infect all peoples with it; this virus was stopped by Enki, who used his skills as a "neurolinguistic hacker" to create an inoculating "nam-shub" that would protect humanity by destroying its ability to use and respond to the Sumerian tongue. This forced the creation of "acquired languages" and gave rise to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Unfortunately, Asherah's meta-virus did not disappear entirely, as the "Cult of Asherah" continued to spread it by means of cult prostitutes and infected women breast feeding orphaned infants; this weakened form of the virus is compared to herpes simplex. Furthermore, Rife has been sponsoring archaeological expeditions to the Sumerian city of Eridu, and has found enough information on the Sumerian tongue to reconstruct it and use it to work his will on humanity. He has also found the nam-shub of Enki, which he is protecting at all costs.

Hiro makes his way to Rife's Raft, a massive refugee flotilla centered around Rife's personal yacht, the former USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. Juanita has already infiltrated this floating caravan for the express purpose of helping overthrow Rife. Y.T. has been captured by Rife's followers and is taken to the Raft, where she becomes romantically involved with Raven for a short time and is eventually taken hostage by Rife personally. While hostage, Y.T. delivers the nam-shub of Enki to Hiro, who together with Juanita uses it to save the virus-afflicted. Hiro then accesses the Metaverse and foils Raven's attempt to widely disseminate the Snow Crash virus to a grouping of the hacker elite. Meanwhile, Y.T. is brought to the mainland by Rife, but she escapes. Rife and Raven proceed to an airport, where they are confronted by Uncle Enzo (the Mafia kingpin). A critically wounded Enzo disarms Raven, while Rife is killed and his virus destroyed when Fido, a cyborg "rat-thing" who had previously been rescued by Y.T., propels himself through the engine of L. Bob Rife's plane at beyond Mach 1, incinerating Rife and his plane. The novel ends with Y.T. driving home with her mother, and with hints of a future rekindled relationship between Hiro and Juanita.

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.