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I could have sworn I had read this when I was in High School, but given how much of it I simply did not recognize, it's possible I only heard a description of it from friends. Sadly, that description was far more engaging than the book itself, which proved tremendously disappointing.
I'm sure part of my disappointment is also connected to my professional background; in the same way that my neuro-scientist ex-girlfriend cannot enjoy any sci-fi story involving the brain because all the plot-crucial scientific errors are glaringly obvious to her, I cannot enjoy attempts to discuss religion and ancient history by non-scholars because (nine times out of ten) they are so full of anachronistic and ahistorical nonsense that I can't focus on the narrative. And while Stephenson has some great ideas, and a really great premise, his understanding of Antiquities is PISS-POOR, turning what could have been a delightful alternate-history sci-fi conspiracy novel into little more than The Da Vinci Code for computer science majors. Word of advice, folks: when you're constructing a narrative around certain key historical events, make sure YOU GET THE FACTS AND TIME-LINES RIGHT. If he had just stuck with the ancient Mesopotamian angle, it would have worked out fine, but his attempts to shoehorn his ideas into the history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam only revealed how little he actually understands about those religions or their history. Also, his anti-Pharisee bias is so strong, and so grounded in misinformation, that it sometimes felt more like I was reading an Evangelical Christian tract than a novel. Seriously -- there were points at which I began to wonder if he might not be an anti-Semite himself.
And it's worth mentioning that this novel has NOT aged well. It's intended to be a futuristic sci-fi story about plutocratic-dystopian America, but given that the main character is a 30-something Baby Boomer, it's full of middle-aged people who served in the Vietnam War, and all the slang appears to be from the 1980s "Valley Girl" movement... and it was published in 1992... Well, even at the time of publication these predictions were dated and impossible, so I have chosen to count it as an alternate-history novel. His anti-American sentiments appear grounded in the sort of cookie-cutter, stereotypical Liberalism that was already threadbare in the 1980s, and he depicts American racism, misogyny, etc. with the sort of garish lack of proportion that only someone entirely sheltered from actual American society by both an insular political ideology and social circle could have accomplished.
Even looking past all the historical anachronisms, anti-religious bigotry, potential anti-Semitism, and haphazard chronology, the book itself is a cluttered mess. The moments of genuine insight and excitement (which are present!) are obscured behind exposition dumps which last for chapters and drawn-out, tedious action sequences. There's too much going on, too many characters, too many events, and too little of it matters. The characters are either flavourless or unlikable (with the exception of "Fido" and Raven, oddly enough), and the conclusion feels rushed, forced and abrupt.
So much potential, most of it wasted.
I'm not giving up on Stephenson though! He must have done SOMETHING to earn his place in the pantheon of cyberpunk authors, and I'm intrigued by the schism I've seen among his fans. You have those, like Jerry Holkins (Tycho Brahe of "Penny Arcade") who cleave to his older work, and after reading this I have to assume that has more to do with nostalgia than the merits of the works themselves; and you have those, like my friend Wyatt, who cleave to his newer work, like Anathem, which has been repeatedly recommended to me and sounds far more interesting and thoughtful than "Snow Crash" proved to be. So we'll see!
I'm sure part of my disappointment is also connected to my professional background; in the same way that my neuro-scientist ex-girlfriend cannot enjoy any sci-fi story involving the brain because all the plot-crucial scientific errors are glaringly obvious to her, I cannot enjoy attempts to discuss religion and ancient history by non-scholars because (nine times out of ten) they are so full of anachronistic and ahistorical nonsense that I can't focus on the narrative. And while Stephenson has some great ideas, and a really great premise, his understanding of Antiquities is PISS-POOR, turning what could have been a delightful alternate-history sci-fi conspiracy novel into little more than The Da Vinci Code for computer science majors. Word of advice, folks: when you're constructing a narrative around certain key historical events, make sure YOU GET THE FACTS AND TIME-LINES RIGHT. If he had just stuck with the ancient Mesopotamian angle, it would have worked out fine, but his attempts to shoehorn his ideas into the history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam only revealed how little he actually understands about those religions or their history. Also, his anti-Pharisee bias is so strong, and so grounded in misinformation, that it sometimes felt more like I was reading an Evangelical Christian tract than a novel. Seriously -- there were points at which I began to wonder if he might not be an anti-Semite himself.
And it's worth mentioning that this novel has NOT aged well. It's intended to be a futuristic sci-fi story about plutocratic-dystopian America, but given that the main character is a 30-something Baby Boomer, it's full of middle-aged people who served in the Vietnam War, and all the slang appears to be from the 1980s "Valley Girl" movement... and it was published in 1992... Well, even at the time of publication these predictions were dated and impossible, so I have chosen to count it as an alternate-history novel. His anti-American sentiments appear grounded in the sort of cookie-cutter, stereotypical Liberalism that was already threadbare in the 1980s, and he depicts American racism, misogyny, etc. with the sort of garish lack of proportion that only someone entirely sheltered from actual American society by both an insular political ideology and social circle could have accomplished.
Even looking past all the historical anachronisms, anti-religious bigotry, potential anti-Semitism, and haphazard chronology, the book itself is a cluttered mess. The moments of genuine insight and excitement (which are present!) are obscured behind exposition dumps which last for chapters and drawn-out, tedious action sequences. There's too much going on, too many characters, too many events, and too little of it matters. The characters are either flavourless or unlikable (with the exception of "Fido" and Raven, oddly enough), and the conclusion feels rushed, forced and abrupt.
So much potential, most of it wasted.
I'm not giving up on Stephenson though! He must have done SOMETHING to earn his place in the pantheon of cyberpunk authors, and I'm intrigued by the schism I've seen among his fans. You have those, like Jerry Holkins (Tycho Brahe of "Penny Arcade") who cleave to his older work, and after reading this I have to assume that has more to do with nostalgia than the merits of the works themselves; and you have those, like my friend Wyatt, who cleave to his newer work, like Anathem, which has been repeatedly recommended to me and sounds far more interesting and thoughtful than "Snow Crash" proved to be. So we'll see!
