Snow Crash by neal stephenson

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

March 26,2025

After so many years of rereads (this book now has the distinction of being the only audiobook I've so far listened to *twic*), it's still such an amazing ride. Hiro and YT versus Raven and L. Bob Rife in a tale of anarcho-capitalism and America as high-tech third world dystopia and much neurolinguistic hacking! Both hilarious and absolutely brilliant, there's few reads as good to me as the hyperactive cerebral mindfuck that is the legendary post-cyberpunk roller coaster of Snow Crash.

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Heart_Of_Chaos

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

March 26,2025

This book felt like a really good idea. One of those really good ideas that you know will make a good novel (or whatever it is you think about making), and you have all these other really good details so you add them to your good idea. And you come up with some more characters and they are really good and some awesome organizations and maybe have another good idea or two and you just keep adding them on, like paint in some Clement Greenberg adored jizz-fest of painting, layer upon layer and more layers you have all this great stuff going on, and then you realize you have to make it all do something. And something happens and it's really pretty unspectacular, like in the painting analogy there is all this great layering going on and what is produced is some big yellow smiley face, but this book is better than that but it was still something of a let down when you realize that all the build up, all the different organizations and people and neat ideas were all just so that what happened could happen in the book.

Oh and then as soon as the plot stuff climaxes the book comes apruptly to a halt, like if Star Wars cut to credits right as the Death Star started to explode (not that the stuff left in the movie after that was anything great, but it would still feel very abrupt).

Yeah, that is what this book felt like. Great ideas. Great build up, and then, 'oh, that's it?' *

*don't give me this Neal Stephenson was prophetic shit in defense of why this book should get 5 stars or more. Yeah, he named some things, but it's not like he predicted things existing, he just influenced things being named.

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Aja

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

March 26,2025

One of the premiere cyberpunk novels, it embodies everything that's best about the genre.
I generally have very little tolerance for the hackneyed "stop the evil drug pushers" type of plotline, but Stephenson manages to do it with a degree of originality - not to mention wit and verve - that overcomes any possible objections I might have had. The mix of near-future 'underground' high-tech and ancient Sumerian mythology is also an aesthetic combination that really appeals to me.
Of course, the basic premise behind that mix - which is essential to the plot - isn't one I'm really logically going to get behind. (Can't really discuss it without spoilers. All I can say is that it seems that Stephenson read some fairly theoretical stuff on the origins of human consciousness - and ran with it from there.) However, I don't believe Stephenson means for it to be taken as a serious 'what if' scenario - just as he does not truly expect the Mafia to be a major world power/corporation/gang in the near-future... but his exaggerated portrayals make incisive - and funny - social commentary. Nearly 15 years down the line, some of it feels a tiny bit dated - but it's still a great book.
The opening scene alone (the pizza delivery) would make reading this book worthwhile...
And the team of Hiro Protagonist ("Stupid name." "But you'll never forget it.") the unemployed hacker/virtual samurai/wanna-be rock band manager - and the precocious teenager Y.T. (imagine the secret life of every kid who has to pretend to be a 'good girl' at home - x10)- simply rocks.
That's kinda the secret to Snow Crash's success. It's well written - fairly literary even - reasonably complex... but it's also just simply cool.

If you haven't read it - you really ought to.

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Henunun

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

March 26,2025

3.5 Stars
This modern cyberpunk classic is smart, funny and oh-so-cool. I loved the setup with a pizza delivery hacker who is literally named "protagonist". The story is intentionally over the top as it satirizes the cyberpunk subgenre. I adored the beginning, but I thought the story was unnecessarily long. I think the novel would have had a stronger, sharper narrative if it had been a few hundred pages shorter. While not perfect, I would definitely recommend this novel to science fiction readers.

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AzoreanEve

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

March 26,2025

-¿El Young Adult Cyberpunk más conocido y que por tanto se adelantó a su tiempo?.-

Género. Ciencia-Ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. Hiro Protagonist trabaja en Los Ángeles como repartidor de pizzas (no se confíen, que ese reparto en el siglo XXIII no es cosa de chiste), es un hacker, un esgrimista de alto nivel y, en sus ratos libres pasa el tiempo en el Metaverso, en cuyo diseño participó, entre los avatares del resto de los habitantes. T. A. es una jovencita muy madura y de ideas claras que trabaja de mensajero (otro empleo peligroso en esa época) que le hace un favor a Hiro e, indirectamente, a la mafia que regenta el negocio de pizzas.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

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empressrinrin

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

March 26,2025

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.

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BlueCitric

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

March 26,2025

I didn't expect this. I expected something cheesy. I don't know why. It had style, and punk, and nineties culture talk, cyberpunk matrix kind of stuff, humor, great characters, action, guns, blades, hand to hand combat. Loved it.

Read it!

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Knives339

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

March 26,2025

There is a certain kind of joy that comes when you stumble across an author who instantly becomes one of your favourites. Particularly when they already have a lot of books for you to read. I’d heard good things about Neal Stephenson and Snow Crash in particular and, I’ll be honest, this book had been on my to-read list for over five years by the time I finally got around to reading it. I’m my fellow Goodreaders are familiar with that particular issue but, hey, what a great problem to have, am I right?

Anyway, this is a great slice of SF/Fantasy. I normally hate SF and Fantasy being lumped together in the same category but in this case you can’t really call it anything else, as this is definitely as much Fantasy as it is SF. It also has a large comedic element, which took me by surprise as I hadn’t seen it mentioned as a comedy anywhere. I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s not Douglas Adams but Stephenson has a great sense of humour and absolutely cannot resist a pun (an affliction I also suffer with... well, the people I spend time with suffer with my inability to resist a pun more than I do, to be fair).

It deals with a near-future Earth where large corporations and organised crime (and what’s the difference, anyway, eh?) have mostly kicked official governments to the curb and people spend as much time on the Internet (never called by that name in this book, interestingly) via their VR interfaces as they do in the ‘real’ world. Our protagonist, who goes by the hilarious moniker of ‘Hiro Protagonist’, starts out as a high tech pizza delivery boy and ends up, in the time honoured heroic tradition, saving the world. Well, parts of it, anyway.

It’s more about the journey than the destination, though, and that journey involves a feisty courier, mob bosses, the last dregs of the federal government, hitmen with nuclear weapons, the history of the world going back to Sumerian times, physical, technological and magical viruses and cyborg dogs who can break the sound barrier. There’s a bunch of other stuff in there, too. It’s great.

I absolutely loved this one and will definitely be checking out more of Stephenson’s work.

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Snow Crash

neal stephenson

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Hiro Protagonist

Y.t.

Da5id Meier

Juanita Marquez

Dr. Emanuel Lagos

Uncle Enzo

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neal stephenson

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