Disliking this book seemed quite impossible. After all, it had all the necessary ingredients: the pervasive air of nerdy geekiness (or, perhaps, geeky nerdiness), an unexpected take on linguistics, a kick-ass female character, a parallel (virtual) reality, a hefty helping of (admittedly, overexaggerated) satire, and just enough wacky improbable worldbuilding to satisfy my book loving soul. Or so it seemed.

But awesome ingredients do not always add up to a satisfying dish¹ (as my horrible cook self knows much too well).

¹Remember 'Friends' episode where Rachel tries to make English trifle for Thanksgiving desert, but because of a couple pages unfortunately sticking together ends up making half English trifle and half the shepherd's pie? Joey was baffled that the rest of the gang found the dish unpalatable:

'I mean, what's not to like? Custard, good. Jam, good. Meat, good!'

n

I did NOT come to this book with an open mind. I came to it infinitely biased in its favor, ready to love it to pieces, prepared to find in it the same irresistible allure that so many of my Goodreads friends appreciated. Alas, after the first few pages my good-natured amusement gave way to irritated frustration, then to impatience, and eventually, as the book was nearing its final pages, my feelings changed to dreaded passionless indifference - akin to the emotions stirred by a disclaimer on the back of a pill packet.

It is very disappointing when a book leaves you indifferent after hundreds of pages spent with the characters and the plotlines - especially when it is a book with such immense potential as 'Snow Crash' had based on all the reviews and snippets I have seen, with all the ingredients for an amazing sci-fi adventure I listed above.

n  “We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.” n

Here's a glimpse of the plot, as much as I can listlessly muster. Hiro Protagonist, our hero and protagonist (cleverly annoying or annoyingly clever, I'm not quite sure) is a hacker in a future completely corporatized and fractured by consumerism America. He delivers pizza for the Mafia franchise by day and in his spare time hangs around Metaverse, a computer-based simulated reality where he is a sword-fighting badass with a juicy piece of expensive (virtual) real estate and important friends. To those having trouble picturing this, think of ‘The Matrix’ as compared to the gloomy existence outside of it. Y. T. is his sidekick, a Kourier with a healthy dose of vital spunk and kindness to animals that just may result in the most spectacular payback at the most crucial moment. Uncle Enzo is the head of the Mafia franchise, and does not like late pizza deliveries - he has his reasons.

As for the antagonists, we have L. Ron Hubbard L. Bob Rife, a computer magnate and a leader of a questionable religion; the Feds that have lost their power but retained their bureaucracy; and enigmatic Raven, equipped with a motorcycle, a few deadly spears and another weapon that earns him more respect from the authorities that that a few small nations get.

And then there's the titular Snow Crash:

n  “This Snow Crash thing--is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?”
Juanita shrugs. “What's the difference?” n

Sounds awesome, doesn't it? To me, the concept of Snow Crash initially evoked the memories of Delany's Babel-17, a book that I loved for all it's strangeness and far-fetchedness and irresistible pull into the blend of linguistics and sci-fi.

n  n

But then 'Snow Crash', having barely taken off, disappointingly crashed. Pun very much intended.

Maybe this had something to do with the clumsily thrown in heaps of infodump, painfully interrupting already shaky and unsteady narrative, adding tons of poorly placed and far-fetched exposition which it mistakes for layers of complexity, basking in self-importance while being needlessly silly (and, frankly, needless).

Maybe it was the sheer number of complex plot threads that weaves complexity but ended up going nowhere, with few (admittedly, memorable) exceptions.

Maybe it was what I can only perceive as casual racism so pervasive in descriptions of most 'ethnic' characters and entire groups featured in this novel, so present in every casually thrown stereotype. Intentional or not, it was unpleasantly grating.

Maybe it was the lack of dimension in Stephenson's characters. Hiro appears to be created as an embodiment of a teenage computer whiz's dreams, not developing in the slightest throughout the novel, only acquiring more and more badassery in the throwaway 'why not?' sloppy manner. Y.T., despite her awesomeness², behaving in a strangely robotic fashion. Raven and Uncle Enzo, frustratingly underdeveloped. Juanita, whose character could have been interesting, appears to exist solely as potential mate for Hiro. The only times I felt any connection to the characters were the appearances of the robotic dog, and I am not even a dog person.

² Y.T., while being far from an excellent character, was at least a ray of (grumpy) sunshine in the otherwise grey landscape of this novel. She has spunk and heart and confidence that is engaging and does not strike fakes notes that often. She made me almost care, and for this I appreciate her character. If only the rest if the book had the same spirit...

Maybe it was the inability to interweave the plot threads into a coherent storyline, to create a bigger whole out of separate parts. The ideas are there, the concepts are there; what's missing is cohesiveness able to pull them together, untangle them and weave a net captivating the readers' brains and imagination. Without this cohesiveness, even the wildest and most daring ideas - like Stephenson's unconventional approach to viruses, for instance - remain disjointed, underdeveloped, unfinished, unpolished, like the refugee Raft in his novel, made of heaps of refuse clumped together trying to make a whole but failing at it.

Honestly, I can't help but see how this book would have worked so much better in a graphic format, being it a comic book (like, apparently, it was initially envisioned) or a film; the action scenes would have looked splendid while the awkwardness of language with overused frequently clumsy metaphors and the jarring present tense (which really doesn't work for this story) would have been cast aside.

-----------
Yes, I am very disappointed at my disappointment with this book. I wish I had the ability to overlook its flaws, but the indifference I felt when reading it precluded me from caring enough to let its good moments overshadow the bad. 2 stars, one for the robot-doggy and another for Y.T. who occasionally made me almost care.

——————
Also posted on my blog.

As someone currently addicted to Second Life (a virtual world where you live represented by an avatar) I loved this book.

“And even the word ‘library’ is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old ones. Then they began to include videotapes, records, and magazines. Then all the information got converted into machine-readable form, which is to say, ones and zeroes. And as the number of media grew, the material became more up to date, and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated, it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency.”

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

“…When you live in a shithole, there’s always the Metaverse, and in the Metaverse, Hiro Portagonist is a warrior prince.”

“Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people’s minds.”

“Sometimes it’s all right just to be a little bad. To know your limitations. Make do with what you’ve got.”

ETA: Listened to the audio of this for no reason other than wanting to read it again, January 2012. Still as good as ever, and listening made me actually pay more attention to the librarian and Sumerian parts.

derisively laugh to me for opportunities of full and cringe-worthy and tedious equally be to found i which, Against A Dark Background beloved the disliked who jackass of kind the am i that mind in keep also should you, seriously review this take you before but. FAIL. hipness insouciant of display a with audience its dazzle to designed lie a - lie brazen some of middle the in worship i someone catching like was it, one this with was i disappointed how express can't words. nowhere go but brilliant seem that (business Sumerian that like) ideas many so. cyberbullshit confusing of full too, snarky too, shallow too. finish couldn't i that (far so) book Stephenson Neal only the.

one extra star for being incredibly ahead of its time.

نیل استیفنسون یکی از تاثیرگذارترین نویسنده‌های علمی‌تخیلی معاصر جهان است. داستان‌های او در بوجود آوردن یا بسط رمزارز، متاورس، نانوتکنولوژی و سیستم‌های نامتمرکز تأثیر گذاشته‌اند. لیست پیش‌بینی‌ها (یا راه‌حل‌هایی) که هنوز به وقوع نپیوسته‌اند خیلی طولانی‌تر است، مثلاً دست‌کاری جو زمین برای غلبه بر گرمایش. جف بزوس مالک شرکت آمازون، بعد از تأسیس شرکت فضایی بلواورجین، نیل استیفنسون را به عنوان اولین کارمند این شرکت استخدام کرد و به او سِمَتِ آینده‌نگر داد. رمانِ اسنُوکِرَش معروف‌ترین رمان استیفنسون هست که سال ۱۹۹۲ منتشر شده. این رمان اولین رمانی نبود که مفاهیم حقیقت مجازی یا بهبودیافته را توصیف کرد و بسط داد؛ ولی شاید یکی از بهترین‌ها و پرجزئیات‌ترین آن‌ها باشد. او از کلمه‌ی متاورس برای نام‌گذاری این محیط استفاده کرد، کلمه‌ای که بعدها شرکت متا برای محصول حقیقت مجازی خودش انتخاب کرد.

ژانر این کتابْ علمی‌تخیلیِ سایبرپانک است. «سایبر» اشاره به پیشرفت‌های وسیع تکنولوژیک به خصوص در زمینه‌ی کامپیوتر و شبکه‌های کامپیوتری دارد؛ و «پانک» اشاره دارد به کسانی که علیه قدرت و سازمان‌های حاکم شورش می‌کنند. در داستان‌های این ژانر معمولاً مردم زندگی فلاکت‌باری دارند در زمانه‌ای که پیشرفت‌های تکنولوژیک خیره‌کننده است.

توصیفات اجتماعی و تکنولوژیک رمان خیلی زیادند و جالب این که زمان وقایع رمان تقریباً همان زمان انتشار کتاب یعنی دهه‌ی ۸۰ یا ۹۰ میلادی است و زمان آینده نیست. از توصیفات اجتماعی کتاب می‌توان از پیش‌بینی قدرت گرفتن بیش از حد شرکت‌های خصوصی و سرمایه‌دارها نام برد تا جایی که آمریکا بین این شرکت‌ها تقسیم بشود. خود دولت فدرال آمریکا بخش کوچکی از آمریکا را در اختیار دارد و رئیس جمهور آمریکا نه تنها دیگر قدرتمندترین فرد آمریکا نیست بلکه حتی فرد شناخته‌شده‌ای هم نیست. در واقع قدرت در آمریکا به سمت نامتمرکز شدن رفته است. علاوه بر آن شهری شناور در اقیانوس آرام شکل گرفته که متشکل از قایق‌ها و کشتی‌های کوچک و بزرگی هستند که سرنشینان آن مهاجران و پناهندگان آسیایی بی‌خانمان شده هستند. معروف‌ترین توصیف تکنولوژیک این رمان، جهان حقیقت مجازی، یا متاورس است، که در آن کاربران با «آواتار»های خودشان در این جهان به گشت و گذار می‌پردازند. قهرمان داستان در این جهان به فردی به اسم «کتابخانه‌دار» دسترسی دارد که به سوالات وی با لحنی شبیه چت‌جی‌پی‌تی پاسخ می‌دهد. هم‌چنین کره‌ی زمینی در متاورس وجود دارد که با آن می‌شود در نقاط مختلف جهان زوم کرد؛ ایده‌ای که بعدها به شکل گوگل ارث پیاده‌سازی شد.

ایده‌ی مرکزی کتاب ایجاد تناظر بین زبان‌های برنامه نویسی و زبان‌های طبیعی انسان‌ها و ارتباطشون با کامپیوتر و مغز انسان است. بر اساس نظریه‌ی چامسکی زبان یک غریزه‌ی ژنتیکی است. در واقع قدرت تکلم و درک گرامر در ژن‌ انسان وجود دارد ولی زبان بخصوصی که با آن صحبت می‌کنیم را از محیط و اطرافیان یاد می‌گیریم. از نظر چامسکی تمامی زبان‌های بشری ساختار گرامری شبیه به هم دارند، که دلیل آن همین ریشه‌ی ژنتیکی زبان است. ایده‌ی کتاب این است که شاید بشود زبانی پایه شبیه زبان ماشین در کامپیوترها، برای مغز انسان هم متصور بود که در گذشته‌ی دور انسان‌ها همگی به آن زبان صحبت می‌کردند. به تصور رمان آن زبانِ پایه زبانِ سومری بوده، زبانی که تنها زبان مورد استفاده انسان‌ها تا قبل از نفرین اِنْکی، یکی از خدایان سومری، بود. این زبان از هجاهای کوتاه تشکیل شده که در جهانِ این رمان به ساختار مغز نزدیک است و به همین دلیل می‌شود به زبان سومری جملاتی را ادا کرد که کنترلِ مغز شنونده را در اختیار بگیرد. برای همین اِنْکی نفرینی بوجود می‌آورد که مردم زبان سومری را فراموش کنند تا زبان‌های متفاوت جدید بوجود بیاید. ایده‌ی کتاب این است که این نفرین برخلاف اسطوره‌های موجود که نشان دهنده‌ی خشم اِنْکی بوده، در واقع از روی خیرخواهی و به نفع مردم و برای محافظت از آن‌ها بوده تا گرفتار ویروس‌های زبانی نشوند. در این کتاب یک میلیاردر تلاش می‌کند تا به این زبان دست پیدا کند و ویروس بیولوژیکی‌ای بوجود بیاورد که از طریق آن کنترل مغز انسان‌ها را به دست بگیرد. به نظر من نویسنده در الهام گرفتن از این اسطوره و ایجاد تناظر با زبان‌های کامپیوتری کمی زیاده روی کرده است.

پیش‌بینی و پیش‌گویی خودکامبخش
اغلب تصور می‌شود که نویسنده‌های علمی‌تخیلی آینده را پیش‌بینی می‌کنند. این حرف در مورد فرآیندهای اجتماعی می‌تواند درست باشد. مثلاً در این رمان نویسنده پیش‌بینی می‌کند که با قدرت گرفتن بیش از حد شرکت‌ها و سرمایه‌دارها حکمرانی کشور به طور نامتمرکز بین آن‌ها تقسیم می‌شود؛ که باید صبر کنیم و ببینیم که آیا چنین اتفاقی خواهد افتاد یا نه. اما پیش‌بینی‌های تکنولوژیک بیشتر پیش‌گویی خودکامبخش هستند تا پیش‌بینی. یعنی خودِ عمل پیش‌گویی یک امر به تحقق آن امر منجر می‌شود. مثلاً ژول‌ورن با توصیفاتی که از زیردریایی ناتیلوس در رمان بیست هزار فرسنگ زیر دریا ارائه داد، الهام‌بخش مهندس‌هایی شد که آن کتاب را خواندند و به این فکر کردند که ساختن چنین چیزی هم ممکن است. وقتی که اولین زیردریایی ساخته شد به افتخار او ناتیلوس نام گرفت. همین‌طور مفهوم متاورس در این کتاب با جزئیات دقیقی که ارائه شده بیشتر نقشه‌ی راه ارائه می‌دهد برای مهندس‌ها که می‌شود چنین چیزی را با این ویژگی‌ها ساخت. به نظر من متاورس در این کتاب بیشتر پیش‌گویی خودکامبخش است تا پیش‌بینی آینده. در واقع نویسنده‌های علمی‌تخیلی آینده را پیش‌بینی نمی‌کنند؛ آن را می‌سازند.

Did you ever have a kid at school who tried to appear smart and as the font of all knowledge by catching on to the tail-ends of things while listening to adults, absorbing some of it, and then spouting forth in front of an assembly of kids, his (or her, --let's be fair here) own regurgitation of what he had heard in the adult quarter, which would often make most of the other kids hang on to his/her every word simply because they themselves didn't have a clue what he was talking about?

Well, with Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson is that kid grown up. Stephenson latches on to all kinds of ideas and then regurgitates his reductionist, lopsided version of them in 'novel' form. The effect it had on this reader, is similar to what the screeching of chalk on a board does to most people; it set my teeth on edge.

There are so many lopsided, half-developed ideas with huge holes in logic in them, in this novel, that I cannot mention them all and remain as brief as I am sure that you, dear reader, would prefer me to be. Most of them pertain to Stephenson's lopsided extrapolation of how a virtual reality world would work, and his (to me loopy) ideas on neurolinguistics, ancient history and religions.

I was ambivalent about his snarky depiction of capitalism taken to the extreme. In the Snow Crash world, everything is privatised to the point that civil services such as police and prisons are privatised, and 'burbclaves' (small city states) have their own laws and services to the point that America doesn't have federal law anymore--yet there are still Feds! The latter institution is highly satirised by Stephenson, with regard to the typical bureaucratic yards of red tape and the tech and intel gathering overkill and so on. I admit that I found these bits humorous. I reckon Stephenson is, by their inclusion into a state that has no laws, and where the federal government seems merely a token from days gone by, saying that the FBI was superfluous to start with in any case, hah. But the overall effect of the Snow Crash background setting is that of an almost schizophrenic collage of bits and pieces stuck together to create a highly disjunctive world.

I enjoyed the action sequences and I very much enjoyed his two female protagonists; slightly less so the male one.

In this early novel, Stephenson shows faint glimmerings of promise. His clumsy explanations of the tech aspects of the world is jarring and often nonsensical, so the main little points of light lie with the action sequences and the characterization, the latter which I found not too bad since many of his stereotypes were slightly more rounded than actually stereotypical and many of the characters were relatively believable and even likeable in spite of the clumsiness. The hero Hiro, (or shall I say, Hiro Protagonist, the protagonist) did feel paper-thin however, like just a another piece of deus ex machina.

So, four stars for the fact that the novel passes the Bechdel test, and for having created the eminently likeable character Y.T.
But minus a star for the jarring racism and lack of cultural and ethnic sensitivity, and minus another star for setting my teeth on edge with his loopy ideas and his lopsided, cartoony projections into a future consisting of what feels like a world constructed of cardboard cutouts.
(And minus a virtual star for positing that patriarchal religions are more rational than matriarchal ones. )
Oh, and pretty important to me is to mention the subtraction of another virtual star for the sex with a fifteen year old girl, and her 'relationship' with a mass murderer more than twice her age.
Add half a star back for the humor.

Many people credit Stephenson with being the first person to think of a cyberverse in which humans could participate represented by avatars, but by his own admission,  Lucasfilm with Habitat  was there before him. ;)

In fact, it might not be an overstatement to say that Stephenson had pretty much gypped his idea off of developers Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar. (Please be my guest and Google them.)

In his book The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Howard Rheingold writes in Chapter Six:

In Austin, Texas, in 1990, at the First Conference on Cyberspace, I met the two programmers who created the first large-scale, multi-user, commercial virtual playground.

In their address to the conference, and the paper they later published, "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat," Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer recounted their experience as the designers and managers of a virtual community that used computer graphics as well as words to support an online society of tens of thousands. Much of that conference in Austin was devoted to discussions of virtual-reality environments in which people wear special goggles and gloves to experience the illusion of sensory immersion in the virtual world via three-dimensional computer graphics.

Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar stood out in that high-tech crowd because the cyberspace they had created used a very inexpensive home computer, often called a toy computer, and a cartoonlike two-dimensional representation to create their kind of virtual world. Farmer and Morningstar had one kind of experience that the 3-D graphics enthusiasts did not have, however--the system they had designed, Habitat, had been used by tens of thousands of people.

Source: http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/6.html

Papers presented by Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar :

http://www.stanford.edu/class/history...

Some fascinating thoughts on the internet as a marketplace:
http://www.stanford.edu/class/history...

PS. I relented and added a half star for making YT female and such a fun character and subtracted a quarter star for making her blonde, then added back a quarter star for the way in which NS made fun of the FBI bureaucracy.

Nīla Stīvensona "Lavīna" (Snow Crash) ir fantastikas klasika, viens no kiberpnaka žanra stūrakmeņiem. Ir (ne pārāk tāla) nakotne, Amerika ir sadalījusies mazās korporāciju valstīs un, lai vieglāk pārdzīvotu sūro ikdienu, cilvēki lielu daļu laika pavada Metaversā (virtuālajā realitātē). Mūsu galvenais varonis - Hiro Protogonists (kas par vārdu!) ir picu piegādātājs, izcils hakeris un pasaules labākais samurajzobenu vicinātājs. Kad notiek šķietami neiespējamais un viņa čoms Multiversā saķer vīrusu un nonāk komā, Hiro metas galvu reibinošā piedzīvojumā, kas ietver mēlē runātāju sektu, picu piegādes uzņēmumu Cosa Nostra a.k.a mafija, Baboloniešu mītus, kas pārtapuši bībeles stāstos, aleutu harpūnistu-asasīnu, peldošu trešās pasaules migrantu pilsētu, kas Dombravam naktīs neļautu gulēt, robotsuņus, kas uzbrūk skaņas ātrumā, ukraiņu atomgrandžu, padomju atomzemūdenes, bezgala seksīgu pusaugu kurjeri-skeiteri, FIB tualetes papīra lietošanas instrukciju un daudz cita lieliska ārprāta. Lai gan noslēgums Stīvensonam padevies tāds, ka par to kaunētos pa Stīvens Kings, tas neliedz izbaudīt šo lielisko ārprātu. Iesaku!

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.

Quintessential cyberpunk: a real "sex-death-&-metalhead"-type sci-fi sensory storm. Better grounded than Gibson's Neuromancer (not a high bar), but as a similarly prophetic Tome of the Internet-To-Be, belongs on the same shelf.

When our main character, Hiro Protagonist (yes, really), finally gets all the way down to uncovering the kernel of the story, you realize the whole thing is built on the sort of germ of a premise that only someone spending way too much time coding at a flickering terminal during the early morning hours of the Computer Age would have given half-a-second's credence to. But you won't care, because if you've made it that far the insatiable action must be seen through. And you'll be relieved, because the WHAT IS GOING ON and THEY CAN'T BE ALLOWED TO GET AWAY WITH THIS is leaning over the back rail of your frontal lobe to shoot spitballs at your medulla, which is returning fire with WHAT IF IT COULD HAPPEN and MAYBE WE SHOULD CONSIDER OUR SURVIVAL OPTIONS.

Needless to say, this book was a lot of fun.
And often a bit gross, in every sense of the word.

I had high expectations for this one. While I didn't find it boring, I also didn't find it gripping. In typical Stephenson fashion, the story crawls to a halt to discuss religion and ideology to nauseum. The Metaverse was a lot to take in and I think on a re-read I will find it less overwhelming and more enjoyable. Hiro, Y.T., Uncle Enzo, and Raven were really fun characters, who surprised me often with the complexity of their personalities. I think what really holds it back is the storyline never gets crazy enough to entice the reader to keep going. I did not get any sense of urgency even though I feel like I should have. Even the ending was anticlimactic. I will have to revisit this book in the future and hope for better results.

Look, I wanted to write a clever review here. I tried. I had several false starts, and now I’m just giving up. You see, this was a reread of Snow Crash for me, (after more than a decade) and it was disappointing in the extreme. I remembered it as a clever, action packed, tongue-in-cheek ironic, outstanding example of cyberpunk. And you know, most of that was in there. It was everything else that bogged it down.

The problems (that somehow I had forgotten) have to do with the unique style of the author — problems that I had somehow managed to forget about this, the first of his books that I read. To paraphrase Charles Schultz, of all the Neal Stephensons in the world, he’s the Neal Stephensonyest. He apparently never met an information dump that he didn’t love. Snow Crash is absolutely packed with them. Long, detailed info dumps, sometimes from conversations between character, but often from a computer constructed super librarian who talks like Batman’s butler. Because characters are sometimes functioning in the real world and the metaverse simultaneously, these info dumps sometimes literally happen while action is supposed to be taking place. Then there are the bits that I’m sure were meant to be humorous, like the long memo put out by the Feds to their employees on toilet paper policy. But after it has dragged on page after page (at least 15 minutes on the audio version), it just becomes one more bit to bog the story down.

If info dumps hadn’t tried me almost to my breaking point I likely could have gotten over how convoluted and sometimes nonsensical the plot became. As much as my nerd self enjoyed all the neurolinguistics, Sumerian mythology, and biblical references Stephenson threw in, I couldn’t help but notice that after a bit he depended more on impenetrably than cleverness to make his premise work.

There’s a final quibble that I didn’t notice the first time I read Snow Crash. The book is intended to be set in an undisclosed but near future — far enough away for the nature of how the world runs to have radically changed, but close enough to be recognizable. The problem is that Stephenson left enough markers to identify this book as having already happened in our past. A couple different characters (identified as being about 30) have fathers who were in World War II. Another couple characters are identified as Vietnam veterans. When I notice these thing (you know, because all those info dumps had already blown my pacing) it took me right out of the story. Considering this book came out in 1992, that seems like a pretty big (and easily avoidable) writing mistake.

In the end, this book has a lot of smart and fun elements — you know, all those things that attract people to read this authors works. Unfortunately, it also has all those elements that has those people asking, why did I read another one? I had remembered this one as different. I was wrong. Two and a half stars rounded up for auld lang syne.

n  Neal Stephenson'sn characters and I seem share quite a few interests (some of which are, admittedly, not for everybody). Though n  n    Snow Crashn  n seems to be Stephenson's most popular book, I wouldn't give it the kind of universal recommendation status merited by the likes of n  n    Zodiacn  n. However, I think it would appeal to a broader audience than say, n  n    Cryptonomiconn  n, or n  n    Reamden  n (only in part due to the fact that those two each clock in at over 1,000 pages).

So, let's get that snow crashing! Ok, so it's not an avalanche survival story, but what do I really have to contribute to the body of Snow Crash commentary out there if not vaguely related Archer clips?
n  n

Our protagonist, appropriately named n  Hiro Protagonistn, is a freelance hacker, and pizza delivery guy (which, given that pizza is a mafia-run industry which takes its promise of delivery in 30 minutes or less very seriously, is not an occupation without risk). He's also the Greatest Swordfighter in the World. Hiro's imaginary report card would read:

n  n    “Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills.”n  n

The gear in this futuristic world is really half the fun. Hiro (aka n  The Deliveratorn) has a uniform made of an n  “arachnofiber weave”n that would put the tactical turtleneck to shame any day. Even the relatively lame n  Metacopsn get to have night vision goggles.
n  n

Hiro's cooperation skills are put to the test when our other lead character, 15-year-old courier n  YT n(it's supposed to stand for Yours Truly, but Michael Jackson's PYT kept getting stuck in my head), saves his skin by bailing him out of a near-miss pizza delivery. Couriers, of course, travel by skateboard, “pooning” passing cars to speed about the city.
n  n

I don't even know where to begin with the whole n  cyborgn situation (a certain world's greatest secret agent would be decidedly uncomfortable in this Stephenson verse). I'll just say that there are some, and not all of them are good (duh). I mean, can you really even kill those things?
n  n

Science or Fiction?
As in the other Stephenson books I've read, the sheer power of his intellect is on display in this one. After complaints from the reading public that Stephenson failed to cite sources with respect to Riemann Zeta function cryptography, Stephenson sent an email to “real life” mathematician/cryptography expert Michael Anshel in which he noted n  “that many readers of fiction underestimate just how much of a novel's content is simply made up.”n

But, guess what Stephenson? There's a reason “that many readers seem to have [difficulty] in identifying the boundary between fact and fiction” in your books. And, for my money, that's not necessarily a bad thing! Sure, I should probably go and check out some of the bits about n  Sumerian etymologyn before I go tossing them around as fact, but at least now I'm interested enough to do so!

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.