I have been busy with this book for a long, long time. I am now officially abandoning it. What started off as funny, funky and innovative has failed to live up to my expectations. The story gets heavily, heavily bogged down halfway through. Also, in my opinion, this book just tries too hard to be funny and smart. I appreciate what the author has tried to do, and if the other reviews are to be a benchmark he appears to have succeeded, at least somewhat. I also appreciate the fact that this is, supposedly, a piece of cyberpunk history. I liked Neuromancer. This, I didn't like.

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.

This is one of those books that's so awful you look for any and every distraction to keep yourself from reading. I have never been that great at ironing, so I looked at some videos online and practiced. I did so much Facebook stalking that I feel like I've broken the law. And, embarrassingly, I've spent so much time iPhone gaming that I reached a new low and downloaded fucking Candy Crush Saga. CANDY CRUSH SAGA! When I'm broke, hungry, and cold, lying in the streets begging strangers not for food or shelter, but for extra lives in Candy Crush, I will only have Neal Stephenson to blame. Okay, and myself: I should have had the strength and sanity to put this trash down and just walk away. I wonder if I have any candy...

The last time I read this novel, it was brand new. And the last time I read this, it must have embedded itself a bit too permanently in my head, NLP'ing its way deeper than any kind of sleeper proto-language ever could.

Why do I say that?

Because I've forgotten more about this novel than I have the guts to admit, and what's more, it firmly ensconced my love of studying ancient Sumeria, the gods, mythology, the history, the literature surrounding it -- and that little fact completely escaped me until now, upon this belated re-read.

I feel like such a fool. And what's more, even though I had read Neuromancer before Snow Crash, I have been chasing THIS PARTICULAR HIGH ever since reading THIS PARTICULAR NOVEL.

Yeah, it's that good. Fun all the way through, with fantastic characters, a brilliant hybrid virtual/real adventure in an anarchistic capitalist hellscape in California, where everything is run by thuggish mobs of all flavors (including the remnants of the US government) and where pizza delivery really does go hand-in-hand with a samurai blade.

It's wild. Vibrant. Clever. And it is just a cool as an adventure as it is a philosophical treatise, a NLP dissertation, a Sumerian mytho-history guide, and a cautionary tale of rampant predatory capitalism.

Oh, yeah, and don't forget creating a slave-race of religious followers on a floating city-state or glass-knife villains with nukes.

Does this novel keep up with modern readers? I should say so! It's one of the wildest movies-in-my-mind I've read in absolute ages and if it ever gets made as a tv series, it better get a huge-budget HBO or Showtime treatment so that it gets the treatment it ABSOLUTELY deserves.

My first cyberpunk book!

I was told going into this that I was either going to love it or hate it. I didnt love it or hate it, I'm honestly not sure I understood a word of it!

Snow Crash is a gamer's dream! I read Ready Player One a few years back and thought I could now handle Snow Crash however there are two major differences. Ready Player One is written for the mainstream and you're inside a virtual reality. Snow Crash is written for the gamers and you're inside the actual coding of a virtual reality.

I did enjoy the world building in the Metaverse but a lot of what was going on went over my head. This book is basically written in it's very own language.

I have given this a low rating because I rate on enjoyment and I didnt enjoy this as I am not a gamer or technical minded at all so please dont be influenced by my thoughts.

My favourite quote 'Vitaly owns half a carton of lucky strikes, an electric guitar and a hangover' - I felt like I finished this book with a hangover, half a packet of cigarettes, disheveled and no knowledge of a guitar!

Am glad I gave this a bash, for now though I'm putting the punks that cyber to the side and maybe I'll try again in a few years as right now this genre isnt for me.

n  Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a future setting, noted for its focus on "high tech and low life". It features advanced technology and science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.n

I don't know why I do it! I'm not a fan of hardcore SF and my previous experience of cyberpunk ( Neuromancer) ended in tears. But I'd already picked this one up cheap, so I guess that's my mitigation.

Anyway, you can guess by my rating that this wasn't a marriage made in heaven. I did get through about a quarter of it before I realised I'd made a big mistake in starting it in the first place. But given my toe in the water approach to absorbing this cult classic you’ll need to judge my ramblings accordingly.

Actually, I have to say that I found this a lot better (well, keep this comment in context) than the aforementioned Neuromancer: for a start I could actually understand what was going on and secondly is was really quite funny in parts. And the story was shaping up into something that might actually hold my attention. So what was the problem? The issue for me is that I just don't have the imagination to fully immerse myself in a world that is just so different from the one in which I live; a world in which when unexplainable things happen a new gizmo is invented to explain it away; a world in which sub-human creatures (or robots or whatever else you want to call them) roam the planet. I wish I could enjoy this stuff, but I can't.

My only other observation is that although I did appreciate Stephenson’s most recent novel  Seveneves, this had more to do with the big picture he painted of ‘the end of the world’ – a concept even my limited imagination can deal with.

So that’s me done with cyberpunk, but I'm sure I’ll find a few more ‘soft’ SF novels along the way that will press my buttons.

Snow Crash is now my second book from Neal Stephenson following in the wake of his superb Anathem. It is an interesting and thought provoking book, but I did not think it as polished an offering as Anathem was.

Snow Crash was written in 1992 and NS was still polishing his writing skills. The "big picture" is here and the story is a mind blowing one. There are concepts here, that looked at in the light of 2017, are quite remarkable and forward looking. Sadly the story gets jumbled due to the complexity of the world building. NS tries to show us so much, and provides a social commentary, that it sometimes becomes a jumbled mess of concepts. Especially in the conversations. Still this was a great and original read.

Hiro Protagonist is not only a pizza driver, an expert sword fighter but he is also a hacker. Set in a dystopian cyberpunk setting it is a sarcastic look at the future of America and the world. There is a virus called "Snow Crash" that is frying the brains of hackers. Who made it? What is it? This starts us on a journey through neurolinguistics, Sumerian language, "transmission" of religion, a decades ahead of its time look at the "Metaverse" and the use of avatars. It's that last tortuous sentence that encapsulates the brilliance of this book. Yes it is a bit of a mess. But the underlying ideas are grand.

The concept of a "virus" and how it spreads and then relating that to religion and languages is brilliant. The thoughtful analysis of the entomology of common religious terms was also quite elucidating. A nod of respect to NS knowing the proper way to strike with a katana (snap the blow off vs follow through). But it is in his description of the Metaverse and avatars that I was truly impressed. This was written in 1992, long before the rise of MMORPGS and Minecraft, and is quite brilliant in describing something that is rather common now.

The story is out there. Hiro and Uncle Enzo are awesome characters. Raven was interesting, but rather strange. YT had her moments, but I found her annoying. The story is out there and reading it is not for everyone. His style and the jumble that can be the plot (one exists, trust me, just give it time) often leads people to dislike his work. please bear in mind this was one of his first works. Don't read it for the writing. Read it for the ideas. The "big picture" behind this tale is quite fascinating. It truly made me think about the concept of language and how the learning patterns are set. I am always respectful of any book that makes me think.

All in all-this was a fun read. Yes, there is some difficult prose but well worth the effort to figure out the principal ideas driving this plot. I will admit this book is not for everyone. But if you like bold, challenging ideas and concepts that make you think-then you will like Snow Crash.

When I first read Snow Crash, I thought to myself: "This thing is paced like a comic." Funny then to later discover that the novel was written after a comic book attempt at the same story fell apart.

Snow Crash is the paradigmatic Stephenson novel. Grabs you quickly, thrusts you head long into world that's so preposterous that he can't possibly be making it up, and the drags you along kicking and screaming until you're left startled and somewhat confused at a precipitous ending.

But don't let that fool you. This is probably Stephenson's best, most memorable work. It's certainly my favorite and it's certainly the one that's the most fun. (Which is probably why I've read it ten times.)

UPDATE: Yep. Still one of my all-time-favorites.

UPDATE: See also: Filet of Meta-Conflict.

UPDATE: Oct. 2020; reading it for the… 10th time? Still an all-time-favorite; still enjoyable as hell. Some of the absurdist dystopia feels very nightmare-come-mostly-true here in 2020. Meanwhile some of the other parts seem weirdly dated, but in the way where I remember when they didn't and so I have a direct through-line from "oh what a neat idea" to "LOL remember when we thought that was a neat idea?"

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SEE ALSO
• "10 Science Fiction Books That I Love (and you will at least like a lot)" at litreactor
• OMNI Reboot: Reviewing Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash (sic)

It had great world building, great concepts, and great satire, but story wise the last 20% completely falls apart. I was a little disappointed by the ending. Also, I had a hard time with the active voice used throughout this book. Reading it felt like a friend pitching a movie to me.

The language-as-programming concept was terrific though, even though I think that Max Barry (obviously influenced by this book) wrote a much more compelling story using the same high concepts when he wrote Lexicon.

I expected this to be bizarre. I was not disappointed!

In the past I have not had much luck with Cyberpunk. While I did enjoy this one more than my previous experiences, I still don’t think it will be a genre that I will generally go out of my way to read. It is just a little but too out there, to the point of being a chore to push through, from time to time.

This book goes from cinematic action to humor to religious philosophy to computer hacking to mafia violence with great abandon. In discussing this with my book club we had to clarify timelines and how one chapter might relate to another because of the fuzzy jumps in the plot. But, then I would find giant sections of great and extremely interesting clarity. It really did keep me on my toes!

I am not sure who I might recommend this to because I don’t think I know anyone that I would point at and say “yeah, this book is so you!” But, it is considered a modern classic, so it may come up in book discussions and it might be worth having it as a point of reference between you and your book buddies. But, be warned, I feel like the majority might find it to be a bit of a chore and lose interest quickly.

This book is great, if you can bring yourself to ignore its central premise, which I won't spoil here.* And it's surprisingly easy to ignore, aside from a 20-or-so page infodump near the middle of the book, because there's so much other good stuff: a giant raft full of desperate refugees and religious fanatics; skateboards whose wheels have retractable spokes that make riding over obstacles and potholes easier (who hasn't wanted one of these?); TRON-style virtual motorcycle races; a Mafia boss named Uncle Enzo who's for some reason one of my favorite sci fi characters; swordfights, boat chases, and other unashamedly kickass action scenes; guard dogs' souls transported into supersonic attack robots; and, of course, the occasional nice turn of phrase.

When I read this type of book, I tend to focus on small details that seem eerily prescient, rather than big ones. Yes, Stephenson did come up with a reasonable guess at what the Internet may well one day resemble. But I'm less interested in that than I am in, say, the concept of Gargoyles. Gargoyles are agents - I think they can have any number of different jobs or tasks or goals - who go about in public, in the real world, attached umbilically to their computers. Thus, they can instantly access any number of different resources, like their Google Earth equivalent, or their Wikipedia equivalent. And do. Very similar to a person in our world who will whip out their smartphone at the slightest provocation, whether to settle a dispute, to text message someone not present, or, hell, to make a move in Scrabble, depending on how interesting present company is. This parallel isn't the clever part, though; anyone could have probably guessed that this would eventually happen. The clever part is that in Snow Crash, everyone thinks these Gargoyles are assholes. Just like in real life!

*Actually, fuck it: the gist is that ancient Sumerian was basically assembly language for humans, allowing them to be controlled by incantation, and Sumerian is making a comeback in the form of a religious cult. As lame as it is ridiculous. But don't let it stop you from reading the book.

The Name of the Code

This 1992 novel is an action thriller with an intellectual premise, much like n  "The Da Vinci Code".n

A better analogy is probably n  "The Name of the Rose",n because the premise is partly linguistic.

The Year and State of the FOQNE

The world building is both immediate and effective. Almost straight away, I started to detect its conscious or subconscious influence on subsequent literary fiction.

Though it's set in California rather than Boston or Alaska, the acronym FOQNE (Franchise-Organised Quasi-National Entities) seemed to foreshadow the private sponsorship of years in n  "Infinite Jest"n ("the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment"), while the bureaucratese in the regulations about toilet paper usage at the Fed headquarters (chapter 37) reminded me of David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel, n  "The Pale King"n (2011). The arrival of a boatload of Russian Orthodox refugees in California suggested Michael Chabon's n  "The Yiddish Policemen's Union"n (2007).

Privatised Public Enterprise

In this world, everything (even the police, the CIA, the justice system and public education) has been privatised and franchised to and by nefarious business interests like the Mafia and dubious religious "charities".

So now we have CosaNostra Pizza University, MetaCops Unlimited, Judge Bob's Justice System, General Jim's Defence System, Admiral Bob's National Security, and the Central Intelligence Corporation (which now runs the Library of Congress). All public and government services have been literally bought off. At least, it's all transparent, if no less corrupt.

Hacker Boy and Skater Girl

There are two main protagonists, a hacker boy (the post-modern-monikered Hiro Protagonist [a la Nabokov's "Hugh Person"], a “post-adolescent Army brat", a “talented drifter", a pizza deliverator for CosaNostra Pizza and a freelance hacker who sells information to the C.I.C.) and a skater girl (a sexually active 15 year old – “a fucking teenaged girl" - Y. T. [it stands for “Yours Truly"], a Kourier, who tags along behind speeding vehicles on the freeway by attaching a magnetic harpoon to them (“pooning")).

Hiro looks Asian - he's half Korean (via his mother), half African (via his father). He has “cappuccino skin and spiky, truncated dreadlocks”. He owns a couple of nice Nipponese swords, which he uses skillfully and lethally. His favourite band plays speed reggae.

Y. T. is Caucasian, almost a WASP, like her concerned and adoring mother. You wonder whether the two will hook up, but they work in parallel (and alternating chapters) rather than together.

The Hiro's Journey

Hiro still has a soft spot for a former student and work colleague, Juanita Marquez. She married their boss, the owner of Black Sun Systems, which created the virtual reality Metaverse (in which half of the novel's action takes place).

This is all pretty subcultural so far, which might account for a lot of the novel's success within the wired, self-proclaimed geek community.

However, what interested me more was a few of its more literary qualities.



Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/commen...

Cartoon Action

Apart from the description, the novel is primarily plot-driven, as you would expect from a thriller.

Throughout much of the novel, it reads like a cartoon, almost a Marvel superhero comic (without superheroes, except in the Metaverse). So much so, I'm surprised it has taken so long to make it into a film or a TV series, especially in the wake of the success of "The Matrix" and "The Da Vinci Code". Maybe there's just too much action for the format.

From a literary point of view, this cartoon quality reminded me of Robert Coover's (1977) n  “The Public Burning".n Complete with a political message, this is a more apt analogy than Neal Stephenson's revelation that “Snow Crash” germinated in a collaboration, the goal of which was to publish “a computer-generated graphic novel". That said, Stephenson finished his contribution as a novel, rather than scripting a more cyberpunk version of “Tank Girl" (1995).

The Neurolinguistic Hacking of the Selfish Meme

The novel has been criticised for info-dumping. However, this really only happens in four out of 70 chapters (30, 36, 56 and 57), which detail the linguistic premise of the novel, which was of greatest interest to me (so it added rather than detracted for me).

Stephenson refers to segments of language or lines of digital code that form memes, which are capable of acting like a biological virus. While these memes are the basis of language, culture and civilisation (right back to Sumerian times), they are also the tools of social control, domination and destruction.

The later part of the novel concerns the rebellion of the protagonists against those who are abusing the memes for capitalist and religious purposes. Being an American novel, there was no hint of socialism, more a subcultural anarchistic activism. Apart from this detail, the novel bears some resemblance to China Mieville's Bas-Lag novels (2000 - 2004).