“If you know how to catch a ride, you can go places.”

Super entertaining ride through dystopia and pizza delivery (as if there was any real difference in the two), ancient Sumerian mythology, computer and religious viruses, hacker groups and some very strange and creepily familiar communities in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash! And that really is just the beginning. Absolutely loved the inventiveness (and here is my caveat) until at least the first half or three quarters mark. While I plan to reread this book (because I’m sure I will get more out of a second or even a third reading), I lost sight of the plot. To be fair, I don’t believe this was ever meant to be a plot-driven novel. All the same, as I approached the end, it felt less like the book was coming to a conclusion and more like it was running out of energy.

Even though it has an edgier, science fiction feel to it, Snow Crash reminds me of one of my favorite novels, Thomas Pynchon’s V (as well as a Pynchon novella, The Crying of Lot 49). Ideas are spilled across every landscape and community Stephenson describes as well as every sentence he writes. Inventiveness applies to characters as well. The naming of his main character, Hiro Protagonist, master swordsman, hacker and pizza deliveryman, was perfect! There were other likeable characters like the young skate punk, Y.T. Despite some issues down the stretch with the plot, I really enjoyed Snow Crash! 4.5 stars.

Hey Mr. Stephenson, Metaphors be with you! Sorry, couldn't help using the cliche!

OK, let me start by listing some of my favourite things from the book:
- Raven
- Technology and it's maniacal usage in the book
- Humour that would go well while drinking with buddies
- Uncle Enzo's Mafia philosophy
and last but not the least
- Technology and it's maniacal usage in the book

My favourite characters in a descending order:
Raven > Uncle Enzo > Ng > Librarian > Hiro > Y.T.

So here is a summary of the book as cited from the book itself:

"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?"

Wow, Mr. Stephenson!

Summary babble:

Snow Crash has one of the best opening chapter that I have read in recent times. An ultimate, adrenalin-filled, psycho-geeky narrative of a Pizza Deliverator. This Deliverator is the same chap 'Hiro Protagonist'. (A name that will stay with you for a long, long time.) Yes, it does look like Stephenson is being ever-so-sarcastic by coming up with names like Hiro and Y.T.

I have heard a lot that Stephenson bombards you with info, facts, and factually-fabricated fiction in a manner that appears like an iceberg. The tip is just 1/8th of the actual monster. And yes, it is true. (All those have read his other books, specially Anathem, can snigger now and call me naive!) But, steer your ships safely.
Here are a few buoys and lighthouses that might (or might not) guide you if you feel like picking up Snow Crash:

- Do you love (I repeat, LOVE) science and technology. Not just brief allusions that appear once in a while; not just computer science, but chemistry, biology, geology, and linguistics too; but almost every paragraph brimming with highly obvious or slightly obfuscated allusions.

- Do you dig reading about things like Metaverse (even though this is not so difficult to fathom since we have seen it materialise already, but written in '92 Stephenson has described a lot of facets of virtual reality, avatars (first usage of this term to define entities in VR) and more, in a splendid detail) or his brimming love for factually presenting information like:

"Even the word 'science' comes from an Indo-European root meaning 'to cut' or 'to separate.' The same root led to the word 'shit,' which of course means to separate living flesh from nonliving waste. The same root gave us 'scythe' and 'scissors' and 'schism,' which have obvious connections to the concept of separation."?

- Can you identify when MSG when "Chinese food without MSG" is mentioned?

No, that was not for you Heisenberg!

- Do you think of petting a radio-isotopic dog, ever?

- Do you love (or don't mind) the bustling overflow of technologically-whacky metaphors:

"logos with a lot of bright, hideous yellow in them, and so Alameda Street is clearly marked out before him, a gout of radioactive urine ejected south from the dead center of L.A."

or

"track him down through the moiling chaos of the microwaved franchise and confront him in a climactic thick-crust apocalypse."

or

"when the temperature has greenhoused up to a hundred and ten degrees".

(I would like to cite some more of them whacky ones, but why don't you check them out yourself?)

- Do you like reading about awesomely described (Oh and one of my most favourite) bad-ass bad guys? A world-class-bad-guy nominee! The sure shot winner of the Nobel (I will shred you in) Pieces (before you blink your eyes) prize. Sir-Kicks-Ass-Aleut. The ultimate-weapon wielder and kick-ass fighter chap: Raven. Raven, the last of the true Gentleman.

- Do you want to keep wondering about Hiro's objective purpose apart from being cool, sword fighting, making a fool of himself in front of Juanita (or stopping her from outwitting him), writing microcode and so many other things? Do you, eventually, want to conclude that when your name is Hiro, heroism is a given?

- Do you like mythology imbibed in technology and would like to read the long ramblings of Hiro with the Librarian about the same? How does weaving facts around fiction or the other way round sound like?
To cite an example, here is something about the Sumerian stuff:
Thi siswhe re nea lstep he nson pla ysw ith yo urb eli efs an dtr ies tos scr ew yo urb rai nso mem ore.

- Do you not mind reading about an annoying side-kick? Yeah, Y.T.

- Do you not mind a conclusion of a book that feels like you are dreaming about swimming in the vast Amazon and then you suddenly wake up to the splashing you are making in your half-filled bath tub?

If the answer to most of these questions is 'Yes', or you want to go ahead, read the book and nuke my review, I will offer you a nuclear submarine.

The rest is up to you.

---

Post-read update: After reading Snow Crash, I was geeked out. I wanted to take up a very human book. Just humans talking to humans and them talking to other humans. Personally. So I took up Norwegian Wood.

Technology is easier to understand. Humans are complex. Being one of them Humans. Sigh.

Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

I had thought that William Gibson’s Neuromancer was the alpha male of the cyberpunk genre; the template upon which all others would be drawn. Turns out, Gibson was the prophet, but Stephenson was the barbarian, breaking ground with a riveting, relentless new age thriller.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is a wild trip.

A fun conglomerate of Hunter S. Thompson, Philip K. Dick, Anthony Burgess and John Brunner, written 8 years after Neuromancer and 19 years before Ready Player One this is a bright light on the cyberpunk literary landscape. Set in a near alternative future, Stephenson introduces a world where governments have collapsed and societies are held loosely together by anarcho-capitalism.

The book was nominated for a Prometheus Award but what could be a libertarian dream may also be seen as a laissez-faire nightmare. This is a blitzkrieg of ideas, a cacophony of sci-fi, techno-socio-economic observations, a kaleidoscope of theological and philosophical concepts thrown together in a Mark Twainian fantasy hopped up on Red Bull and amphetamines.

Above all this is an intelligent, modern adventure that expertly weaves in elements of pre-history and archeological thrill seeking. If Bladerunner led to The Matrix, then this is what’s next. And, if Stephenson had not boiled it all together enough into a steaming cup of Have At You!, then he also has the best name for a lead character of all time: Hiro Protagonist.

A very, very Goodread, five stars, two snaps and a bag of chips.

** 2018 addendum - it is a testament to great literature that a reader recalls the work years later and this is a book about which I frequently think. As great a hero as Hiro is, the scenes between Raven and YT are those that I recall the most and Raven is a character about whom more could be written. The casting of Ravinoff by Jason Momoa would be a good one.

*** 2023 reread -

Love this book, truly one of the great science fiction novels of all time.

This has lost none of its potency in the 30 years since its publication, if anything its message has renewed relevancy with the inclusion of its cautionary message about centralized information gathering and dissemination.

While the most organic comparisons will be to Neuromancer and Ready Player One, this has been wildly influential on many works since and a consequential legacy of many works before it, Snow Crash is a high water mark in this genre.

Actually, when I think of this book in terms of other works like Catch-22 or Slaughterhouse Five, this is not just great SF but great literature and we can find that Stephenson, writing in the early 90s, has provided to us a work unique for its time and place.

The anarcho-capitalist setting and socio-economic observations subtly screaming out on most every page also made me consider a comparison with Howard Chaykin’s work on his American Flagg series from the 80s.

Stephenson’s characterization was delicious, making this work on many levels; Uncle Enzo and Raven, and the man with the glass eye teaming up with Hiro and YT to make this so much fun. I did not realize it last time, but this is told from the perspective of an omniscient but chatty storyteller so we can hear Stephenson’s own voice mischievously breaking the fourth wall here and there, and again with the comparison to Chaykin.

This can also be funny and with a long list of humorous elements scattered throughout the narrative that made me consider an oblique comparison to Trevanian. Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates franchise is as much fun as the Fosterites from Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land.

Finally I will add this great book to my list of all time favorites. As of this addendum I have published over 1800 reviews and this makes the tenth book on that exclusive list. It’s that good.

Un buon romanzo fantascientifico-cyperpunk, col ritmo di un thriller d'azione. La scrittura è molto scorrevole, forse si sofferma troppo su combattimenti vari, che, a mio modesto modo di vedere, renderebbero meglio sullo schermo sotto forma di film. Comunque mi ha riappacificato con la fantascienza-cyperpunk. Lo stile senza fronzoli ha reso la lettura molto lineare e divertente, con momenti molto interessanti sulla mitologia sumerica e riflessivi sulle descrizioni del Metaverso, avatar, hacker ecc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d0OW...

This was our book club read for February and I tried but didn't get very far into it. Right off the bat the writing style annoyed me. Why drop the first word off your sentences? This was just not what I was expecting and just not for me.

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince.

Not one person in the book club liked this book. I think we all may have just zeroed in on that opening line in the book's description and thought it sounded interesting. Personally I know I would rather the book had just stuck with the Pizza mafia theme - it sounded kind of kooky and fun. Instead the whole premise ended up being way too unbelievable even for a fantasy/sci-fi type book.

I ended up getting all the spoilers from my friend so I wouldn't have to finish the book. I have to add that I have an issue with the way a 15 year old girl is portrayed in the book. Needless to say, this was a disappointing read.

Review also posted at Writings of a Reader

It gets a star because I like 2 minor characters, Ng and Enzo (for the most part) and it has one really neat idea, which I'll discuss later.

I don't understand why this book is so well thought of. It has so many huge problems, which will be discussed, so spoilers. I will admit, cyberpunk doesn't really seem to be my thing, but only one of the issues of this book has implications beyond it. That'll be first

There is that big issue that really hurts all of cyberpunk in my mind. That is this silly tron/matrix version of the internet, with people running around as avatars and trying to accomplish moronic things in this real-world simulation in the net. It's especially egregious here because the book even talks about how when hackers are really trying to get things done, they use standard desktop type interfaces. With that in mind, why is this organization trying to plant a computer virus by having this guy holding a 'physical' item, driving to a place that is full of hacker avatars (what are they even doing here?) and then setting it off? Why not just program it? And, granted the stupid premise, why is the person they are sending in some real-world assassin (Raven) and not some computer expert???!! Having a big chase/fight scene in a computer is Tron silly. Which would be ok if this was meant to be a silly book. It's not.

Problem 2: bad mythology/comparative religion/history. Stephenson has a cool idea here. That there's this sort of linguistic virus that can lock people into patterns and that Babel was a historical event where someone intentionally confounded the languages as a sort of immunization against this virus. The virus in question is called the Asherah virus and so is associated with that cult. All good. Fine. Asherah isn't Eve. Doesn't work, sorry. Bad comparison. She was not worshiped from Mesopotamia to Spain. Bad. The Deuteronomists did NOT do away with animal sacrifice! Way the fuck out there bad. Synagogues didn't exist until, at the earliest, the Babylonian exile and weren't widespread until after the fall of the second temple. Bad. Speaking in tounges is an indication of infection by the virus. It cites Acts Reference to speaking in tounges at the Pentecost as a sign of the infection of Christianity by the virus, but ignores Jesus's reference to speaking in tounges as a good thing in Mark. Bad.
There's this whole equation of knowlege/data infecting people in the form of this virus and that's where the idea of the fall comes from. Stephenson trues to link Eve to Asherah for this reason, but ignores Prometheus, Coyote, etc.
Also, the code of Hamurabi isn't as early as it is implied to be in this book. Which shouldn't be a problem, because there actually were laws before that.
And finally, way to just ignore Egypt for some reason.
Oh, and trying to have binary code in your ancient hacking is really silly. Why would it be binary? Why, when you have that little picture, would you say that it looks like a 0 and 1 when there's no reason why Sumerian would have the same figures? Also, that looks like an o and a 1 or maybe a q. Oh, and there was no concept of 0 at the time!!!!
It's fine to work with a fictional idea and plant that in history, but it works a lot better if you get the history surrounding it right.

Problem 3: ruining a cool idea. Having the linguistic virus is cool. Making it a biological AND linguistic virus doesn't make sense. The mechanism is weird. Just over-doing it. Done.

Problem 4: Sword vs. Gun. The main character, Hiro Protagonist (oy), uses a samurai sword in real life, fighting people with modern weapons. Bull shit.

Problem 5: sexism. There's a great line in the book where Hiro is thinking about the way this woman was treated while working at a software company. He says something like that it was the kind of sexism from people who thought they were too smart to be sexist. Stephenson should pay attention to that. Hiro has a love interest, Juanita. Her whole point is to feed Hiro information to drive the plot forward and then, for no particular reason, agree to get back together with him at the end of the novel.
Additionally, there's a spunky 15yo girl skateboard character, Y.T.. Not a huge fan of the character type, but she's fine. At one point, she's held hostage on the big boat fortress of the bad guy and Raven basically decides that he's going to have sex with her. Essentially rape. Whether or not physical force is involved, that's what this is. I understand why Y.T. decides to just go along with it. He's a giant, she's basically defenseless and surrounded by hostile people. When this acceptance becomes enthusiasm/interest, I'm sorry. Standard nonsense-'oh, I'm being raped. it's so sexy.'

Problem 5: overdoing it. If you want to make fun of the bureaucracy of the government, that's all good fun. But it's just so overdone. This memo about how to share toilet paper. How long, to the minute, it should take to read. Ugh. It takes me right out of the story. It's silly and I don't buy it.

Problem 6: deus ex machina/lucky coincidence. Of course Y.T. has air bags physically installed in her body. Of course Jaunita can suddenly override Asherah and broadcast her own viruses (in order to let Hiro go and do his thing). Of course, for some reason, Hiro's internet sword can break into an internet wall even though they're designed to keep unwanted people out. Of course Uncle Enzo is some super bad-ass fighter. Of course the Mafia is fighting this weird religious cult. Of course Hiro's and Raven's fathers knew each other even though that winds up having no impact on the story whatsoever. Of course Y.T.'s old dog is now a super robot dog hybrid that can break his basic programming to go and help her.

Problem 7: Uncle Enzo to the rescue. Enzo is the head of the mafia. His personal interest in the well being of Y.T. is perhaps a bit odd, but certainly fine within the context of the story. (It's closest to a weird, father/daughter thing.) What doesn't make any sense is when he suddenly decides that he personally will go out and fight these people by himself and he wins against Raven. Weird. I know I mentioned this in #6, but it gets its own number because it both comes out of nowhere, fitting into the #6 category and is deeply problematic because it isn't in keeping with the nature of the character.


Problem 8: exposition. I like Diaspora by Greg Egan. That book has a whole lot of explaining of scientific principles in it. However, that was the point of the story. Snow Crash is essentially an action story. It's a bit annoying when every once in a while the story has to stop and explain all this stuff about Sumeria etc. That's annoying, but acceptable. It is not acceptable when, about 90% in the book, the story has to stop and explain what the hell has been going on and what the villains basic motivations are. Theoretically, Hiro is explaining this to Enzo and some other people, but he's really explaining to the reader, because it's pretty hard to get a clear picture of what is going on in the book.

Problem 9: loose ends. It is strongly implied that Raven dies at the end of the book. It is specifically stated that if he dies a hydrogen bomb goes off. If this happens, it is not mentioned.

Problem 10: couriers unite! I have a friend who was a bike messenger. He saw this movie about bike messengers where, at the end, all the bike messengers team up with the main character to help him overcome the bad guys because, of course, they're all one big happy family. This caused my friend a great deal of amusement. The same thing literally happens here. Y.T. a courier (spelled with a k, for some reason) is kidnapped and managed to get the word out to another courier. He calls the company which, because it is a company, trying to make money, sends a bunch of couriers (i.e. a bunch of kids on skateboards, which is funny, but not a problem) to go help Y.T.

So, yeah. I originally rated this as two stars. Thinking about it, I'm taking one of those away. Even if I could rate it 0, I'd leave the 1 for the reasons I stated up front.

Loved it! Can't recommend it highly enough. Everyone should read this book. Go do it. Do it now. It's just awesome. You won't regret it.

I didn't love my first experience with Neal Stephenson (The Diamond Age) but this was completely a different scenario. I'm very much looking forward to trying more of his work.

Big thumbs up.

I can only see this book as a score of missed opportunities.
I loved the first few chapters - the quick dive into an absurd dystopian world where delivering pizzas becomes a matter of life and death is particularly brilliant. The book is let down by its poor plot - on a par with a bad James Bond movie - two questionable scenes (in my mind), and a particularly unbelievable resolution of the 'snow crash' mystery. Basically, it all came apart in the second part of the book which also sports a rushed and unsatisfying end.
The three stars I gave the book is for the moments of brilliance that transform the book in parts.
There are descriptions and passages that are worth reading this book for.

*This section contains spoilers*

I did enjoy the 'badass' and 'hardboiled' shenanigans and dialogues very much, but there are two moments in the book that I could have done without.
The first one centers on the scene where our 15 year old heroine, Y.T. is seduced by arch - villain Raven. During (consensual) intercourse she manages to anaesthesize the guy with a device contained in her vagina. This is given a light treament and we are supposed to find it hilarious. Well, I read something not long ago that I thought was great advice for writers. How do you know your story is sexist (or not)? The advice given was to replace your heroin by a hero and see if you feel the same way about the scene. Now imagine a 15 year old boy in that same scene. I 'll let you make your own mind up on this one.

The other scene touches upon the name of one of the refugee that helps Hiro to get onto the villain's boat lair - that poor block's name is Transubstanciacion and we are told that everyone's calling him 'Tranny'. Very funny.
Now, let's do the same as we did before. Let's imagine a woman instead, her name is Controversial but her nickname is 'Cunty'. Now, you know were I am going with this.
Shame because actually Hiro is a great example of a non white protagonist.

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!

A friend just gave me back my ages-old copy of this book, three years after I had forgotten that I had lent it to him. I am overjoyed to have this back in my possession. So much so that I feel compelled to immediately reread it. That is just how good this book is.

***Post reread***
The problem with reading Neal Stephenson is that you can not help coming to the realization that, no matter how hard you try, how dedicated to the craft you become, you will never write anything as fully formed, as intricately detailed and impeccably researched or as purely fun as Snow Crash. Give up, all ye purveyors of mediocre science fiction, Stephenson owns you. At least that was the impression that I had while reading the book. All of my own half-hearted attempts all stand out as poor homages to this masterwork.

From the postnational aspect of citizenry to civilization's basis in codified behavior to brain-twisting explanations of the physics of virtual samurai duels, Stephenson has thought everything through down to the pico level of detail and left no loose ends dangling. When he is describing Nuclear Fuzz Grunge, you have to believe that somewhere in his office there exists an evolutionary chart that traces the development of this niche musical genre, much as Tolkien formed the intricate lineages of his elves.

Anyone familiar with Stephenson's more recent books, The Baroque Cycle, Anathem, or Cryptonomicon, is well aware of his skill at cramming as much as possible detail into every page, but it's here in Snow Crash (and his follow-up, The Diamond Age) where he really just lets loose and has fun. A pissed off Aleut who drives around on a motorcycle with a hydrogen bomb sidecar, a smart-mouthed skater chick who rides the miles of highways in LA, the Mafia as a quirky group of good guys- Stephenson is clearly having a great time while writing this, nearly as much as any reader will have. I really don't think that I could recommend this book any higher.

2.5 stars. I'm sorry I'm giving this book such a low rating. Writing is smooth, characters are interesting, story is intriguing and all that in cyberpunk-ish setting. So what went wrong?

Well this book reminds me of serial procrastinator. It losses track of what it supposed to be doing for the most part and at some point authors remembers that there was actually story that was supposed to happen hundred pages ago and tries to make up the lost time with bunch of exposition and info dumps and then loses track again which results in cycle repeating again. There are whole chapters that are just for infodumping. In this large page count worldbuilding could have been done more naturally through character PoV. Natural comparison would be Gibson's Sprawl series but those book do so much more of everything in half the page count. On the other hand writing is far more fluid than Gibson and when this book is good it's very good but those moments are too far between.

DNF.

What a disappointment! I enjoyed the beginning of the novel very much (granted, the whole virtual reality thing is a bit outdated, but the book was written in 1992) but the book pretty much comes to a halt after the first half. Stephenson gives a tedious lecture on Sumerian mythology, Hebrews, Pentecostals... It just got too boring for me and I just couldn't finish the book.