Title: Snow Crash
Author: Neal Stephenson
Publisher: Bantam 1992
Genre: Science Fiction (Cyberpunk)
Pages: 440
Rating: 5 / 5 stars
Reading Challenges: Science Fiction; Mount TBR; Fall into Reading
How I Got It: J owns it!
One of Timemagazine's 100 all-time best English-language novels.Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison—a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous…you’ll recognize it immediately.
This is one of those books that took me awhile to get into. The universe building is a bit extensive. I was confused about how all the pieces of the puzzles and all the characters would eventually come together. But I shouldn't have worried. I was satisfied. What really got me latched me onto the book was the connections between religion, culture, and technology. The way the author talks of technology, it is a complete society. It has a language, it has creation stories and myths, it has characters, it has an evolution. I loved the scenes between Hiro and the Librarian when they were discussing Sumeria and viruses and the connections to Snow Crash. Sounds confusing until you read the book and then make all the connections. I went into the book turned off by cyber punk fiction, but I found this great symmetry between it and history and anthropology. This review has turned into babbling (ha ha Babel!), but I truly did enjoy the novel. For a better explanation, check out the Wikipedia page.
P.S. A movie version is supposedly in the works, directed by the same director as Attack the Block!
