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Snow Crash
The Rundown.
Snow Crash is a well-crafted, tongue-in-cheek romp through a near-future America so familar, one expects to see its characters chasing each other down the street.
Set mostly in geographic California with arterial highways delivering consumers to the fast food, faster shopping, and even small country franchises, a very modern, ancient Sumerian virus is turning hackers and non-hackers alike into tongue-speaking refugees.
Throw in the Metaverse, Stephenson's version of the global information structure. A three-dimensional audio and visual hallucination built around the mystical powers-of-two, cartoon physics rule the day. Rent a cheap avatar for a stroll down the main street. Ride your motorcycle at 300 km/h and bounce harmlessly off of a 20-mile square building. Just don't read the scroll held by the Bland Angel of Judgment.
Further complicating matters is a slew of divergent and entertaining characters. Your guide through this journey is the unlikely Hiro Protagonist (no, really!), a once and future hacker wonderboy who took off before the IPO and now delivers pizza for the Mafia (thirty minutes or less or you're fired). Joining him is the ever resourceful Y.T., a teenaged Kourier skateboarding her way through traffic by harpooning cars.
Want more? How about the surprisingly boyish Uncle Enzo, head of aformentioned Mafia, or L. Bob Rife, fantastically wealthy crank, founding funder of Rife Bible College and current owner of the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. Perhaps you'd like to meet Mr. Lee, proprietor of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong Franchise, or stop to pet Rat Thing, a supersonic isotope-powered cybernetic pit bull. Pushing forward the plot is a Metaverse librarian and Raven, a one-man killing machine and nuclear power.
Sounds serious? Perhaps. Complicated? Enjoyably so.
What's good? The writing is crystal clear and very descriptive. Stephenson never gets lost in the details, and is as comfortable relating various myths about Babel as technical descriptions of the Graveyard Daemons cleaning up unfortunate Metaverse corpses. They fit together into an interesting, if complicated puzzle. He's also highly creative and well-researched, much like Neil Gaiman. It would take a serious student of a particular field to spot an error in his work (except for the strange 'Built-In Operating System' acronym).
What's not so good? There's one piece of the backstory (concerning the parentage of a couple of characters) which is a little too convenient... it makes the story more effective, but it was an obvious dramatic advice. The ending might leave some readers a cold. Frankly, it's quick. Very quick. All of the pieces had been in place for a hundred pages (no MacGuffin here), but it's still a surprise. Stephenson is better at creating a believable yet outrageous world and populating it with appropriate characters than he is at telling an airtight story. Don't be fooled -- he's no slouch in the story department, but the draw of "Snow Crash" is Stephenson's fertile imagination. All things considered, these are very small nitpicks.
What's to think about when you finish? This is a story about dualities. There's a reason for the 'powers of two' lecture early on. The obvious schism is the organized technocracy of the Metaverse contrasted with the hyperinflationary franchised real world.
Pit Hiro against Raven. One reluctantly saves the world he helped create, the other seeks to destroy the world that created him. How about Uncle Enzo versus Rife? Ng and Rat Thing? YT and ... well, everybody else.
The Conclusion. Given the quality and density of Snow Crash, it's easy to recommend this work as a defining piece of SF. If you consider yourself a serious cyberpunk fan, hacker, or geek, you ought to feel guilty until you read it.
Note: as with most cyberpunk pieces, Snow Crash contains quite a bit of harsh language, some violence, and one sexual encounter. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Thanks to Chilli for additional insights during this review.
Pick this book at Amazon.
You're right, we need a central repository.
More must-reads in no particular order:
Naked Lunch
Asimov's (?) "before the golden age" collections if you can find them.
Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven, also his short stories
Hitchhikers series by Doug Adams
the Dangerous Visions anthologies
Titan, Wizard and Demon by John Varley
Philip K. Dick (especially Ubik and Valis)
Lovecraft (all of it if possible)
Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories (possibly the only _good_ fantasy ever written)
Godel Escher Bach
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
1984 and Animal Farm
as many Robert Sheckley stories as you can find
Groucho
Well, it's pretty new, and kind of obscure but I can't stop raving about the comic book "Thieves and Kings". I suggest it to people as strongly as I do Snow Crash, if that helps you judge how good it is (or I think it is).
Amazon sells the three tpbs that have currently been released.
(and there's also the anime series "Escaflowne" but for now let's stick with books)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I mean, I do like NS, but I've already read these. I'd love to hear about other authors that I might want to read!
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
I have very little interest in SF writing usually, but this book is very much an exception. I came across it by way of a media student living in my house years ago. He got sent the book as a review copy when it came out and recomended it to me - and the old line about not being able to put it down is certainly true in Snow Crash's case.
I've yet to read any of his more recent works, but this one gets a definite ten out of ten.
Chris Wareham
I read this book after everyone I knew and respected was giving it rave reviews and labelled it as "a must read". I recally reading the first few chapters and wondering what the big deal was. The writing is very pedestrian and not at all what I've come to expect from the "best-of-the-best" in any genre. I found the ideas presented in the first half of Snowcrash pretty tame and almost of a "this is cool and so I'm going to write about it just to be cool" variety. Much of what in the first half just seemed like the meanderings of a juvenile writer who thought that cyberpunk was hip and wanted to delve into it. Mind you, my previous escapades into the genre consisted of earlier Gibson, Sterling and their ilk and so I consider myself a little spoiled. Many of the starting ideas just seemed to be rehashed from "the godfathers of cyberpunk".
It wasn't until the book started to plummet into a world of linguistics and a seemingly well-researched and in-depth history of language that I started to become interested. I considered putting an end to my read until I reached this harder, more satisfying interior. While the first half insulted my intelligence and experience with the cyberpunk genre, the second half held my interest and challenged my mind.
If it wasn't for this new spark and introduction of "language as virus" as well as the relatively heavy linguistics, I probably would have passed off Stephenson as just another one of many mediocre cyberpunk writers. Instead, it is clear to me that Stephenson has some really good ideas, albeit a relatively mediocre writing style.
So would I recommend the book? Yes, but with a warning that the first half of the book might seem tripe for those who have lots of experience with cyberpunk but nevertheless well worth the wait to build up to the harder material in the last half.
ian
The book, *and* this review.
A *major* chunk of the story occurs in cyberspace...and *another* major chunk is mythological...and somehow, Our Reviewer seems to have glossed all of that over.
Stephenson's cyberspace is as impressive as Gibson's, and yet different; to some degree, one can see it as a progression from the current web, where Gibson's view is nowhere in sight.
On the other hand, I have *always* had a problem with Snowcrash, and one of these cons, I mean to tell Stephenson so: he com*pletely* blows the intellectual climax of the novel (don't worry, it doesn't affect the outcome of the "physical" end", so this isn't exactly a spoiler): since obviously, anyone reading it with anything less than the total immersion will see that the mythological queen/Goddess is the culture hero, for freeing the knowledge of self-hacking, rather than the mythological king/God, who tries to keep it hidden.
It *is* an excellent book, and deserved the Hugo it won. Of course, I just hope my son, in his quest for a job, doesn't wind up deliivering pizza for Domino's...I might have to give him some practice with swords, and then enroll him in a kendo class....
mark
You're right about me leaving out the mythological underpinnings... I must have moved that from the synopsis to the analysis and forgotten to paste it. To wit:
Let it be known that Hiro knowingly attempts to reenact the ancient Sumerian myth which is explained throughout the story. One might analyze 'Snow Crash' as the germ of a future hacker mythos, where the sorceror-priests are those who can reach into the guts of the [mind|machine] and rewire [consciousness|digital reality] as they see fit. Except that the advertising age necessitates a word from our sponsor... (Hiro's business card at the lightshow.)
Mea culpa. Sorry everyone!
As for cyberspace, I took that for part of the mythology. Did Hiro find it more real than reality?
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QDMerge 0.4 just released!
how to invest, a novice's guide
Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. Galactic-scale action flavored with AI, Usenet, and gothic intrigue. A bit hard to believe in places, but the grand scale of the story makes suspense of disbelief easy.
Someone else mentioned Hofstadter's Godel, Escher Bach; I'd add his Metamagical Themas as well.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. Several metaphysical journeys woven into a wonderful story/extended essay. Also good background material for anyone having to suffer through Total Quality training.
Don't forget James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. A spiritual ancestor of the cyberpunk style.
--JT
Would you also do away with public libraries, prefering that individuals keep their own, (relatively) small collections instead? As a cultural niche, we are defined by our attitudes, likes and dislikes. It would be an interesting project, to define the common ground.
/. Had I made my own Linux/Computing oriented site, I wouldn't have had the insight of others to broaden my horizons. Repositories are good.
Some of the most useful web resources came to my attention on
Few of us have the gift of synthesizing new knowledge from vacuum, and fewer still have the clairvoyance to know what sci-fi books they'll like, just be reading the cover.
It is true that someone could refer to such a (cultural) resource as a 'community list of suggested readings' in an effort to take on the characteristics of a geek (as cool as that that may sound for a fad-hound these days). So what of it? Maybe that's another convert. Maybe they would benefit from the new perspective. Maybe they would recognize in geekdom, a community that appreciates people for their talent and contribution, not their clothing, check-book or hair-style.
And a vast majority of geeks would certainly find something of value in there too. Nobody ever said 'required reading' in the compulsory sense. No one would excommunicate anyone for flatly refusing to read Neuromancer, or for not knowing the last verse of Jabberwocky - or why that poem is significant. No one is proposing that we cover a book in red leather, and devise a pledge of allegience.
It's just an idea for a place people like us can go to in order to find something new, that they are likely to enjoy. Sheesh!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Cultures are defined by (drum roll) their culture. And nothing serves as well as a library, to define a particular culture.
Books provide the cultural staples and social archetypes which we use to communicate, relate, and advance as a culture. They contain the semantic templates and roots for our language, jargon and style. They are our memetic petri-dish.
Considering English-speaking cultures, we are to a great extent defined by the English works of literature. Shakespeare comes to mind. Try conveying the sense of Hamlet or Romeo to a Zulu. To a cultural peer, all you have to say is "like Hamlet", and you're both on the same page.
Yes, one of the most interesting attributes of the geek culture is it's breadth of reference, but we share some common threads. We subscribe to certain ideals and values and concepts that are well exposed in various works of 'geek culture'.
We do need a (peer reviewed) list of 'essencial readings' that we are defined by. Perhaps a slashdot-like mechanism, where people can submit their items. Others can review what's there and concur or counter (a'la moderation), so that a stable set of agreed upon 'must', 'should' and 'see also' items emerges.
This way, someone interested in the geek community could skim the 'must' list and get the jist.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
> One thing that might interest those that have
> read it is that the opening of the book was
> originally a short story and quite a comic
> one at that (calling the main character Hiro
> Protagonist and making him a 'Pizza Deliverator'
My understanding was that the opening of the book
was originally a premise for a video game, and
when he ran into implementation problems he
decided to write it up as a story.
This explains a lot of the flaws of the book,
in my opinion, and also probably explains why
so many slash geeks love it, and I should
probably stop now because slagging on Neal
Stephenson is no way to boost your karma.
While I agree that the real "meat" of the novel didn't start until about halfway through ...
If you could avoid busting a gut laughing at the Deliverator delivering pizza, I don't know what to day about your sense of humor. :^) The thing that carried me through until we got to the mythology and linguistics was that the characters were fun, the satire was on-target, and the whole thing is just screamingly funny.
Or maybe my sense of humor is just a little weird ...
This was a decent review, but it didn't mention one of the (to me) most powerful points of the book - the ties to mythology.
All the Sumerian mythology and pre-Biblical Jewish cult stuff, concisely explained by The Librarian, was a true delight. It was one of the things that set this book apart from merely adequate-and-entertaining cyberpunk (or post-cyberpunk if you prefer.) I mean, sure the descriptions of the virtual world and the near future's techno-toys are right on the mark, but any good cyberpunk tale can do that. This one does more. It makes the reader think. A lot.
There's a bit of that in Cryptonomicon too, though there it's primarily Greek, rather than Sumerian mythology that's discussed. Also, in Cyrptonomicon it was more of an aside, while in Snow Crash it's a vital part of the story, linked in with the viral mind-killer of the title and L. Bob Rife's quest for World Domination.
>I'd love to ask him about whether YT is Mrs Matheson
I saw Mr Stephenson on his book signing tour for Cryptonomicon and during the Q&A asked him exactly that - he said nope not the same person - further along that line of questioning it turns
out according to Neal, Diamond Age and Snow Crash are not in the same universe at all. He stated further that any similarity is just due to the coincidence of the both novels having the same author.
Actually, there was a VR-type system that was already being developed that used the "avatar" label. Neil Stephanson wasn't aware of it at the time. He does, however, make note of it during a kind of after-reflections blurb at the end of the copy I have. I'll have to dig up the book and post the relevent passage.
Having said that... the avatar moniker is just another example of how Stephanson put some fore-thought into this novel. Cable as a data medium has been noted. He also makes mention of using wireless networking and the speed hit one takes to do it. Another minor point was that Hiro really couldn't afford his Metaverse environment, but he paid for it anyway. A further point was the relative minor number of people in the world that had access to the Metaverse. All are reflections of today's emerging environment.
Snow Crash is an odd world. There are some purely wierd things in it. But interlaced with the oddness is some very close-to-home observations/predictions.
The trouble with Gibson is that he tends to write the same book every time (thematically speaking). In 1983, "cyberspace" was an amazing thing. Today, it is getting passe.
The thing that impresses me so much about Stephenson is that he writes something wholly original with each book.
The cake is a pie
This is really the book that killed cyberpunk, I think. I haven't been able to read an old school "cyberpunk" book since without finding it wanting. I remember reading Mona Lisa Overdrive (I think that was it) shortly after reading this, and finding it to be a great disappointment, not because it was any worse then any other Gibson books, but because Stephenson had just stamped the perfect statement on my brain. (It didn't help that the Gibson book had a courier character much like YT.)
The satire in Snow Crash is just utterly brilliant. The private jails. The mafia pizza delivery service. The "Central Information Service". The nuclear bomb in the sidecar.
Stephenson also has more guts then any other writer I've ever read. Who else would have the guts to name their protagonist "Protagonist"? Who else would drop a five page dissertion on Sumerian mythology in the middle of an action book?
The cake is a pie
Hey, it wasn't meant to be an insult. I love her books.
Actually, now that I think of it, one of her lesser known books, Falling Free, has a great engineer character, something that is surprising lacking in most SF.
The cake is a pie
Everyone always leaves that out... what's the deal?
I would also suggest Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards 2000 - 1887 as a quintessential read for all of science fiction.
We also conveniantly foget there are numerous female science fiction writers that put a nice spin on what we are used to.
Recommended:
Ursula K. Le Guin: Just finished reading Four Ways to Forgiveness. The Left Hand of Darkness is excellent
Charlotte Perkins Gilma:
Try Herland
Octavia Butler
I liked Parable of the Sower
Or at least the books I read. After reading Snow Crash I became a Neil Stephenson fan. I've picked up all his books I could get my hands on, and will buy Cryptonomicon as soon as I get some free time.
Has Slashdot ever had an "Ask Neil Stephenson" interview? If not, we need one. If so, another one would be nice. Stephenson is knowledgable about Linux, a great Cyber(and Cypher)punk writer, and funny as shit. I'd love to ask him about whether YT is Mrs Matheson, what happened to Uncle Enzo, Gnome vs. KDE, whether Snow Crash changed any of his religious beliefs, and why every damn company wants to "do Snow Crash", but nobody's talking about "doing smartwheels" (there's gotta be a reason that that's the only technology that made the transition from Snow Crash to The Diamond Age. There's a lot more I could think of if it came to it.
Now, compare to the ending in "Diamond Age" in which the last chapter reads like it came from a different book and all of a sudden the ending to "Snow Crash" is excellent. Unfortunately, the way he ended "Diamond Age" pretty much ruined what had been a very enjoyable book because the whole plot just went to pieces. "Snow Crash" wasn't like that IMHO - everything wrapped up, as the reviewer said, the pieces had all been in place for some time and he just tied them all up nicely.
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Who doesn't like Stephenson's writing, his plots, his pacing, his dialogue, his characters, or his books?
/. would review books by different authors. Generally if you give one good review to an author people are going to check out his/her other books. I would much rather see reviews of different authors rather than a review of every book a given author has written.
It would be nice if
I've noticed something that I thought had to be unique to my experiences.. that being that Nobody Buys Snow Crash By Themselves. I've yet to meet anybody who has gone to the bookstore, seen this book, picked it up, and liked it. Eveybody had a friend who handed them their battered, much-read copy and said, 'Hey, you're gonna like this'. The book somehow got introduced to the geek culture and has been spreading from carrier to carrier ever since. You may not be actually handed the book, but more likely than not you heard from a fellow geek that it was good and you went out and bought it.. I know i'll never lend my copy again, I've had to buy it twice now since my first copy never came home. ;) --insert spooky x-files music here--
So is the nam-shub of stephenson subliminaly planted throughout the book? Did the publisher soak the paper stock in the blood of geeks? Or perhaps there's really no Mr. Stephenson at all.. the book came in on a comet from out beyond the oort cloud
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
- Don't waste your time with the Illuminati trilogy; it's all a very long joke, and by the time you get to the punch line, you'll have wasted a great amount of time.
- Asimov - doesn't have the style of Gibson, but wrote a number of great books. I'd recommend the Robot Trilogy and the Foundation Trilogy (and the 4 or 5 other related books), but I read this stuff when I was twelve - it may be too puerile for your taste (don't know your age).
- Clarke - wow, spent many found hours with good ol' (Sir) Arthur C. He's more cerebral than Asimov, but sometimes there isn't much story or plot. Definitely read 2001 and 2010 , and Rendezvous with Rama and the second Rama book. Don't bother finishing any of his book series, they end horribly. For example, 2061 was mediocre, but 3001 was just monstrously bad.
- On the opposite end of the spectrum, try Stanislaw Lem. He's a bit hard to find, and he is weird. Try The Cyberiad and The Futurological Congress . Lem should get more props - he's really important, but people tend to shy away from translated work.
- Kurt Vonnegut. Anything. Start with Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five , but I don't think he's written anything second-rate. NOTE: Not all of his work (and arguably none of his work) is scifi. Also, avoid Slapstick till you've read some of his other work.
- Philip K. Dick. Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep has a delicious cyberpunk feel to it, but it predates the genre. Very influential.
- Jorge Luis Borges. Possibly one of the greatest writers of all time, and ertainly one of my favorites. Borges wrote in a genre called magic realism; it'll make you think of Twilight Zone. Try Ficciones. One favorite story is "The Garden of the Forking Paths".
That's hardly all of them - I've left out everyone from Jules Verne to Douglas Adams. However, this is probably a good start.-Josh
But there's a generation gap between the two, and that's why I love Snow Crash and am lukewarm to anything Gibson wrote beyond Neuromancer. Whereas Gibson writes for a general public fascinated by technology, Stephenson is a second-generation cyberpunk writer (insofar as his effort on Snow Crash goes; the rest is mildly cyberpunk.) Stephenson writes for people who read cyberpunk. And who reads cyberpunk? Hackers.
And that's where the genius of Snow Crash comes in. Stephenson obviously plays on the clichés of the genre. His novel is highly humorous, yet it deals with very real people facing very real danger. Characters such as Raven are both satirical yet very much human.
Same goes for the Metaverse; it's a wild place, filled with avatars of giant penises and such behavior you might expect from the normal brainless troll populating the Web years from now. Yet it is also a place that's barely real, and Stephenson makes a point of reminding us of that fact throughout the novel. The Metaverse is an illusion, yet it carries a good part of the drama. Contrast this with Gibson's hyperrealism, where Cyberspace is more real than the real world.
All this, in my mind, makes of Snow Crash the groundbreaking novel it is. And even without them, it'd still be a witty and entertaining read. Snow Crash has injected humour and self-reflection in a genre that was in desperate need of a dose of self-derision.
Now, if only Stephenson could learn to end a novel properly, without having to resort to the #&$^ showdown between the forces of Good and Evil...
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Is the hacker community trying to live up to these novels?
We have talked numerously about the script kiddies, that everyone likes to rip on, for trying to live up to the MTV and movie potrayals of hackers...
But do these books serve as a guideline for future innovations to the internet. I am sure there are some very intelligent people out there right now trying to make the "Metaverse" spoken about in Snow Crash, a reality.
Is that misguided?
And all this time I thought that came from everyone playing Ultima IV when they were supposed to be studying! Another illusion ruined. ;)
Weapons of Mass Analysis
My question is, of course, with all the disorganization... what else have I missed?
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Neal Stephenson would be an excellent person to interview on /.
Of the interviews we've done here so far, John Carmack was definitely the most responsive and insightful. Sterling (surprisingly) was the worst.
Stephenson consistently strikes me as not only one of the cleverest SF writers around right now--Gibson may be a better prose stylist, but Stephenson is much funnier--but one of the brightest.
In each of his books, he seems to have had a number of deep insights into contemporary culture, and extrapolated it into a future world-view. The "franchise" society in Snow Crash, for example, was a profound meditation on the commercial balkanization of American culture.
I, for one, would love to have a (mediated) discussion with him about the future.
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