Product Description

The only relief from the sea of logos is within the well-guarded borders of the Burbclaves. Is it any wonder that most sane folks have forsaken the real world and chosen to live in the computer-generated universe of virtual reality? In a major city, the size of a dozen Manhattans, is a domain of pleasures limited only by the imagination. But now a strange new computer virus called Snow Crash is striking down hackers everywhere, leaving an unlikely young man as humankind's last best hope.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3336 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible. --Acton Lane

Review
After terminally cute campus high-jinks (The Big U) and a smug but attention-grabbing eco-thriller (Zodiac), Stephenson leaps into near-future Gibsonian cyberpunk - with predictably mixed results. The familiar-sounding backdrop: The US government has been sold off; businesses are divided up into autonomous franchises ("franchulates") visited by kids from the heavily protected independent "Burbclaves"; a computer-generated "metaverse" is populated by hackers and roving commercials. Hiro Protagonist, freelance computer hacker, world's greatest swordsman, and stringer for the privatized CIA, delivers pizzas for the Mafia - until his mentor Da5id is blasted by Snow Crash, a curious new drug capable of crashing both computers and hackers. Hiro joins forces with freelance skateboard courier Y.T. to investigate. It emerges that Snow Crash is both a drug and a virus: it destroyed ancient Sumeria by randomizing their language to create Babel; its modern victims speak in tongues, lose their critical faculties, and are easily brainwashed. Eventually the usual conspiracy to take over the world emerges; it's led by media mogul L. Bob Rife, the Rev. Waync's Pearly Gates religious franchulate, and vengeful nuclear terrorist Raven. The cultural-linguistic material has intrinsic interest, but its connections with cyberpunk and computer-reality seem more than a little forced. The flashy, snappy delivery fails to compensate for the uninhabited blandness of the characters. And despite the many clever embellishments, none of the above is as original as Stephenson seems to think. An entertaining entry that would have benefitted from a more rigorous attention to the basics. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Neal Stephenson has published four novels: The Big U, Zodiac, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. For the last of these he won a 1996 Hugo Award. He also writes (with J. Frederick George) as 'Stephen Bury'. Their books are Interface and Cobweb. Most of his books are published in Penguin. He lives in Seattle, where he is at work on other novels.

Customer Reviews

Too little care in continuity
Okay, so Neal is a far better writer than I'll ever be. But as a reader I thought that the writing played better as a series of short stories rather than a cohesive novel. A couple of examples are Hiro's brilliant start as a pizza delivery guy, yet after the crash into the pool his firing from the job is never described nor hardly mentioned again in the entire book! This was after building such a tension in the beginning about his abortive delivery that I thought the whole novel would have pizzas or highways as the theme. Yet again Raven is portrayed as the chief evil guy with an almost mythical ability to kill all and sundry, and then turns in the boyfriend of the girl hero. I ended up not knowing who to back, nor who was really the good and bad guys&girls. I agree that may be acceptable in some genre, but in what I thought was plain entertainment and light hearted sci-fi it left me with a distaste and dissatisfaction in the outcome.

Original idea (at the time) but poor quality rushed ending
I bought the book for the subject matter and therefore did generally enjoy 80% of the book. The writing style was quite shallow with no depth to the characters and limited descriptive text however that was forgivable for the originality. But ... the end was terrible, it was inconsistent, incomplete seems to have been written in a rush as if the author had become bored with the story or had more important things to do. The acknowledgment at the end of the book seems to explain; the story was originally going to be an art based graphical novel but the graphics never materialised leaving a part finished book.
All that said, I liked some ideas in the book; as a Sci-fi or cyber-punk book it fails, but bear in mind that this was written in 1994, way before the various virtual worlds we have now and for that reason I don't really regret spending my time reading it. It's just a pity it wasn't finished off better.

Reasonable beginning, Amazing middle section, Weak ending

If you like the sound of this book based on the back of the book (hero called Hiro, pizza delivery, etc etc), then this book is for you. However if you have heard how great this book is but are slightly put off by the description, then there really isn't enough to keep your interested to the end. The book starts slowly; has an amazing middle section where I though "wow this could turn out to be a great novel"; however the ending is weak, and this is where the book really falls down. The trouble is that we find out what is going on far too early in the book and there is nothing left for the ending of the book, which is just one long chase scene after another.

Audience:
Seems to be aimed at the mid/late teen audience, people growing up in the early 90s would also get a lot out of it too.

The good:
There are some great ideas in the book and its influence on films like The Matrix is clear
Some intelligent concepts relating to language and religion
Main character is well written
Does a great job of creating an interesting world (from an early 90s perspective)

The bad:
*Laughably bad sex scene*
Supporting characters are poorly written and often fall back on stereotypes.
Too much filler when the story really needs to move along
Lack of peril/drama
Boring ending