Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2327 in Books
• Published on: 1994-10-27
• 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

Synopsis
In the future the only relief from the sea of logos is the computer-generated universe of virtual reality? But now a strange computer virus, called Snow Crash, is striking down hackers, leaving an unlikely young man as humankind's last hope. This book is shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Customer Reviews

High tech future runs out of steam
Neal Stephenson delights in setting up and describing a parallel reality. Just like our world but not quite. And what a set up. His imagination dazzles in the first third of this story set in the near future, but then things start to go awry. Introducing a librarian to allow long explanations of his ideas and plot is a clunky writing device, made worse still as the story heads towards its climax with the major characters gathered for a final explanation as though this were some 21st century Agatha Christie. As the first part of Snow Crash shows, Stephenson could do better, and would later in his career, as his writing chops caught up with his imagination.

How did I miss this?
As a fan both of the Cyberpunk genre and of Stephenson, it's hard to believe that I've only just found this book. As ever with this writer, there are layers and layers of detail which make the imagined society feel absolutely real. And in 2007, this requires far less of an imagination that it must have in the mid 90s; Stephenson's vision is already developing in reality.

The themes of infection, duality and societal anarchy are explored beautifully and my only quibble is the way we don't get a particularly satisfying conclusion.

prophetic
I found this a bit slow to begin with but after 100 pages or so the story really starts to motor, taking you along at a fair clip. The prose sizzles with stone-hard description, cool tech and a sassily cool main character. It's funny in places too, properly funny.

The ideas in here mark it out for special attention. Set in a chaotic, privatised, broken up, lawless future world, and inside a 3-D virual one, the story explores the nature of language, religion and hacking. Orbiting the central ideas, which I'm not sure gel completely convincingly (but are still convincing enough), we encounter other fine fruits of Stephenson's imagination like the massive floating refugee camp, Kouriers with their fantastic skateboards, and guard dogs from hell.

The rest of it works. Fine characters, some really great set pieces and a good ending. A super read - well worth the time invested.