nicanical
Snow Crash starts out promising: hacker Hiro and courier Y.T. hunt for links between a unique virus, a cult, and Raven—a hog-riding terrorist with a nuke for a sidecar. The setting is a dystopian vision of the Western Seaboard with corporatocracies and a collective virtual space. High tech, low life. Standard cyberpunk stuff.
But, unfortunately, Neal Stephenson becomes too enamored with his satire—ideas and tropes become too exaggerated, too absurd, and too numerous. Consequently, entire elements of the story are either unbelievable, or underdeveloped and forgotten: the Mafia turning into a pizza franchise with its own sovereign territory? Unbelievable; the Metaverse, a virtual social nexus and important part of the protagonist's background? Underdeveloped and forgotten for most of the book.
The individual ideas are interesting and ripe for exploration; Snow Crash just has too many in one place, making its world a mile wide but an inch deep.
Snow Crash also suffers from issues of composition. First: entire chapters are infodumps. (One character responsible for a lot of the exposition is even called the Librarian). Exposition is okay in moderation, but Snow Crash's infodumps are excessive. Second: the story reads like a collection of loosely-related events. Major beats are tied together because "Raven was here", not really through any initiative of Hiro's or Y.T.'s.
Snow Crash starts out promising: hacker Hiro and courier Y.T. hunt for links between a unique virus, a cult, and Raven—a hog-riding terrorist with a nuke for a sidecar. The setting is a dystopian vision of the Western Seaboard with corporatocracies and a collective virtual space. High tech, low life. Standard cyberpunk stuff.
But, unfortunately, Neal Stephenson becomes too enamored with his satire—ideas and tropes become too exaggerated, too absurd, and too numerous. Consequently, entire elements of the story are either unbelievable, or underdeveloped and forgotten: the Mafia turning into a pizza franchise with its own sovereign territory? Unbelievable; the Metaverse, a virtual social nexus and important part of the protagonist's background? Underdeveloped and forgotten for most of the book.
The individual ideas are interesting and ripe for exploration; Snow Crash just has too many in one place, making its world a mile wide but an inch deep.
Snow Crash also suffers from issues of composition. First: entire chapters are infodumps. (One character responsible for a lot of the exposition is even called the Librarian). Exposition is okay in moderation, but Snow Crash's infodumps are excessive. Second: the story reads like a collection of loosely-related events. Major beats are tied together because "Raven was here", not really through any initiative of Hiro's or Y.T.'s.