Snow Crash

This is an action-packed novel slowed down in places by some intrusive background information. It seems to have been popular and influential in the 1990s.

It's set in a future in which the American government still exists, and still employs quite a lot of people, but seems to be largely irrelevant to everyone else. The President's name and face are not recognized. If the book ever explains how this diminished form of government functions, I missed it.

The story is mostly about the main characters, described below.

L. Bob Rife is in a way the central character although he's also rather a non-character, remaining offstage for most of the book. He's a rich man who discovers from someone else's research that the long-dead language of ancient Sumeria is the machine language of the human brain, and he decides to use it to take over the world by programming everyone to do as he says. As a weapon against clever people who might find out what he's up to, he also develops a kind of virus called Snow Crash, which computer programmers (but only computer programmers) can catch by looking at a screenful of data. It fries their brains. All of this is seriously implausible, but it takes up only a relatively small part of the book.

Hiro Protagonist is an African/Asian-American software wizard who happens to be delivering pizzas for the Mafia at the start of the book. He was in at the start of the Metaverse, a virtual world existing only in cyberspace, and hence knows some of its secrets. He's armed with a matched pair of Samurai swords that he inherited from his father and knows how to use. Hiro is loosely allied with Y.T., Uncle Enzo, and others opposed to Rife.

Y.T. (short for Yours Truly) is a 15-year-old girl who ought to be a minor character, but turns into a major character because the author and several of the other major characters (plus one of the extraordinary Rat Things) are unaccountably fond of her. She works as a courier, delivering packages on her technologically-enhanced skateboard. She's quite likeable and has a nice line in cheeky dialogue, emerging as the best character of the book, but she's impossibly resourceful for her age.

Raven is an Aleut, a native of the Aleutian Islands on the fringes of the Arctic. He's large and deadly, armed with an endless supply of glass knives and glass-barbed harpoons, and he kills almost everyone who gets in his way. In spite of which, he's not entirely unlikeable. He has his own private agenda, but he also has an alliance of convenience with Rife.

Uncle Enzo is the head of the Mafia, and not really a major character, but he rates an honourable mention because he's the only person in the book to fight Raven in the real world without definitely losing. Hiro fights Raven in the Metaverse without losing; but Hiro has unfair advantages in the Metaverse.

I quite enjoyed the book despite its occasional bloody deaths and occasional briefings on Sumeria. I wouldn't rate it as one of my favourites, but it was worth reading for the colourful and imaginative worlds that it describes (the real world and the Metaverse), and even for its weird account of Sumerian history and language.

like a more intellectual dan brown - not for everyone. his political satire is cutting, modern and absolutely BASED.

like brave new world and 1984, it presents a disturbing sci fi dystopian feels surreal and realistic at the same time; but unlike these classics, it's vision has yet to become outdated or deteriorate into cliche. it's an intriguing vision of a true anarcho-capitalist technocratic non-state and how its inner workings might look like. then again, someone probably sees it as a utopia to aspire towards, just like some inevitably argue brave new world is a utopia.

(warning: not really a review, more of a thing to remind me of the book)

Overall, a fairly cinematic story akin to the genre I'd expect The Matrix to fall into. If I'm completely honest, I did occasionally lose track of what was going on through the story (it took me a good few weeks to read it), but the story and two main characters managed to carry me along.

I also have to admit that it took me a little while to get past the corny named main character “Hiro Protagonist” and the overly macho techno all black, motorcycles and swords. Of course, Hiro is the world's best swordsman...obviously. Though when I just went with it, it was pretty good fun.

Neal Stephenson writing was extremely good at visualising a scene and the objects in the world the characters live in (in reading the acknowledgement I learnt that the book was intended as a graphic novel and I wonder if there was graphic work he was describing). All the same, it was very easy to read and see the world as we moved from reality, to the metaverse (virtual world), to vehicles and different landscapes.

There's a tonne of historical and religious background to the story too, most of which I understand to be based on real research (from our universe) and the depth of which was incredible.

The Snow Crash is (supposed to be) a virus that exists in both the digital world and the real world. The story creates (perhaps tenuous?) links between computer/digital ideas and pre-biblical times explaining that the story of Babel was the first instance of the virus, transmitted through verbal programming, affecting humankind.

The two other main-ish characters were Y.T (a young women/teenager who we follow in parallel with Hiro) and Raven. Y.T. is really fun, and perhaps more relatable since she's a little more “regular” (compared with Hiro) - just kitted out with lots of tricks in her suit.

Raven is the uber baddie, throwing glass spears, cutting through bulletproof suits and generally being invisible. He definitely plays the “main henchman” really well, and we even get to understand his motives which I love for a “proper” baddie.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, left a little confused about the motivation about some of the connections in the book (like what really motivates Y.T. to join forces with Hiro, or how Hiro was one of the first creators of the metaverse, yet he's somehow a promotor for his roommate's band...).

Sorry, not much of a review, more a prompt for my own memory in years to come!