Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (2003, Random House Publishing Group)
214 pages
English language
Published Nov. 19, 2003 by Random House Publishing Group.
Within the Metaverse, Hiro is offered a datafile named Snow Crash by a man named Raven who hints that it is a form of narcotic. Hiro's friend and fellow hacker Da5id views a bitmap image contained in the file which causes his computer to crash and Da5id to suffer brain damage in the real world.
This is the future we now live where all can be brought to life in the metaverse and now all can be taken away. Follow on an adventure with Hiro and YT as they work with the mob to uncover a plot of biblical proportions.
My girlfriend lent me this to read on the plane when I had a long flight. Overall entertaining, I didn't feel like I was slogging through (mostly), but it takes itself Way too seriously for a book whose main character is named Hiro Protagonist.
The book ranges a pretty wide variety of topics, probably more interesting to readers who program.
Wrote a whole long review about why I didn't like it, but got bored of my own opinion.
In short:
While clever, the linguistic virus, Sumerian, and religion lessons were long and dull
Characters unbelievable, and didn't really invest in them.
Sex with a minor scene - didn't want that
Did like:
the world
the technology
the prologue bit about pizza delivery. Loved that world building, really great opening! Then the main story wrecked it (for me).
Amazingly ahead of its time. Fun and entertaining writing. Combined due justice to the hacker culture with an interesting storyline around the genesis and evolution of society.
One of the most creative cyber-punk books I know of.
Great long bursts of creative language, humor, tech inventions that parse, and a really cool development of a theory of mystical linguistic powers in Sumerian and Hebrew.
Sadly counterbalanced by long stretches of random, meaningless and frankly tedious violence, and predictable dystopian "America as evil corporation" spewage.
The grand fiinale was long, frenetic, and unsatisfying.
