Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison--a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about Infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous...you'll recognize it immediately.
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.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Boring, Confusing and without a Meaningful Plot:
I am on ebook page 293 of 1029 and I am completely bored by this book. In comparision Dune Book 2 is only about 387 pages and it was a lot of fun by the time I was on page 300. Sentenses are complicated. There are too many made up words that in the end don't mean much. Mix those together and you get a difficult to follow book. Other reviewers described this issue better than I did here. Main plot drags nowhere and I even cannot see main plot. I have now given up on the book and think it was a... more info
Mediocre:
In Snow Crash, Stephenson is very playful with his language, and is often witty. Then again, he is often hackneyed and silly. The plot is very exciting from the beginning, but halfway begins to degenerate into unnecessary history recitals that last five to ten pages at a time, repeatedly. Ignoring these virtually unreadable portions, the story continues to entertain throughout, right up until the end. The conclusion is relatively sudden, extremely predictable, and does nothing to reward the reader for... more info
An amazing read:
This is a fantastic book, with Stephenson's usual thought provoking teaching mixed in. Highly recommended to everyone.
Cyberpunk as Cultural Satire/Commentary:
Snow Crash is a subversive, postmodern romp through a world defined by computers, religious fanaticism, commercialism, and near-anarchy. Hacker Hiro Protagonist delivers pizzas for a living for the now-respectable Mafia until a mishap unites him with a fifteen-year old, futuristic skateboarder named Y.T. Hiro falls back on what he knows best -- hacking and gathering intelligence that he can sell to the former C.I.A., now a private corporation -- with Y.T. as his eyes. When his friend and former business... more info
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