Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Buy new:
$12.59$12.59
FREE delivery: Thursday, Feb 15 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
Buy used: $9.15
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the author
OK
Snow Crash Paperback – January 1, 2000
Purchase options and add-ons
Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions.
Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary.
But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state).
Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian priesthood. He’ll be joined by Y.T., a fearless teenaged skateboard courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.
Review
“Stephenson’s cult classic has become canon in Silicon Valley, where a host of engineers, entrepreneurs, futurists, and assorted computer geeks . . . still revere Snow Crash as a remarkably prescient vision of today’s tech landscape.”—Vanity Fair
“Hip, surreal, distressingly funny . . . Neal Stephenson is a crafty plotter and a wry writer.”—The Des Moines Register
“[Snow Crash] not only made the name of its author Neal Stephenson, it elevated him to the status of a technological Nostradamus.”—Open Culture
“A cross between Neuromancer and Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland . . . This is no mere hyperbole.”—The San Francisco Bay Guardian
“Fast-forward free-style mall mythology for the twenty-first century.”—William Gibson
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway–might want his car, or his cargo. The gun is a tiny, aero-styled, lightweight, the kind of a gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane, and when you get done using it, you have to plug it in to the cigarette lighter, because it runs on electricity.
The Deliverator never pulled that gun in anger, or in fear. He pulled it once in Gila Highlands. Some punks in Gila Highlands, a fancy Burbclave, wanted themselves a delivery, and they didn't want to pay for it. Thought they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat. The Deliverator took out his gun, centered its laser doo-hickey on that poised Louisville Slugger, fired it. The recoil was immense, as though the weapon had blown up in his hand. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Punk ended up holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. Stupid look on his face. Didn't get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator.
Since then the Deliverator has kept the gun in the glove compartment and relied, instead, on a matched set of samurai swords, which have always been his weapon of choice anyhow. The punks in Gila Highlands weren't afraid of the gun, so the Deliverator was forced to use it. But swords need no demonstration.
The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model. This is America. People do whatever the f*** they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can f***ing stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it–we're talking trade balances here–once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwaves in Tadzhikistan and selling them here–once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel–once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would consider to be prosperity–y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery
The Deliverator used to make software. Still does, sometimes. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.s, the Deliverator's report card would say; "Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills."
So now he has this other job. No brightness or creativity involved–but no cooperation either. Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall, your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free, shoot the driver, take his car, file a class-action suit. The Deliverator has been working this job for six months, a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards, and has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes.
Oh, they used to argue over times, many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners, red-faced and sweaty with their own lies, stinking of Old Spice and job-related stress, standing in their glowing yellow doorways brandishing their Seikos and waving at the clock over the kitchen sink, I swear, can’t you guys tell time?
Didn’t happen anymore. Pizza delivery is a major industry. A managed industry. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University four years just to learn it. Came in its doors unable to write an English sentence, from Abkhazia, Rwanda, Guanajuato, South Jersey, and came out knowing more about pizza than a Bedouin knows about sand. And they had studied this problem. Graphed the frequency of doorway delivery-time disputes. Wired the early Deliverators to record, then analyze, the debating tactics, the voice-stress histograms, the distinctive grammatical structures employed by white middle-class Type A Burbclave occupants who against all logic had decided that this was the place to take their personal Custerian stand against all that was stale and deadening in their lives: they were going to lie, or delude themselves, about the time of their phone call and get themselves a free pizza; no, they deserved a free pizza along with their life, liberty, and pursuit of whatever, it was f***ing inalienable. Sent psychologists out to these people’s houses, gave them a free TV set to submit to an anonymous interview, hooked them to polygraphs, studied their brain waves as they showed them choppy, inexplicable movies of porn queens and late-night car crashes and Sammy Davis, Jr., put them in sweet-smelling, mauve-walled rooms and asked them questions about Ethics so perplexing that even a Jesuit couldn’t respond without committing a venial sin.
The analysts at CosaNostra Pizza University concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn’t fix it, and so they went for a quick cheap technical fix: smart boxes. The pizza box is a plastic carapace now, corrugated for stiffness, a little LED readout glowing on the side, telling the Deliverator how many trade imbalance-producing minutes have ticked away since the fateful phone call. There are chips and stuff in there. The pizzas rest, a short stack of them, in slots behind the Deliverator’s head. Each pizza glides into a slot like a circuit board into a computer, clicks into place as the smart box interfaces with the onboard system of the Deliverator’s car. The address of the caller has already been inferred from his phone number and poured into the smart box’s built-in RAM. From there it is communicated to the car, which computes and projects the optimal route on a heads-up display, a glowing colored map traced out against the windshield so that the Deliverator does not even have to glance down.
If the thirty-minute deadline expires, news of the disaster is flashed to CosaNostra Pizza Headquarters and relayed from there to Uncle Enzo himself–the Sicilian Colonel Sanders, the Andy Griffith of Bensonhurst, the straight razor-swinging figment of many a Deliverator’s nightmares, the Capo and prime figurehead of CosaNostra Pizza, Incorporated–who will be on the phone to the customer within five minutes, apologizing profusely. The next day, Uncle Enzo will land on the customer’s yard in a jet helicopter and apologize some more and give him a free trip to Italy–all he has to do is sign a bunch of releases that make him a public figure and spokesperson for CosaNostra Pizza and basically end his private life as he knows it. He will come away from the whole thing feeling that, somehow, he owes the Mafia a favor.
The Deliverator does not know for sure what happens to the driver in such cases, but he has heard some rumors. Most pizza deliveries happen in the evening hours, which Uncle Enzo considers to be his private time. And how would you feel if you had to interrupt dinner with your family in order to call some obstreperous dork in a Burbclave and grovel for a late f***ing pizza? Uncle Enzo has not put in fifty years serving his family and his country so that, at the age when most are playing golf and bobbling their granddaughters, he can get out of the bathtub dripping wet and lie down and kiss the feet of some sixteen-year-old skate punk whose pepperoni was thirty-one minutes in coming. Oh, God. It makes the Deliverator breathe a little shallower just to think of the idea.
- Print length440 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2000
- Dimensions5.5 x 1.3 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-100553380958
- ISBN-13978-0553380958
- Lexile measure970L
Frequently bought together

More items to explore
The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it.Highlighted by 2,383 Kindle readers
Besides, interesting things happen along borders—transitions—not in the middle where everything is the same.Highlighted by 2,297 Kindle readers
When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.Highlighted by 2,056 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Snow Crash: Deluxe Edition | The Diamond Age | Interface | The Cobweb | |
| More from Neal Stephenson | Now in a gorgeous new hardcover edition featuring never-before-seen material, the breakthrough novel from Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators. | Vividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, The Diamond Age is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time | In this now-classic thriller, Neal Stephenson and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a shocking tale with an all-too plausible premise. | In this now-classic political thriller, Neal Stephenson and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a savagely witty, chillingly topical tale set in the tense moments of the Gulf War. |
Product details
- Publisher : Random House Worlds (January 1, 2000)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 440 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0553380958
- ISBN-13 : 978-0553380958
- Lexile measure : 970L
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #8,547 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #81 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #88 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction (Books)
- #360 in Science Fiction Adventures
- Customer Reviews:
Important information
To report an issue with this product or seller, click here.
About the author

Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer, known for his speculative fiction works, which have been variously categorized science fiction, historical fiction, maximalism, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk. Stephenson explores areas such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired Magazine, and has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (funded by Jeff Bezos) developing a manned sub-orbital launch system.
Born in Fort Meade, Maryland (home of the NSA and the National Cryptologic Museum) Stephenson came from a family comprising engineers and hard scientists he dubs "propeller heads". His father is a professor of electrical engineering whose father was a physics professor; his mother worked in a biochemistry laboratory, while her father was a biochemistry professor. Stephenson's family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in 1960 and then to Ames, Iowa in 1966 where he graduated from Ames High School in 1977. Stephenson furthered his studies at Boston University. He first specialized in physics, then switched to geography after he found that it would allow him to spend more time on the university mainframe. He graduated in 1981 with a B.A. in Geography and a minor in physics. Since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Seattle with his family.
Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic "The Baroque Cycle" (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) and the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Yes, the book was written in 1992 and is not well regarded outside of Stephenson Fans but I think it is classic. I’ve read it multiple times. Reading it now in 2023 makes me want to go on several rants. I won’t.
It is well-written, fast-paced. Mainstream Cyberpunk, but not Cliché.
The world-building is top notch and while Stephenson gets some things he was written wrong about religion I understand how his research led him there. You see some of the beginnings of Stephenson’s blending of Science Fiction and historical fiction that he would do in Cryptonomicon, and what would later become his speculative fiction style.
Insert rants about New Perspectives on Paul, Tongues, Catholic Mystics, Facebook now Meta, and National Debt here.
Took away a star for a plot oversight…he presents Enki as an historical protagonist of the human plight, suggesting that he wrote a “program” that would save us from the Ashera bio-virus, but previously offers an account of his bent to incest-pedo behavior.
This is a huge red flag that Enki himself was infected with the bio-virus. Hence, his “program” (termed “me” in this book as well as in ancient written evidence), would’ve been the product of Asheric viral influence. This makes sense when observing the historic results of our species. Self-destruction is self-evident and self-replicating.
He also misinterprets the underlying function of religion, generally and specifically, which is yet another Asheric mind control tool (weapon?), whether mono- or polytheistic. Again, self-destructive and divisive.
From reading much of his works I am confident Stephenson is infinitely smarter than I am, so how could he miss this? Besides these minor flaws, the work is insightful, educational, and entertaining. Highly recommended.
The tech displayed in Snowcrash is dated now, as other reviewers observed. Action scenes are well-written and engaging. The book starts off like Hollywood, with the reader dropped into a crazy action scene in which some of the basic tenets of the book are laid out. The over-the-top action is self deprecating where it needs to be to maintain suspension of disbelief. The fist half of the book reads like a 'who-is-doing-it' thriller as the funky good guys learn more of what is going on and make contacts with the good honchos whose work they are inadvertently doing. Protagonist (yes, that is the family name of the main character) also gets to know the violent bad guys and their special powers as the first half of the story unfolds.
Spoiler Alert
The mid section is dominated by discussions between Protagonist and a Watson-like archival program, called the Librarian, who informs Protagonist of the connection, down through history of between various viruses; starting with a space borne "metavirus" that seeds all life; going to an improbable theory that, in the beginning, human language tended to coalesce rather than fragment; turning to Sumerian myths and a putative Enki, who was a neurolinguistic hacker who wrote a mind blowing incantation that literally tore the fabric of his culture to pieces, causing Babel and the break up of humanity into competing tribes (something deemed good because unity was causing stagnation): then on to classical antiquity in which champions of the old unity battled those who liked the competing/warring states state of affairs; finally to the present in which the big bad guy has gotten his mitts on the Ancient Sumerian written viruses and is using them to reestablish a unified world of babbling fools under his power. He infects computers with advanced malware, and infects hackers directly with a bitmap that hits their optic nerves, because they have "bits and bytes wired into their psyche" after lifetimes of coding. The rest of us he can mumble the Sumerian verbal malware to and it goes right to our brain bios and scrambles our internal logic.
Where is the Government of the United States of America in all this? It has apparently become a willing and minor accomplice to the big bad guy, and the US Navy is nowhere about when a flotilla of millions of his infected South and East Asian refugees (called 'refus") are about to be dumped onto CA by him. The language used at first to describe this made me wonder if a bit of "Camp of the Saints" was coming at me, but given that Protagonist is black/Korean and the big bad guy is a Texan who goes by the name "L. Bob," this was a false supposition. The author even throws in a scene in which a straw-man racist-bigot becomes sushi at the end of Protagonist's katana.
L. Bob and the President of the US, who no one recognizes until he reminds them, are in the plot together, and are trying to disempower the good guys--the Mafia and a Hong Kong magnate (I assume Triad, for the power he wields) who just want a peaceful breakup of the country and world in "franchulates," sovereign little territorial bits of turf. I forgot to diagram the plot as I read. This would have helped keep things in perspective.
The book did end all too abruptly with L. Bob, and presumably the nondescript POTUS, dying on the LAX runway as their getaway jet is smashed by a good "rat-thing," a dead dog, reanimated like RoboCop, and able crack the sound barrier when excited (here, fido, lets play your favorite, chase and catch the 9mm bullet). Our Protagonist had exited the book many pages earlier after thwarting a logic bomb attempt to fry the minds of the World's code writers. A tertiary character, the head of the good Mafia, though an old man, defeats L. Bob's best, glass knife wielding, henchman extraordinaire on the tarmac, and then the secondary character, a girl named "Y.T." walks out of LAX to get a ride home with her mom in the last sentence. It just felt like an editor told the author that he had to end the novel before it passed 500 paperback pages. The novel could have used a summary chapter to explain how his future world was ordered, and just what was the 'good' outcome, the events leading up to it, we could anticipate, and a bit on how all the main characters lived happily ever after, I'm so old fashioned.



















