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Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash: A Novel Paperback – May 2, 2000

by Neal Stephenson (Author)

4.3 19,284 ratings

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The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators

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.

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Print length

440 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Del Rey
Publication date

May 2, 2000
Dimensions

5.5 x 1.24 x 8.24 inches
ISBN-10

0553380958
ISBN-13

978-0553380958
Lexile measure

970L
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Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

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 2,586 Kindle readers
Besides, interesting things happen along borders—transitions—not in the middle where everything is the same.
Highlighted by 2,477 Kindle readers
When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.
Highlighted by 2,227 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Praise for Snow Crash

	Snow Crash: Deluxe Edition	The Diamond Age	Interface	The Cobweb

Customer Reviews	19,284	4,894	529	466
Price	$38.04	$12.79	$14.13	$19.25
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.

WARNING: California’s Proposition 65

Editorial Reviews

Review

“One of the most popular sci-fi books of all time . . . It stands as a foundational text of the cyberpunk movement.”—Wired

“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

Neal Stephenson is the author of New York Times bestsellers including The Diamond Age, Zodiac, Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World, REAMDE, Anathem, Seveneves, Fall: or Dodge in Hell, and Termination Shock, as well as nonfiction works such as In The Beginning . . . Was the Command Line. He has worked for Blue Origin and Magic Leap, and more recently co-founded Lamina1, a startup creating an open metaverse platform.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed sub-category. He's got esprit up to here. Right now he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachno-fiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.

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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey (May 2, 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 1.24 x 8.24 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #7,402 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #82 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction (Books)
- #83 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #329 in Science Fiction Adventures

Customer Reviews:
4.3 19,284 ratings

About the author

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Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

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NEAL STEPHENSON is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Termination Shock, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (with Nicole Galland), Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Zodiac, the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning . . . Was the Command Line, and Some Remarks, a collection of short fiction and nonfiction. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

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Customer reviews

19,284 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book engaging and thought-provoking. They describe it as a classic of modern science fiction with a cyberpunk flavor. The characters are interesting and relatable, with a female protagonist. Many praise the inventive world and creative writing style. However, some readers have mixed opinions about the plot quality.

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Readability Sci-fi Thought provoking Fun Creativity Character development Plot quality Writing style

685 customers mention "Readability"636 positive49 negative

Customers find the book engaging and entertaining. They describe it as a fun, thought-provoking read that marks an important development in 3D interactivity. Readers praise it as one of their favorite books from one of their favorite authors.

"...I can’t say I agree with the premise of the book but it made a very interesting read." Read more

"...It's interesting in that it challenges the reader to alter their view of history, but the analogies are not as well drawn as they could be...." Read more

"...but much of it comes across as biting satire and I found it enormously entertaining...." Read more

"...Action scenes are well-written and engaging...." Read more

210 customers mention "Sci-fi"201 positive9 negative

Customers enjoy the cyberpunk novel. They find it a serious futuristic sci-fi story with entertaining characters and cool action scenes. The book is described as a must-read for sci-fi fans, part thriller and meditation on interesting topics. Stephenson illuminates the world of hackers and creates an interesting duality in the action.

"...The ending, while action-packed and exciting, is where I felt some disappointment...." Read more

"...Action scenes are well-written and engaging...." Read more

"...I won’t. It is well-written, fast-paced. Mainstream Cyberpunk, but not Cliché...." Read more

"...read, has some interesting and entertaining characters, and lots of cool action scenes, so if you can ignore the timeline issue and get past some of..." Read more

210 customers mention "Thought provoking"192 positive18 negative

Customers find the book thought-provoking and inspiring. They appreciate the visionary and entertaining scenes. The book discusses technological and philosophical concepts, with wonderful world-building and pacing. It highlights important themes and new ideas about society.

"...Elements of economic theory, religion, virtual reality, Sumerian mythology and linguistics take this story out of the realm of anything you’ve ever..." Read more

"...Mainstream Cyberpunk, but not Cliché. The world-building is top notch and while Stephenson gets some things he was written wrong about..." Read more

"...fiction today, and it shows in the way he can research a topic, comprehend it deeply, and then render an entertaining explanation in the context of..." Read more

"...wondering if Stephenson has spies in the future be cause his spec-fic is on point with what lies ahead. Sense of humor is wild, accurate and humane...." Read more

190 customers mention "Fun"190 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's entertaining moments, exciting plot, and interesting ideas. They find the tone fun and enjoy the ride. The book is filled with breathtaking action and adventure, with a sense of humor and wordplay. Readers appreciate the epic journey and mention it's not exactly dystopian.

"Neil Stephenson’s early books are a wild ride indeed. My favorite character is B-782!..." Read more

"...The ending, while action-packed and exciting, is where I felt some disappointment...." Read more

"...rounded up to five simply on the basis of its originality, scope and audacity." Read more

"...Sense of humor is wild, accurate and humane. Very observant, thus guy." Read more

169 customers mention "Creativity"143 positive26 negative

Customers find the book inventive and imaginative. They appreciate the good theme, neat writing style, and snarky details. The concept is original and audacious, with a well-done world setting that introduces it in an engaging way.

"...and a half stars, rounded up to five simply on the basis of its originality, scope and audacity." Read more

"...I felt that Snowcrash had a good theme, which to me was based on an extreme overextended analogy between Computer viruses, memes or mind viruses,..." Read more

"As original and foresightful as Gibson and easier to comprehend the science (fiction?)...." Read more

"...K. Dick is the guy down the hall who talks all the time and seems really nice, but you're kind of worried about him...." Read more

168 customers mention "Character development"122 positive46 negative

Customers enjoy the interesting main characters and their physical challenges. They find the book engaging and mention that it has a female hero.

"...suit-and-tie topics are woven into a story that features an eccentric cast of characters and an action-packed storyline...." Read more

"...It's a fun read, has some interesting and entertaining characters, and lots of cool action scenes, so if you can ignore the timeline issue and get..." Read more

"...major and minor character arc, but the finale involves characters that are so secondary to the plot that you couldn't care less about them...." Read more

"...pulls off what others probably couldn't, and Hiro is indeed an excellent protagonist...." Read more

249 customers mention "Plot quality"112 positive137 negative

Customers have different views on the plot. Some find it suspenseful and entertaining, with an action-packed storyline. Others say the plot is unpredictable and thin, with a slow buildup. The ending is also underwhelming for some readers.

"...This one leaves a few loose ends. Without spoiling things too much, I'll mention one example...." Read more

"...a story that features an eccentric cast of characters and an action-packed storyline...." Read more

"...Let's just say there's a story event that is deeply troubling as far as why it was even included, and whether the author considers the, ermm,..." Read more

"...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..." Read more

247 customers mention "Writing style"151 positive96 negative

Customers have different views on the writing style. Some find it dense and understandable, with a creative wordsmith approach. Others feel the sentence structure is unusual, the book is a chore to read, and the author fails to pull it all together. They mention there is too much description and the author tells rather than showing.

"...But on the whole, I found this novel much more enjoyable and understandable than William Gibson's earlier NEUROMANCER...." Read more

"...between Hiro and Raven for example, which comes out of nowhere, makes no sense, and is totally pointless. -..." Read more

"...I won’t. It is well-written, fast-paced. Mainstream Cyberpunk, but not Cliché...." Read more

"...ever giving us any explicit dates for the storyline, it's relatively easy to extrapolate once you put the clues together ... the main character is..." Read more

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Donald C. Brunell
A Wild Romp
Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2025
Verified Purchase

Neil Stephenson’s early books are a wild ride indeed. My favorite character is B-782! I can’t say I agree with the premise of the book but it made a very interesting read.

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EMAN_NEP
MYTHOLOGY MEETS TECHNOLOGY
Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2009
Verified Purchase
0101 1100 1101 0001
1111 0010 0101 1010

What if looking at these seemingly innocent binary numbers could not only affect your computer, but your brain as well? After all, your brain is simply a biological computer itself.

This is one of the main themes in Stephenson's SNOW CRASH, a becoming-more-recognizable future where people divide their time between Reality and the Metaverse.

The other theme is more complex, but tries to draw parallels between Sumerian mythology and computer viruses. It's interesting in that it challenges the reader to alter their view of history, but the analogies are not as well drawn as they could be.

Fortunately, these two suit-and-tie topics are woven into a story that features an eccentric cast of characters and an action-packed storyline. I couldn't use the phrase "colorful cast of characters" as some of them are literally black and white in the Metaverse!

For example there's the main hero, Hiro Protagonist. I haven't come across a name that creative since Prince S., a character in Dostoyevsky's THE IDIOT.
The sword-wielding, motorcycle-riding Hiro reminded me heavily of Cloud from the famous FINAL FANTASY 7.

Then there's the skateboarding Y.T. (not Whitey!), a 15-year old, skateboarding female Kourier that reminded me of the rebellious John Conner of TERMINATOR 2.

The locations are just as interesting, where people live in storage units or the neighborhoods of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, The Sacrifice Zone, Nova Sicilia, Narcolumbia, et al.

It's not exactly Mister Roger's Neighborhood either as each place has their own rules and lots of security to keep out unwanted people.

Just off the shore of the West Coast (where most of the story takes place) is a mass of ships called The Raft. Very similar to Mieville's ship-city of Armada in his book THE SCAR (written many years after this book). It is here where Hiro and gang meet up with several of the major antagonists as the novel draws to a close.

With so many crazy ideas all into one book, it is understandable that the first hundred pages read like SNOW CRASH FOR DUMMIES, complete with laugh-out-loud humor, to make your transition into this world easier than Orientation Day at school or work.

After those first hundredish pages, the story races along like a mechanical guard-dog on a straight highway.

The mythology portions come up about halfway, but are presented by a Librarian. The best way to imagine the Librarian: What if GOOGLE could talk? or What if that stupid paperclip in MICROSOFT OFFICE actually did something useful for once?

The ending, while action-packed and exciting, is where I felt some disappointment. The last line is good, but there is not much closure on what happens to the characters and the chapters that were previously ~15 pages are rapidly narrowed down to ~5 pages--a sign of an author who can't contain his excitement at almost finishing his book.

But on the whole, I found this novel much more enjoyable and understandable than William Gibson's earlier NEUROMANCER.

If Hiro were rating this book, he would give it 0100 out of 0101 Stars.

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Steven M. Anthony
Original and Audacious; Wildly Entertaining
Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2014
Verified Purchase
Neal Stephenson writes science fiction that requires a certain level of attention and concentration to follow and stay on top of. You can’t lay a Stephenson novel down for a few days and hope to come back and take up where you left off. This is not pulp science fiction.

In this audacious novel, Stephenson crafts a dystopian Earth near the end of the 20th century. Most civilization has broken down and even in the United States, society has devolved into semi-sovereign “franchulates” (franchise consulates) and “burbclaves” (suburban enclaves). A rampant form of pure capitalism reigns, with private ownership of roads and police protection. Existing alongside this “free for all” is a Metaverse, an on-line world governed largely by hackers. Now, dystopia coupled with virtual reality is nothing new, however Stephenson takes it up a notch, weaving Sumerian and Old Testament mythology throughout the story.

Some may find elements of Stephenson’s world silly, and some of it is pretty far out there, but much of it comes across as biting satire and I found it enormously entertaining. The “heroes” of the story are Hiro Protagonist, a freelance stringer for Central Intelligence Corporation (a privatized successor to the Library of Congress), a computer software designer and the greatest sword fighter in the world (in the Metaverse) and Y.T., a souped up skateboard riding 15 year old courier.

With the help of the Mafia (Cosa Nostra, Inc.) and assorted other supremely interesting characters, Hiro and Y.T. discover a new designer drug, Snow Crash, whose purpose is to inject a virus into the deepest level of the brain, acting much the same as a computer virus. Seeking to prevent spread of the virus, Hiro and Y.T. cross swords with Bob Rife, the richest man on the planet, who seeks to use Snow Crash to exert total control over the world's population. Elements of economic theory, religion, virtual reality, Sumerian mythology and linguistics take this story out of the realm of anything you’ve ever experienced. Four and a half stars, rounded up to five simply on the basis of its originality, scope and audacity.

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RAFAEL
LLEGO A TIEMPO
Reviewed in Mexico on June 10, 2024
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LLEGO A TIEMPO Y EN BUENAS CONDICIONES

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Lucca Canizela De Camargo
Superb
Reviewed in Brazil on May 22, 2022
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Espetacular novel!

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Andreas Tesi
Pietra miliare della narrativa cyber-punk
Reviewed in Italy on March 4, 2025
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romanzo cyber-punk di notevole scrittura, che gia'nel 1990 defini'la definizione di avatar e di romanzo ambientato in un futuro distonico.

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The Mighty Neiner
Extrem gute Qualität, unglaublich aktuell.
Reviewed in Germany on January 24, 2024
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Die Deluxe Version ist der Hammer, hochqualitativst und sehr schön zum Ansehen. Aber nicht nur zum Ansehen taugt der Schinken, der dieses Buch ist, nein! Auch lesen kann man jenes, und man wird nicht enttäuscht werden. 5/5

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Jacques De Wilde
Le classique pour comprendre le concept de métaverse
Reviewed in France on July 8, 2022
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C’est à parieur de ce roman d’anticipation que les GAFA et autres acteurs du numérique envisagent l’avenir. Pour autant, cet opus réserve des surprises bien différentes et, avouons-le, plus humaines et prometteuses. À lire en anglais si possible.

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