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Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash Mass Market Paperback – April 1, 1993

by Neal Stephenson (Author)

4.3 17,937 ratings

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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 cyber-sensibility to bring us the gigantic thriller of the information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's Cosa Nostra Inc., but it 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.

Print length

480 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Spectra
Publication date

April 1, 1993
Dimensions

4.5 x 1.25 x 7.25 inches
ISBN-10

0553562614
ISBN-13

978-0553562613
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4.3 out of 5

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Robert M. Deatrick

Second only to Crypto

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2023

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

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.

2 people found this helpful

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LSDuigi

Seriously hard to decide on review....

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2023

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Well. Deciding on a final review score for this is... difficult..

The story is mostly great. In fact, if I'd rated the book at around 80 or 85% complete, I'd have had no trouble saying 4.5 stars. But the end there... I don't know how to describe what happened that caused the shift in certainty without spoilers...

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, actions that occurred as morally acceptable behavior; or what exactly the intention was when choosing that specific plot piece... When you get to it, you'll know, as it was incredibly uncomfortable to read...

The other issue I kept running into is what seemed to me to be these incredibly lazy (either lazy or otherwise ignorant on the author's part) jumps in logical reasoning when unwinding the what and why part of plotline... I mean, I understand what the end goal was. The "route" to get to that end goal, however, was littered in logical fallacies and historical inaccuracies.

I suppose it could have been a situation of newer information being available here in 2023 vs back in 1995 or so.. But not all of it. There's a lot of use of sweeping generalizations, faulty correlation/causation assumptions, and other cognitive value/judgement biases...

What's not clear, is because of the way the narration is written, it's not clear if the above biases, assumptions, and questionable moralities are that of the author proper, or if they were supposed to be the corresponding character's..

I dunno. I really can't decide right now. I can say the story telling is otherwise great. The world building. The plot concepts. The real-world comparisons and commentaries drawn. It's worth reading, sure. I'm glad I read it... Just.. The sociocultural insensitive bits sometimes felt like they were, well, inappropriate and (at best) unconsciously down-punching tropes and uncomfortable to read.

🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️ I'd still give it a read if you like sci-fi, tech, and/or cyberpunk novels. Just be prepared for some "what the hell" moments when reading.

15 people found this helpful

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DMG

Engaging theme, initially interesting plot, bad ending.

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2015

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I will next read Neuromancer (get ready, Amazon) after I found myself strongly agreeing with Psychlist's review of Jan 3, '15. 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, and the old fashioned DNA/RNA kind. That is what speculative sci/fi is supposed to trade on anyway. But like most all the successful writers of future history, the author only extends popular and famous trends to their extreme ends. It kinda reminds me of novels about the 21st century, written at the same time as this book (1989-1992), in which the Soviet Union played a prominent role.

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.

11 people found this helpful

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William Darby

A present from me to me

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2023

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I moved to Maui at age 61. The first week I got a job on the United Airlines ramp & I got my first Amazon Fire tablet. That first year was hectic trying to keep up with my younger coworkers. I purchased Snow Crash but put it aside - I had no time to give it the attention it deserved. Now, 12 years later in retirement on a remote acre on the wet side of the island, I came upon the book & learned I already owned it. But now the pace of my life is different and I had the time to read it. It was well worth the wait.

12 people found this helpful

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Pharmama

Avatare, Metaverse und die nicht so ferne Zukunft

Reviewed in Germany on May 20, 2013

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Ich scheine es ein bisschen mit den nicht ganz so einfach zu beschreibenden Büchern/ Filmen etc. zu haben. Snow Crash gehört da auch dazu,
Spielend in einer (nicht allzu fernen?) Zukunft in einem Amerika, wo es keine funktionierende Regierung mehr gibt, dafür aber Kapitalismus über alles. Die Leute leben in und arbeiten für Franchises wie die Mafia – die den Pizzalieferdienst unter sich hat ... und das so ernst nimmt, dass eine späte Lieferung die Familienehre beeinträchtigt.
Oder Kleinstaaten-Gebiete wie Mr. Lees greater Hong Kong mit eigenem Sicherheitssystem wie umgemodelten Bulldoggen. Ursprünglich staatliche Unternehmen wie der CIA wurden privatisiert – sie handeln nach wie vor mit Informationen, nur kann sie jetzt jeder verkaufen und kaufen.
In dieser Umwelt lebt der Held Hiro Protagonist – halb Afrikanisch-Amerikaner und halb Koreaner – ein bis zu einer vermasselten Lieferung Pizza Kurier und im Metaverse gefeierter Hacker und laut Visitenkarte der Weltbeste Schwertkämpfer. Das Metaverse ist das, was Second Life hätte werden können – halb Internet, halb Zweit-Welt in der man sich trifft, Informationen austauscht und in der auch die grossen Firmen alle vertreten sind.. Zugänglich per Computer, repräsentiert wird man als Avatar ... je nach Verbindung und Informatikkenntnisse besser oder schlechter.
Die zweite Hauptperson ist die 15 jährige Y.T., ihres Zeichens Kurier – was im modernen Amerika heisst: sie ist mit hochtechnischem Rollbrett, Schutzausrüstung und „Poon“ unterwegs, indem sie sich an Fahrzeuge anhängt. Ihre Wege kreuzen sich mehr durch Zufall – sie ist diejenige, die die Pizza dann doch noch rechtzeitig zum Ziel bringt ... und sich den Dank der Mafia sichert.
In der realen Welt und im Metaverse macht sich eine neue Droge breit, die sich Snow Crash nennt – das weisse Flimmern, das man nach einem absoluten Computerabsturz sieht. Es scheint eine Verbindung zu geben zwischen Sprache, Gehirnbeeinflussung, Religion, Viren und Computer – und ein Informationsmogul: L. Bob Rife will sie einsetzen ... ja, wogegen?
So ganz nebenbei lernt man noch etwas über die Sumerer, Sprache, Religion und Computer.
Hiro mit seinen Samurai-Schwertern, Y.T. mit ihrem Board suchen sich ihren Weg – gegen einen starken Widersacher in der Realwelt und dem Metaverse – Raven. Einem Aleuten auf persönlichem Kriegszug gegen das, was von Amerika übriggeblieben ist und der – zum persönlichen Schutz sozusagen – mit einer Atombombe vernetzt ist.
Alles trifft sich schliesslich auf der Raft – einer Art riesigen schwimmenden Unterkunft, die dem Informationsmogul neue Leute – Flüchtlinge sozusagen – nach Amerika bringt.
Das Buch fängt eher gemächlich an – bringt aber eine Menge Ideen, auch neue, die über das sonstige „Cyberpunk“ Thema herausgehen und reichlich Gesellschaftskritisch sein können – langweilig wurde es mir nicht. Im zweiten Teil nimmt das Erzähl-Tempo zu, gleichzeitig werden auch die Hintergrund-Informationen dichter. Es endet mit einer (oder zwei?) Verfolgungsjagden ...
Ich fand es lesenswert wegen den teils abstrus scheinenden Ideen, den durchaus „coolen“ Figuren und weil man – da das Buch doch schon älter ist (1992) inzwischen einiges daraus schon wiedererkennen kann: Internet, Avatare, Information als Macht ...
4 Sterne dafür.
Lesenswert für: Science Fiction Fans, Computer Fans, Leute mit Interesse an Sprachentwicklung ...

8 people found this helpful

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Heinz E. Probst

Gift

Reviewed in Canada on November 17, 2023

Verified Purchase

My son really appreciated this book. He recommends it.

Patrick St-Denis, editor of Pat's Fantasy Hotlist

Cool and smart!

Reviewed in Canada on August 25, 2012

Verified Purchase

Given all the rave reviews Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash has received over the years, it's a wonder that the book has been sitting there on my shelf for well over a decade now. I was getting more and more concerned with each passing year, for this work kept receiving such accolades that it raised my expectations to what I felt was an impossible level. I mean, a science fiction novel being selected as one of the 100 books to read in English by Time Magazine? It reached the point where Snow Crash had to be one of the very best books I had ever read, if not the very best, if it had any chance of meeting those lofty expectations.

Understandably, although it is an ambitious, intelligent, and entertaining novel, Snow Crash couldn't possibly live up to my expectations. It is a fun and thrilling read, no question. And yet, as much as I enjoyed it, I don't feel that it's the sort of literary work that lingers within your mind long after you have finished it.

Here's the blurb:

One of Time magazine's 100 all-time best English-language novels.

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 CosoNostra 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.

The worldbuilding is simply awesome. In a not-so-distant future, the USA has become a fragmented ensembles of smaller Burbclaves and city-states. As is usually the author's wont, the witty narrative is full of satiric social and political commentary. What's even more brilliant is the fact that Snow Crash was written between 1988 and 1991. To realize just how on the money Stephenson turned out to be regarding the information age and virtual reality, it's simply astonishing. The same thing goes for the technology now in use, both in terms of software and hardware. Truly, Neal Stephenson was a visionary.

The characterization is well-done, especially considering that having teenagers as your principal protagonists can sometimes be quite tricky. Yet both Hiro Protagonist, the Deliverator and katana-wielding hacker, and Y.T., a pesky Kourier, are well-defined characters you just have to root for. When Hiro is involved in an accident and is about to be late delivering a pizza, Y.T. delivers the pie on time, thus earning a favor from the Mafia and joining her fate to Hiro's, though none of them are quite aware of that fact just yet. Although the narrative follows the POVs of these two protagonists for the better part of the book, they are joined by a colorful cast of secondary characters that give Snow Crash its unforgettable flavor. Chief among those include Uncle Enzo, the Librarian, and Raven.

The pace is fluid and the chapters relatively short, making this novel a real page-turner. Indeed, there is never a dull moment. The early portions about the Sumerian myths and their importance are a bit more nebulous and hard to understand, but everything is explained later on in the book. Hence, for a while at least, you are sort of left in the dark as to what this new computer virus is all about. Be that as it may, you just need to buckle up and enjoy the ride. From beginning to end, Snow Crash remains a dense and surreal work of fiction full of humor that will make you think as much as it makes you laugh.

As I mentioned, what is even more impressive is the fact that this novel was initially published two decades ago. Discovering just how right Stephenson was concerning everything that has to do with the information age and virtual reality will have you shaking your head in bewilderment.

Snow Crash is a smart, cool, funny, witty, and action-packed adventure featuring a pair of unlikely heroes who must save the world from infocalypse. If you enjoy roller-coaster rides, Snow Crash is definitely for you! You will never again look at toilet paper quite the same way afterwards. . .

If, like me, you haven't read it yet, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash could be perfect vacation reading material for you.

Check out Pat's Fantasy Hotlist!

6 people found this helpful

One of the two most iconic cyberpunk novels,...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 7, 2022

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...the other being William Gibson's Neuromancer. Stephenson is an ingenious plotter and builds his plots on research, in this case into the ancient Sumerian language which in Snow Crash makes a reappearance in near-future America. The latter is a place where countries and corporations have become indistinguishable, and operate out of adjacent franchulates like so many MacDonalds' outlets. The space that contains them is a zone of chaos navigated by pizza delivery people and skateboard couriers who hitch rides on passing traffic. The protagonists of this book meet in meat space but spend half their time in cyberspace where they're trying to foil a plot by a religious cult to take over the world with a virus that can infect the minds of coders as well as their computers, and that is based on ancient Sumerian. It's a hard plot to summarize, but it's all action and snappy dialogue among characters who are little more than cartoons. I enjoyed it as an appetizer before moving to Cryptonomicon which is a more ambitious and weighty achievement in every way.

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Dystopian conspiracy thriller

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 28, 2023

Verified Purchase

Well told narrative of two heroes fighting against insurmountable odds in an alternative US.

Dialogue is funny, with an robust structure. It would be easy to lose one's position in this book at times, but I maintained awareness of place. It is rich in ideas, environment and character description. So the author did well to summarise where necessary and have in depth exploration elsewhere.

I would love to read more details from a technical perspective about virtual viruses physical impact on users health. Additionally, the story would have been wonderful with emphasis on Raft life.

The book had ambition, punch and confidence. I found it entertaining. The pace and force of the writing powers through to the end. A book crafted in a movie style, maybe it will be on the big screen soon.

One person found this helpful

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Snow Crash Mass Market Paperback – April 1, 1993

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