Snow Crash: A Novel: Stephenson, Neal: 2015553380958: Amazon.com: Books

Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial

Hardcover
$22.60

Paperback
$12.59

List Price: $18.99 Details

Save: $6.40 (34%)

FREE Returns

No Import Fees Deposit & $8.65 Shipping to Canada Details

Delivery Tuesday, April 16. Order within 21 hrs 11 mins

Deliver to Canada

In Stock

$$12.59 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Delivery Thursday, April 18. Order within 12 hrs 41 mins

Deliver to Canada

Used: Good | Details

Sold by LuxuryMerchandise (Veteran Owned)

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Follow the author

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash: A Novel Paperback – May 2, 2000

by Neal Stephenson (Author)

18,339

See all formats and editions

Savings Get 3 for the price of 2 Shop items

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$12.59","priceAmount":12.59,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"12","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"59","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"DhUFRXD%2F5l%2FTzf%2ByFsSh7fhLwDZPdH8z4ESfksXRXO0djWf2C8x9sSYGwvi7N7Sfo%2BvrufaA%2FE2NNe8O6Df9T6PHRuxnj29kUWRczlFyL0IG%2Fy%2BZYTNjJ9f8mjcTLxoTDYuBMJRoitc%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$11.93","priceAmount":11.93,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"11","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"93","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"DhUFRXD%2F5l%2FTzf%2ByFsSh7fhLwDZPdH8z1J0sgZOeg3nq1uZVdE6qiSEiriL8rp7CUsOuF7064yAP6iomDkjx%2BdLRXHAfgbNeG22LIcAX6OshJx5%2BWF7djMkmkO8tG6hRy8PU9Khr6%2FdKdpNxZCnzeGnWcOOX%2B61WPDJ3nA6B%2Fk0AN1uEd1%2B4FRAcRat6Dsp4","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

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.

Report an issue with this product or seller

Print length

440 pages
Language

English
Publication date

May 2, 2000
Dimensions

5.41 x 1.12 x 8.24 inches
ISBN-10

0553380958
ISBN-13

978-0553380958
Lexile measure

970L
See all details

Frequently bought together

Snow Crash: A Novel

$12.59

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

Neuromancer (Sprawl Trilogy)

$13.98

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: The inspiration for the films Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049

$10.89

In Stock

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Added to Cart

Choose items to buy together.

William Gibson
15,749
Paperback
$13.98
$8.43 shipping
Cixin Liu
43,869
Paperback
$10.59
$8.71 shipping
Cixin Liu
20,748
Paperback
$14.99
$8.94 shipping
Andy Weir
120,534
Paperback
$13.98
$8.55 shipping
William Gibson
5,366
Paperback
26% off
Ends in 02:11:04
$14.15
List: $19.00
$8.48 shipping
William Gibson
6,428
Paperback
$11.99
$8.48 shipping

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 2,383 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

Praise for Snow Crash


	Snow Crash: Deluxe Edition	The Diamond Age	Interface	The Cobweb

Customer Reviews	18,339	4,635	466	401
Price	$22.60	$12.79	$21.00	$17.00
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.

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 ‏ : ‎ 5.41 x 1.12 x 8.24 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #8,058 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #90 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #101 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction (Books)
- #407 in Science Fiction Adventures

Customer Reviews:
18,339

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

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

4.3 out of 5

18,339 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

TL;DR Read if you program and like Science Fiction.

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2023

Verified Purchase

TL;DR Read if you program and like Science Fiction. Read if you like Cyber Punk. Read if you want to read a VR classic. Read if you are a Neal Stephenson fan.

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.

5 people found this helpful

Seriously hard to decide on review....

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2023

Verified Purchase

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.

17 people found this helpful

Gabriel Claycamp

One of the greatest books of all time

Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2024

Verified Purchase

An amazing story, that continues to be more and more real as days go on.

Underdeveloped main characters and rapidly switching storylines

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2023

Verified Purchase

*SOME SPOILERS INCLUDED*

As a teacher of Bradbury, Huxley, and Orwell, I immediately bought this book when I saw it mentioned in a fabulous article from The Atlantic (3/23), "We Are Already Living in the Metaverse". Overall, I was a bit disappointed by the book and most certainly don't believe it stacks up (quality-wise) with the great aforementioned classics.

The main storyline revolves around Hiro, a hacker/programmer/sword fighter/enforcer who lives most of his miserable life in a storage locker connected to VR Goggles. His techno centric existence and lack of family life reminded me very much of Ernest Cline's protagonists from Ready Player One, and Armada. Interestingly enough, the one thing we never see him do is code.

The second storyline revolves around a 15 year old female courier, YT, who could have carried the story herself. She was by far the more interesting character, living a double life as a picture of independence and strength. Hiro, by contrast, comes across as reluctant, needy, and a little obsessed with his programmer ex girlfriend.

Ultimately, the book delivers a thin plot revolving around a conspiracy to take over the world using ancient coded language tied to early Theocracy and contemporary charismatic religions. Typical of dystopias, the guilty parties are big business, the government, and the evolved remnants of the mob. Oddly, the public face of the mob is pizza delivery. While the messages about the dangers of government corruption and technology working against us are relevant, I felt the book spent too much time focused on the religious backstory. Was it interesting? Yes. Relevant for a modern, broad readership? Probably not.

I had hoped to offer this as a partner text to some of my classics, but the unnecessary and somewhat graphic statutory rape made me cringe enough that I most likely won't use school funds to buy the book.

Conclusion: good beach read, but not classic caliber.

4 people found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Lucca Canizela De Camargo

Superb

Reviewed in Brazil on May 22, 2022

Verified Purchase

Espetacular novel!

One person found this helpful

Translate review to English

Rajeev Nair

Book received in good condition

Reviewed in India on February 5, 2024

Verified Purchase

Book received in good condition.

The Mighty Neiner

Extrem gute Qualität, unglaublich aktuell.

Reviewed in Germany on January 24, 2024

Verified Purchase

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

One person found this helpful

Translate review to English

Jacques De Wilde

Le classique pour comprendre le concept de métaverse

Reviewed in France on July 8, 2022

Verified Purchase

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.

Translate review to English

Cliente Amazon

La nascita di metaverse e avatar

Reviewed in Italy on November 11, 2021

Verified Purchase

È un libro storico che per primo introduce il concetto di metaverse (ora ripreso per realizzarlo davvero) e di avatar (già usato in un videogioco, come citato dall'autore, ma non sviluppato con le diverse implicazioni).
Ha un andamento discontinuo alternando momenti di grande tensione (spesso inutili per lo svolgimento della linea narrativa, ma molto godibili), con momenti da pseudo-cultura (per altro documentata). Apre interessanti possibilità e riflessioni su metaverse, ma anche sullo sviluppo della società, che nei successivi 30 anni stiamo vedendo che si stanno indirizzando nelle direzioni che qui vengono esplorate nelle diverse implicazioni. Potrebbe ad alcuni sembrare troppo discontinuo, ma le occasioni di riflessione sono interessanti e molti meccanismi narrativi decisamente coinvolgenti.

3 people found this helpful

Translate review to English

See more reviews

Get to Know Us

Make Money with Us

Amazon Payment Products

Let Us Help You

English $USD - U.S. Dollar United States

© 1996-2024, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates