Snow Crash in SpecFic Buddy Reads

Feb 16, 2012 Nataliya rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2013-reads

Disliking this book seemed quite impossible. After all, it had all the necessary ingredients: the pervasive air of nerdy geekiness (or, perhaps, geeky nerdiness), an unexpected take on linguistics, a kick-ass female character, a parallel (virtual) reality, a hefty helping of (admittedly, overexaggerated) satire, and just enough wacky improbable worldbuilding to satisfy my book loving soul. Or so it seemed.

But awesome ingredients do not always add up to a satisfying dish¹ (as my horrible cook sel ...more

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Sep 16, 2013 Lyn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: all-time-most-favorite-books

Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

I had thought that William Gibson’s Neuromancer was the alpha male of the cyberpunk genre; the template upon which all others would be drawn. Turns out, Gibson was the prophet, but Stephenson was the barbarian, breaking ground with a riveting, relentless new age thriller.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is a wild trip.

A fun conglomerate of Hunter S. Thompson, Philip K. Dick, Anthony Burgess and John Brunner, written 8 years after Neuromancer and 19 years before Ready Player On ...more

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Jun 08, 2023 Trish rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book was seriously impressive.

Hiro Protagonist (the name alone is so deliciously self-aware) is a hacker and a pizza delivery driver in real life and some version of a prince / hero fighter in the virtual.
For in this futuristic Los Angeles (still 21st century though), the VR is at least as real and part of human life as RR (regular reality). Especially ever since the economy crashed. Oh and there is no law anymore. In fact, LA is no longer part of the USA at all since the "government" star This book was seriously impressive.

Hiro Protagonist (the name alone is so deliciously self-aware) is a hacker and a pizza delivery driver in real life and some version of a prince / hero fighter in the virtual.
For in this futuristic Los Angeles (still 21st century though), the VR is at least as real and part of human life as RR (regular reality). Especially ever since the economy crashed. Oh and there is no law anymore. In fact, LA is no longer part of the USA at all since the "government" started selling territory to private organizations. Thus, there are quasi-sovereign gated communities and enclaves known as FOQNEs (Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities). One such FOQNE is the Italo-American Mafia that Hiro works for.
One really interesting development in this weird future America was what had become of the Library of Congress after merging with what used to be the CIA. *lol*
It is therefore no surprise that Hiro meets Italian mobsters as much as former love-interests, who code specific elements of the VR, and a special courier, all while uncovering a scheme to "infect" society with a special form of virus that could up-end the world as he knows it.
In an essay in 1999, Stephenson explained that the title of the novel is the term for a particular software failure mode on the early Macintosh computer. So you know what calamity to expect. Especially considering how reliant everyone is on tech and VR here (yes, even more than nowadays).
Anyway, it's not just something that will make the lights go out, it can have very dangerous or even lethal effects on a person's body in RR.

I LOVED the blend of futuristic tech, a dystopian world, Sumerion mythology (Tower of Babel) and more. It seems the author is very good at and interested in blending history with linguistics, politics, philosophy and - here - computer science. I mean, this book was published in 1992 and he coined the word Metaverse. Take THAT, Zuckerberg!

Seriously, everyone was quirky and the world almost disorientingly weird, but I enjoyed every second I got to spend with the characters - be it uncle Enzo or the discoveries made thanks to the library or Lagos.

We even get quite some impressive fighting when (view spoiler). Not to mention (view spoiler). That was some breathstopping action!

In short: this is pretty much a perfect book no matter from which angle you look at it. And it obviously influenced A LOT of other authors who subsequently created very similar stories. Funnily enough, I was reading this while learning of Apple's new product, "visionPro", which in turn triggered me to think of the awesome possibilities on the excited side and the potential negative implications on the dystopian side. Which made for an even more special feel while reading this book. *lol* ...more

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Mar 26, 2013 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi, 2023-shelf

The last time I read this novel, it was brand new. And the last time I read this, it must have embedded itself a bit too permanently in my head, NLP'ing its way deeper than any kind of sleeper proto-language ever could.

Why do I say that?

Because I've forgotten more about this novel than I have the guts to admit, and what's more, it firmly ensconced my love of studying ancient Sumeria, the gods, mythology, the history, the literature surrounding it -- and that little fact completely escaped me unt ...more

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Oct 04, 2016 Linda rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016, own_scanned-books

This book was just a lot of fun! Loved the spunky dialogue and characters, and the futuristic world was a bit unsettling yet still familiar. And of course the sword-fighting scenes were awesome. The last scene had me laughing, I could totally see it playing out as a movie. Lost one star for the info-dumps that went along with explaining what Snow Crash actually was - I pretty much skimmed over those parts after losing its appeal early on. But all the action well made up for the boring bits. Anot ...more

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Jul 15, 2015 Christina Pilkington rated it it was ok

*2.5 stars

I have so many conflicting feelings about this book. First, it was my first Neal Stephenson book and also first cyber punk novel. I also listened to this book on Audible which probably wasn't the best idea since this book, for me anyway, required a lot of concentration.

There were large portions of the book that were basically big info dumps. Not that I necessarily minded that. Those parts of the book, where the idea of Snow crash, ancient religions and viruses, Sumeria, and binary cod ...more

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