Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson | 1992 | Bantam Books | Paperback $ 18.99
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 an infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous… you’ll recognize it immediately.
I’ve been making more of an effort to read classic sci-fi and fantasy, as evidenced by my list for Classics Club. I’m grateful to my past self for having the idea to include these titles as well as the more traditional literature and poetry; I’ve had a slightly rough go of it lately with some of those, so having a fun cyberpunk palate cleanser was pretty nice.
I am aware that this book is really a kind of parody of the cyberpunk subgenre — I mean, honestly, the main character is lampshadingly named “Hiro Protagonist” — but it’s also just a fun story in and of itself. A little dated, sure. And I can’t say it’s the most brilliant prose to have passed through my eyeballs lately. But it’s not meant to be taken super seriously, which IMHO means it’s easier to ignore a few clunky bits and pieces.
Perhaps I should properly have read another title on my list, Neuromancer by William Gibson, which is widely considered one of the grandaddy-books of the genre, before this one. But… I kind of don’t care. The caricatured tropes are so ubiquitous in mainstream sci-fi by now that the older original material will probably read like a bit like a parody of itself anyway. That’s just something you have to get used to when you start reading a lot of genre-specific classic lit.
One of the more fascinating parts of the book, to me, was its idea of an online world where people can lead fully virtual lives, the Metaverse. Yes, as in Meta, parent company of multiple leading social media platforms led by Mark Zuckerberg. That company’s so far rather silly money pit of a virtual reality platform was pretty obviously directly inspired by Snow Crash (as were many earlier attempts at online multiplayer virtual worlds). Another piece of tech introduced in the novel, simply called Earth, was probably an inspiration for the now mundane online navigation tool Google Earth. Keep in mind that this book was published in 1992 — before the internet as we know it was opened up to the public as the World Wide Web in 1993.
I think that this title is a good choice for sci-fi fans who are willing to try something a little older, but still interesting and relevant to contemporary issues and technologies.
Links:
- Website of author Neal Stephenson
- Review at Kirkus
- “You’re a bestselling author, but do you have your own NFTs? Neal Stephenson has a new flex” article at LitHub
- TV Tropes entry for Snow Crash
Publication information: Stephenson, Neal. Snow crash. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 2000. Print.
Source: Public library.
Disclaimer: I am not compensated, monetarily or otherwise, for reviews of books or other products.
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