Book Review – Snow Crash

Author: Neal Stephenson
Publisher: Bantam
Binding: Hardcover
Publication Date: 1992

Having read Neal Stephenson’s absolutely brilliant Baroque Cycle and the only slightly less fantastic Cryptonomicon, I went into Snow Crash with high expectations. I didn’t come away disappointed.

Snow Crash, in what seems to be Stephenson’s signature style, is at once intelligent, hilarious and a meandering journey that takes a while to get to the main point but never fails to entertain along the way.

The setting is a futuristic version of 21st century Earth where America has fragmented into a number of city-states, corporate franchises dominate the skyline, and a virtual reality world known as the “Metaverse” exists side-by-side with the “real” world.

The main character, the appropriately named Hiro Protagonist is a hacker, pizza deliveryman, and the greatest swordfighter in the world. Hiro spends his time delivering pizzas, hanging out in the Metaverse and gathering information for a central database run by the “Central Intelligence Corporation”, the corporate version of the CIA. That is, until a seemingly routine pizza delivery goes wrong and introduces him to a teenage girl simply known as Y.T., who works as a courier.

After a mysterious virus (the eponymous Snow Crash) bursts onto the scene of the Metaverse and turns Hiro’s friend Da5id into a mindless vegetable, Hiro and Y.T. join forces to uncover the source of the virus and its purpose. Along the way, everything from speed metal to Sumerian mythology to the story of the Tower of Babel comes into play to drive the plot.

I really enjoyed Snow Crash on a lot of levels. Admittedly, it probably will appeal more to the geeks like myself, as Stephenson has based the story very heavily on modern technology and terminology that might be confusing to the less computer literate. Also, as mentioned before, Stephenson seems to tell stories gradually with a lot of (entertaining) digressions along the way. “Snow Crash” in particular doesn’t really start to “get to the point” until about halfway through, so that might turn some readers off, although there is a good deal of “action” (chases, swordfights, etc.) throughout the story.

In sum, I can’t really mark Snow Crash down too much because I really did enjoy it and Stephenson obviously put a lot of work into it, as with his other work I’ve read. Also as with his other work, I often found myself cracking a smile but also found myself impressed by the depth of knowledge Stephenson has amassed (in particular the discussions about the origins of language).

View/Post Comments

Buy it now at Amazon!