Snow Crash

Hard to collect my thoughts on this one. Took a really long time to get going. The 2nd half was better and more connected. The world was cool, a high tech low life corporate America ad absurdum. The central idea of a latent root language in the brain, that if mastered can be used to program people, is interesting but its expression in this novel is layered in a tonne of religious-historical discourse which at times both hampers the action and labours the point. The full extent of the philosophy of language behind the idea wasn't really brought out. Then again, it's not a philosophy essay.

The book could be cut down a lot and not lose anything. A tonne of the novel is just building up the mafia, building up YT, building up Raven. Does the final confrontation pay off? Not..really. The ending is fine enough, a little rushed, the baddies get their comeuppance, the heroes poon off into the sunset (... I never did get over that word). If you're already sold on how cool the world is by the first few chapters, which I was, you'll slog through a lot of the book like “yeah I get it, get on with it now”.

But there's a world changing, understanding-of-humanity changing idea at the core here. A reimagining of the reasons behind the evolution of all language, culture, and religion. So despite it being a bit bloated, it's still a 4 star book in my mind. Slimmed down and streamlined it could have been a 5, there's plenty to think about here.

The 17 year old me who downloaded hack/phreak text files over dialup really wanted to read it, and I know he wouldn't have been ready for it back then. The 38 year old me who just finished it for the first time... he got it, but maybe he's too old to get excited about it any more.

Maybe it's the right book at the wrong time. But I'm glad I read it.

Great book, I can see why it's a staple of the cyber-punk / hacker genre. Stephenson does an amazing job weaving together sci-fi/hacker culture with mythology.

Tried to finish this. Had a lot of interesting stuff going for it. The main character, named Hiro Protagonist (its so ridiculous to name his this that it actually works somehow), was rather interesting. He rides around on a motorcycle and wields a samurai sword better than anyone else in the world. OK, cool. I like this guy. He hacks computer. Cool. He teams up with a sassy teenage ‘delivery' girl named Y.T. who gets around town by using some type of magnetic grappling hook to latch onto cars as they drive down these futuristic highways. Alright, cool. Bad guy named Raven who is more badass than Hiro shows up. Alright, things are getting interesting.

Nam-shubs. What the fuck? Everything from here on out is completely gobbledygook. Language is a code just like computer code. Spells are virus made by words that take infect people and get spread by prostitutes. This caused the Tower of Babel. There is a televangelist who has a massive floating city made out of all sorts of random boats and is the richest man on the planet or something. He wants to spread some super spell/virus/code.

I gave up.

I really want to like this book, but there's something about it that just leaves me cold. Is it Stephenson's annoyingly declarative (and present-tense) prose? His habit of telling instead of showing? Or maybe just the way the main characters never do anything, just sort of hang around and bear witness to the unfolding of the epic plot? And what the heck is up with the ending anyway? (It never stops driving me crazy when Y.T. sleeps with Raven. That has never made any sense to me, from either of their perspectives.)I used to hate this book for its smugly self-assured pretentiousness, but rereading it now, that feels intentional and almost like parody. If nothing else, it could be in a museum of 90s hacker culture, capturing the egoism and machismo perfectly. Snow Crash is really no sillier than [b:Neuromancer 22328 Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1) William Gibson http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1285017005s/22328.jpg 909457], I guess, but Stephenson feels a real need to go into long explanations of programming (I understand, thanks) and (now-dated) technology.I would ultimately call this a cool idea and an homage to hacker culture that doesn't quite turn into a real story ever.

It's as good as everybody says it is. That is, “Snow Crash” is one of the greatest novels of our time.

This will be a pretty hard review for me. Snow crash was the first book by Stephenson which I read and I approached it as other, typical sci-fi (I read mostly hard sci-fi...). That probably was my first mistake. This book is not at all as what I was used to as it is more of a sci-fi exploitation... The amount of ridiculous and over the top things here amount as high as the Babel tower brought all the time in the plot. The main character is called Hiro (pronounced like or closely to hero) Protagonist (sic!) who is half afro-american, half asian (deep breath) haker genius, greatest sword fighter in the world, one of the main creators of the metaverse (kinda matrix) working for pizza delivery, CIA and haker-triad Hong Kong. His sidekick is overly sexualised (seriously, this was sometimes way too much) 15 year old courier working for Pizza delivery which happens to be also sicilian mafia and a sovereign state. Their main antagonist (weirdly not called Npc Antagonist) is a native russian east coast ruthless killer and kayak surfer (lol) creating nano blades from glass and connected to a hydrogen bomb (which he has stolen from a soviet nuclear submarine he single-handedly took control over) in case something happens to him... And that is not even a half of what is there!
However under this Kung-fury-like plot (that movie is great btw! ;) ) there is a lot of really interesting ideas and a mix of academic theories from language theory, psychology, philosophy and more. I truly loved how the author has shown human languages as being parallel to computer programming languages. The type of implications it has, how viruses may spread, etc. is quite amazing. Also the historical background, even though quite fantastic, is compelling and creates a believable (to an extent!) context.
Even though I tend to enjoy the exploitation genre (mostly in cinema), here I felt like there was way too much of everything piled up. The ending was like a car crash at a high velocity abruptly leaving the story as if the author was becoming tired with his own book. Also most of what happens throughout the plot doesn't have any great meaning and is there mostly too show how bad-ass is, albeit one-dimensional, is our hero protagonist or his antagonist. What also left me uneasy was author's oversexualised picture of young girls, where our 15 year-old courier is pictured as a sexual object in almost every interaction with males.
Bottom line, it's a book full of great ideas, pretty good form, but buried under way too much nonsense and sexism.

Story: 3 / 10
Characters: 6
Setting: 5
Prose: 4

Snow Crash and Neuromancer (Gibson) are well known as the two more famous Cyberpunk novels ever written. Neither really work though (1 / 5). Gibson's novel takes place almost exclusively online and is extremely difficult to follow. Thankfully, Stephenson's virtual world is interesting and significantly more straightforward. Snow Crash's problem is really that the prose is obscure and the action story is worthless. Despite the minute value the book had for me...
...I can recommend it to readers interested in linguistics and analytic philosophy.

Tags: rat things, burbclaves, Mafia, franchises, Fedland, lawlessness, corporate anarchy

Snow Crash is definitely ahead of its time being written in 1992 but I just can't get into this at all unfortunately

The only Stephenson worth reading, and even so its desperate attempts to be hip will irritate you the whole way through. Some good stuff buried underneath it, though.

This was the first book I read by Neal. Let me say he will always be a favorite author for this story alone. It deals with some (somewhat dated) views of “cyberspace” and technology, but where the book is dated there are also satirical elements to throw you off the trail. In the end this is a pleasing romp that takes you on a journey you won't soon forget.

“The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel.”

This book almost lost me about halfway through when Stephenson goes on and on about religious history, but I stuck with it and I'm so glad I did! There's a lot of interesting ideas that still holds up pretty well in 2025.

I wouldn't say many of the ideas are groundbreaking for this day and age, but considering it came out in the early 90s, it's very impressive and prophetic. I can see why it's a classic sci-fi novel, but I wouldn't blame you if you skimmed parts of it like I did to get to the main meat of it all.

I have read good cyberpunk and then I have attempted to read this. I was surprised. Stephenson was in his 30s when it was published in 1992. From the... "edginess", I expected him to be in his teens. Maybe if I read it in 1992 when I was 17 I would have lapped it up. I lapped up everything else cyberpunk so it's a surprise this one passed me by.

It appears I am more "Marid Audran" (Effinger) than "Hiro Protagonist" in my leanings.

The thing is, people are going to say "but it's a parody". Yeah, great. Doesn't mean it's a good one. I went through Mirrorshades with the same feeling with a lot of the material. Some good stuff, other bits? Not so much.

Snow Crash didn’t clock in with the interest and weight of Gibson’s Neuromancer (unfair, yes), but you can see the larval stages of Stephenson’s ability to take delight in humans in contest with each other.

This was a really cool world that is unfortunately filled with really forgettable, wooden characters, frustrating pacing, and some really uncomfortable situations. Still kept my interest, but maybe a case of its reputation coming by way of being first rather than actually good.

This was…interesting, to a point. Probably my favorite parts were the interesting twist on linguistics and Sumerian history/mythology. I’m a sucker for anything pertaining to ancient Mesopotamia. Probably the only reason I finished. The characters aren’t likable, they’re a Mary Sue and Gary Stu. 🙄 I really thought Stephenson was going to do more. The ending was so lackluster and felt very slapped together. Really hoped for more oomph…

Overrated

This was a book that wasn't as clever as it thought it was. I had the exact same complaints as with ‘Seveneves' - long, ponderous and dull with one dimensional characters. I kept wondering how many more pages left I had to power through. Stephenson is very popular and regarded as a sci-fi legend, so clearly I'm wrong. It just isn't for me.

Mesmerizing action packer with thrilling twists and turns.

I feel the books was slow. There are about a million things going on and at times it feels like the pace is picking up only to move the story slightly forward. The world created is great, the characters are vivid, and at times it reads well.

I read this as a “You've got to read this book!” Recommendation and while I see what people like, I just found myself seeing how many pages I had left.

Simply phenomenal!

Meh

I last read this in college, re-read it when over at a friends place and nothing else to do I picked it up. Still rules. Neal Stephenson, despite all his faults, is a true genius way ahead of his time and also is hilarious, an excellent writer.

Snow Crash is a decent novel and my first from Neal Stephenson. The book wasn't bad but I just couldn't get into the story and I found Stephenson writing style a lot less engaging than I thought. Sometimes the dialogue seemed like it was written by a teenager - making me cringe from time to time. Additionally, I couldn't follow when the story was in the metaverse and when it was not, which added to the frustration of reading this book.

YMMV.

An old favourite. This time around, I found myself getting impatient towards the latter half. The first act setup is probably my favourite part, how it creates the setting and introduces the concepts of the Metaverse. As a software guy, I love that “hacking” is like a superpower in the book. Once we get into the long discussions with the Librarian, I started skimming.