Snow Crash: A Novel Kindle Edition

I enjoyed this book right up until the detailed sex scene between the 15 year old female main character and another character who has been touted as a main villain of the book the whole time. I have a feeling the author wanted to use this as a way to let you get to know the "villain" shortly before he is revealed as not totally villainous but more vindictive. I don't care to find out. I could of maybe stomached this scene if it matched the rest of the tone of the book, but it doesn't, it comes out of nowhere, is quickly set up, and happens. I cannot fathom what the author was thinking by taking the story there, all I know is that I wont be reading any more of this author.

The Bad:Tonal shifts. “Snow Crash” starts with some legendary levels of satire, but the consistency for said tone drops off after 50 or 60 pages. The satire remains, but the more the novel progresses, the more an afterthought that satire seems. In the middle of the book, the tone becomes one of ‘discovery/revelation’ that persists until the end… at which point the tone graduates to ‘let’s get this over.’ The shifts are never quite abrupt, but are somewhat stark.Changing voice. “Snow Crash” never quite feels like it’s written by three different people, but the beginning, middle and end all feel radically different from one another. Some difference is to be expected as a story nearly 500 pages in the telling is unraveled… but there’s a difference between progression of events having a subtle impact on how the story is told and the feeling that the author is changing how they’re drafting the story in their own mind.Wandering plot. Why did Hiro need to go to Oregon to learn that thing about Raven? The Raft was cool, but did it need to occupy so much time or focus for the reader to grasp its significance or otherwise appreciate the information Stephenson was offering? There are a couple of other plot points that beg the question ‘why that’ or ‘why present it this way,’ but the goal is to remain as spoiler-free as possible, so those points will remain unmentioned. There is a fair amount of wandering/meandering in the storytelling that’s hit or miss; for every enjoyable moment of superfluous world building or character development, there is a head-scratching moment to offset it.The Good:The Deliverator (the first ~50 pages, really). Y.T. The ideas behind Babel, protolanguage and religion, in general.The Takeaway:Entertaining if a bit dated (as far as many of the technical predictions or conventions are concerned). “Snow Crash” was no doubt a hell of a read when it was released: immensely entertaining; rife with observations and commentary regarding the era in which it was written (much of which is still shockingly relevant); offering statements about how we got to where we are; great observations about people, their hopes, dreams and motivations.Recommended for: fans of cyberpunk; those interested in a topical examination of neurolinguistics; people looking for a wild, trippy ride that will trigger some fierce 90s nostalgia. Anyone that enjoyed “Neuromancer” or “Lexicon” may want to give “Snow Crash” a shot.“It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.”“Software development, like professional sports, has a way of making thirty-year old men feel decrepit.”“To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.”“The Deliverator lets out an involuntary roar and puts the hammer down. His emotions tell him to go back and kill that manager, get his swords out of the trunk, dive in through the little sliding window like a ninja, track him down through the moiling chaos of the microwaved franchise and confront him in a climactic thick-crust apocalypse. But he thinks the same thing when someone cuts him off on the freeway, and he’s never done it-yet.”“They do a lot of talking about Jesus, but like many self-described Christian churches, it has nothing to do with Christianity except that they use his name. It’s a postrational religion.”

There's only two novels that I've had to stop reading in my life, this is one of them. This book begins to take an odd slant on religion midway through and consistently tries to make analogies about STD's. It's a strange combination of uncomfortable and boring. Stay away from this book if your looking for a fun and interesting read.

I continue to read Stephenson's books now and again (particularly when they show up on the Kindle $1.99 list), and my reaction is always the same. First, I can't put it down because his prose is just so readable... Second, I get bogged down in the philosophy and history and technology, which is either too arcane or not detailed enough (or, in the case of Snow Crash, both)... Third, the payoff is jejune, playing out like a bad action movie with an even worse director. So I'm left thinking the book was kind of fun and breezy, but I can't say I'd recommend it.And, oh yeah, there's a 15-year-old teen having sex with an adult. It's necessary as a plot point (though weirdly described), but totally inappropriate, even for a book written in 2003, way before #metoo. It's statutory rape. The sad thing is that the teenager could easily have been 19 and it wouldn't have changed the story or plotlines at all. So it makes me wonder a little bit about the author himself.....

I haven't read anything of Stephenson's since Seveneves. Before that my only other exposure was with Anathem.With those two books as my previous experience I was a little hesitant to dive into one of Neal's massive tomes with endless paragraphs of info dump and esoteric scientific explanations.I was PLEASENTLY surprised to find none of that. Yes, there are large chunks of Stephenson's verbose prose. But while action packed and with an amazing world that only Stephenson can build this was still "light" compared to those novels.A semi-dystopian future where the US is chopped into different enclaves and the mafia are the good guys this story blends real world action with VR/Matrix/Ready Player One simulated drama.

When I read Snow Crash, I was amazed that the book was written in the early 90s. It accurately describes many of the technologies we now not only have, but have access to every day. For this alone, it is worth a read. Stephenson predicted a lot of what we now take for granted in day to day life and it is really kind of awesome.From a prose stand point, this is not the easiest book to read. There is plenty of tech jargon (some of it made up) and a lot of linguistics vocabulary you might need to parse as you are reading. Also, his description of the corporate states is a little head scratching at first, but I feel pretty confident in saying that if you ignore it early on, you'll get it by the end.Otherwise, it is an entertaining yarn. I didn't like it as much the 2nd time I read it, but I still think it is a very good book.

I didn't love it. The high octane opening seems to have fooled everybody. The opening feels like a short story that was later built on to make a novel, so irrelevant is it to most of the plot, and even to the protagonist.It's very long and draws a lot of spurious analogies between biological and computer viruses that don't really fly, mixed in with clumsy pages of information about Sumeria or somewhere which turns out later to be relevant, but only as flimsy justification for a fairly boring plot device.There's some good action, but it sure does go on a bit. The whole novel does. It should have been 100 pages shorter at least, and not as accomplished as people seem to make out - I'm really not sure why this didn't sink into the slush of post-Neuromancer 90s sci-fi and disappear forever. Its vision of virtual reality isn't just poor in retrospect, it's poor even for its time, unimaginative and filled with convenient rules that serve the plot but not the world-building.Bizarrely, regular coders employed by corporations to do their jobs are referred to as 'hackers'. That's not what a hacker is, Neal.Points for: Strong female lead, even if there's constant partial-nudity and sex references; fantastic opening chapter or two; consistent writing and plenty of action, if that's what floats your boat; diversity.I can't say I recommend it, unless you mainly read sci-fi, in which case it's definitely not the worst of 90s sci-fi.6.5/10David BrookesAuthor of 'The Gun of Our Maker'

The book arrive within 5 days of ordering it, which was good. As for this book, and its genre of Science Fiction, based loosely on Computer hacking, viruses, Mafia, Religion, Morality, sex, it fails utterly to have even a half believable story. YT and Hiro are the heroes, they are the original pizza delivery guys, and then YT gets involved with Uncle Enzo, the Mafia chief. I tried to visualise it as a bit like the graphic image film Sin City, but this was poorly researched and very dragged out. I only purchased it as I’m in a Book Club, and am ashamed to admit I voted for this book based on its title. Avoid this nonsensical story, and give to charity instead.

This is a sprawling tale of a decidedly dystopian technofuture.It is probably responsible for putting the term avatar into common usage.As with Neuromancer there are only a couple of elements (references to cathode ray tubes) to signal that it was written some time ago, otherwise it still seems as prescient now as when it was written.This is epic story telling in the old fashioned style, in the manner of Dickens and Trollope it has big story and it is in no hurry about telling it. Although the story certainly does not drag, it may require some determination to stick with it till conclusion, but it is worth the effort.[There is quite a lot of stuff in the middle of the book about language and programming, those with an interest might want to read some Wittgenstein and research the Sapir Worf hypothesis, neither of which were mentioned, as I recall, but are potentially of interest.]

I was skeptical when I started reading the story. I didn't quite think I would like the main character or follow all the terms used to describe the new corporate America. All I can say is that I am very happy I kept reading because the story was amazing. I loved the YT character - reminds me of old punk days. I was also blown away when I realized how old the book is - based on the tech-talk, I could have sworn it was written in the last decade! It's a must read for sci-fi fans.

Hailed as one of the defining classics of the 'cyberpunk' subgenre of SF, I'm probably reading 'Snow Crash' a good 20 years after the concepts it portrayed were groundbreaking, but it still holds up pretty well as a novel. Bouncing between the exploits of a sword-wielding pizza delivery driver/hacker, and a courier who hitches lifts by harpooning passing vehicles, the early chapters in particular are breathtaking. There is an assured swagger to Stephenson's prose, with wild action and a vivid setting in a future USA that has been transformed into a series of semi-autonomous corporate-owned suburbs, whilst the idea of a language that can rewrite human brains is a suitably heavyweight SF concept.It's not flawless however, as the longer the book goes on, the more the tongue in cheek humour develops into an over-the-top comicbook-style sensibility. Ultimately, it becomes impossible to take any of it seriously, and it doesn't so much draw to a satisfying close as suddenly stop.There are is still plenty here to enjoy, and many of Stephenson's obsessions are readily apparent - but ultimately, though this may have been groundbreaking at the time, I feel that some of Stephenson's later books ('Cryptonomicon' and 'The Baroque Trilogy') are simply better written.