Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) |
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List Price: $15.00
Our Price: $10.20
Your Save: $ 4.80 ( 32% )
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Manufacturer: Spectra
Average Customer Rating:  
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PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780553380958
ISBN: 0553380958
Label: Spectra
Manufacturer: Spectra
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: 2000-05-02
Publisher: Spectra
Release Date: 2000-05-02
Studio: Spectra
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Editorial Reviews:
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One of Time magazine's 100 all-time best English-language novels.
Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison—a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.
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 infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous…you’ll recognize it immediately.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Half-baked concepts and absolutely dreadful writing.
Comment: Something good:
This book, written before the Internet was little more than a government and university project with a few commercial interests throw in, presents an almost precognitive look at a world interconnected via the computer. Some of the technology described, even if slightly off-base, rightly predicts what we are using and developing today.
Something bad:
I won't delve too much on the absurdities described with a supposedly ancient "hacker" algorithm being made to free mens' minds from the entrapment of a hypothetical space "virus". Nor will I go into the rancid historical references used to back up this laughable proposition (there are more intelligent people than me who have detailed this in reviews here already.) But to suppose that by 2012 (this is a guess based on evidence in the story since the date isn't listed anywhere I could see) that the entire US government would be minimalized to the point of vestigial worthlessness because of over privatization, and that society would be fractured into competing commercial "franchises", run by agencies such as the Mafia none-the-less, is just silly. Sure there's room for satire (I'm pretty sure Stephenson was not a fan of the Reagan era), but an author has to at least give a more realistic time line to work with. This is supposed to be a natural deterioration here, not even post-war, yet, somehow, all democratic society withered away in 20 years.
Something awful:
Contrived plots and silly ideas are one thing. Writing them down in such a poor and inconsistent manner is inexcusable. There are times when the characters will completely shift their narrative and their personality. Just going from the first chapter to the next couple presented such a fundamental change that I have to believe that the first was written years apart from the rest of the book.
Later in the book Stephenson can't seem to find a better way to express his largely contrived ideas than to expound upon them in a fashion that I can only relate to a Socratic dialogue (in tone if not in substance.) First there's the main character, Hiro, talking back and forth with an AI librarian for chapters at a time trying to formulate this Sumerian plot point, then later we get the same type of performance except now we have the heads of a few of these world controlling franchises playing the parts of the librarian. Stephenson couldn't think a better way to get his ideas across than to create lengthy (and quite boring) dialogues?
To conclude, I'm not sure why this book is so beloved. The writing is immature, and the ideas supporting the plot are untenable. If it wasn't for his view of an interconnected virtual world this book would be worthless.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Snowblind
Comment: I started reading Snow Crash with high hopes. It was picked by Time Magazine as one of the top 100 English-language novels and two friends had recommended it to me. It seemed like a safe bet.
Woops.
Snow Crash is a nonsensical stew of crackpot ideas and sophomoric escapist fantasies. If you want well-drawn characters and an engrossing plot, look elsewhere. This book is nothing but a jumbled assortment of "cool ideas" strung together in a ridiculous plot filled with two-dimensional caricatures. It's the literary equivalent of a lowbrow Hollywood blockbuster: a bilious torrent of pseudo-intellectual sensory overload spewed at the audience to no particular effect.
If you're a twelve year old boy or a fan of crackpot philosophy then you'll probably love this story about samurai hackers riding around on motorcycles chopping up zombies infected with a religious virus. If that doesn't sound totally freakin' awesome to you, save yourself the 468 page effort and skip this turd.
Stephenson earns two stars for prescience, but this book is a loser.
Customer Rating:
Summary: SNOW CRASH by Neal Stephenson
Comment: Snow Crash is a cyberpunk science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson, originally published in 1992. It involves virtual reality and computer science, religion (particularly ancient Mesopotamian religions, Sumerian in particular), linguistics, and philosophy.
Stephenson writes in the present tense, a technique that is typically annoying and inferior, but which Stephenson pulls off reasonably well. This is not to say, however, that Snow Crash would not have been better served by being written in the standard past tense. It's close.
The world Stephenson has created is vivid and interesting. Society has degenerated into anarcho-capitalism; virtually every aspect of government has been relegated to the private sector. Elements of Stephenson's Metaverse are present in today's internet. Stephenson holds the reader's interest with his colorful characters, including his main character, the sword-wielding hacker Hiro Protagonist.
A cast of interesting people doing interesting things is, ultimately, enough to carry the book, which is good, because Stephenson's take on philosophy, religion and linguistics falls flat. Stephenson obviously did a lot of research, which he presents as page after page of lecture from the Librarian character. He's gotten some things fundamentally wrong, however, most notably the development of early Christianity. And his concept of a real-life virus as code is downright silly.
Ultimately, Snow Crash is seriously flawed, but well worth reading.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Really Fun Cyberpunk Novel
Comment: First, let me say that this book has the best first chapter of any book that I have ever read. After you read that chapter, it goes down slightly in quality.
Perhaps Mr. Stephenson rewrote that chapter again and again, or perhaps he wrote it for something else. Regardless, it HUMS. And it feels different from the rest of the story. Darker, more dangerous, just as satirical, but not quite as funny.
Past that, though, the story hardly breaks down. It is entertaining throughout, very amusing in most places, and harbors characters that I will probably never forget. I had previously read a single Neal Stephenson book (The Big U), which I also loved. Every time I see one of his new books come out, I have the feeling that I should buy it. (I had this same feeling with Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, and Kazuo Iguro's Never Let Me Go...now adays, I simply listen to that little voice, obviously).
The story never gets bad, it is entertaining throughout, the characters are original and interesting, so why not five stars? Well, two reasons. First, I don't think that any of the characters develop, at all, in the course of the book. Things happen, people die, and no one changes. Not something that I ordinarily like to give five stars to. Second, while it is terribly fun, it is not terribly relevant. There is nothing here that made me think, "Hrmmm..." in the realms of personal thought or thoughts of import. Again, not something that I like to give five stars to. If I could, I would, also, give it four and a half stars. If only Amazon would give us ten stars to use!!!
I read this book, enjoyed it, and discovered why it is on Time's list of the 100 Best Books in English since 1923 - Because it is good! So, I will be lending it, recommending it, and reading it again. It's definitely worth picking up.
B+
Harkius
Customer Rating:
Summary: I think I enjoyed it
Comment: Hiro Protagonist is a free-lance hacker for the CIC (the Central Intelligence Corporation) and pizza delivery guy for the Mafia, a concert promoter, and other things to make ends meet. He is also the greatest swordsman in the world of the not too distant future. Most nation states have fallen apart and corporations have taken over running things. Hiro and his sidekick Y.T. are in up to their necks in a plot to take over the world by a "computer virus" as old as civilization itself.
In this very original thriller that smacks of Lethal Weapon and the Matrix (although written in 1992) Neal Stephenson weaves together Sumerian myth, hackers, Pentecostalism, the world of organized crime, and an America that is scarily recognizable into a fast-paced intelligent story that will keep you turning the pages far into the night. The only problems are that Stephenson is sometimes needlessly crass, and the ending of the book is so abrupt it leaves a lot of loose ends that left me gasping for breath and a little put out with the author.
I enjoyed it immensley, but it left me unsatisfied with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
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