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Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book)
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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: May 02, 2000
Publisher: Spectra
Release Date: May 02, 2000
Studio: Spectra
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Editorial Review:
From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible.
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - A Really Fun Cyberpunk Novel
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, ... Read More
Rating: - I think I enjoyed it
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 ... Read More
Rating:  - Brain BIOS
I liked the linking of how a human brain works and how a computer works. There has to be some hardware/software wired a birth to create the different personalities and to allow consciousness to develop. A funny exciting read.
Rating:  - practically unreadable
Sentence construction is an art that extends beyond your high school English teacher's boundaries of correct or incorrect. It's necessary, at a basic level, to ensure that a book's readable, but it can be also used as a tool, among other devices, to enrich an author's message. Stephenson's sentences in Snow Crash are so clunky, top-heavy, and distracting that it gave me a headache. The book is further weighed down by poor humor and cheap jabs.
I tried hard to like Snow Crash. I thought that ... Read More
Rating: - The book itself has become a reference, you might as well read it
I can easily agree with the many reviewers here, "excellent ideas," "brilliant opening," "later parts overblown," etc., but really it's almost irrelevant now. The book has sprinted past reasonable criticism and become a standard that other books are measured against. This is cyberpunk to many readers. In the same way that calling Tolkien "boring in places" is meaningless now, so too is calling Stephenson's characters "one dimensional parodies."
If you haven't read Snow Crash yet, go grab a copy ... Read More
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