Neal Stephenson's Seveneves was also reviewed here recently. A brief bio of the author can be found in that review. I'm still not a huge fan of Neal Stephenson, but parts of Snow Crash, like parts of Seveneves, are impressive works of imagination.
Snow Crash came along much earlier in Stephenson's career, and I think it reveals the influence William Gibson had over him. Hiro Protagonist (get it? get it?) is a hacker and pizza delivery driver working for the mafia, and in the course of a failed delivery he joins forces with Y.T. a teenage "Kourier" skating her way through the dangerous streets of a postapocalyptic Los Angeles.
But why, you ask, do they join forces? That's a long story, but by way of explanation Hiro crosses paths with a virus called "Snow Crash" which causes computers to crash, brains to implode and new religions to form. It all goes back to ancient Sumer, you see, and the god Enki...
I could elaborate, but that would take a while and at this point you're either interested or not. Given Neal Stephenson's reputation, I wouldn't call this book "hard sci-fi" exactly. It does go into a lot of religious history, and there's some programming lingo, but it's not so much difficult as long-winded.
I did like it though. I didn't love it, but it definitely wasn't bad. The idea of a back door into the human psyche is an interesting idea, and the author did a good job of setting up the concept. Snow Crash is also more cohesive than the later Seveneves, even if it could've been a lot shorter. I'll take a sword-weilding Afro samurai assaulting an aircraft carrier with a gatling gun over a laborious and implausible tale of human evolution any day of the week.
I'm probably done with Neal Stephenson after this book. I complained online about Seveneves and was encouraged to go back and read Snow Crash, a book that many people said was better. I agree that it was better, but I also think that I now know enough about Neal Stephenson's fiction to know that it isn't my cup of tea.
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