Snow Crash is a book that I didn’t drop onto my face very much at all. In fact, I held it in my hands over the course over a month and a half, progressing at a leisurely pace through its four hundred and something pages, believing it to be a book that was published within the last decade.
I was wrong. Somehow, Snow Crash was published in the year 1992, twenty years ago. This is staggering due to its uncanny, prophetic portrait of contemporary digital culture, and the teetering machinations of powerful private enterprise and “big tech”.
In Snow Crash, the real world is governed by a network of corporate figureheads and companies, which have reached the peak of capitalism incarnate. Governments are still around, but if you think lobbyists get away with some absolutely deplorable activities today, wait until you read Snow Crash, where government is seen to be the pillar of a capitalistic society, enabling any and all loop holes to be shut to enable companies to flourish through the violation of basic human rights.
There’s stuff here about viruses (both organic and those of the computer type) - and how inflation leads to people essentially using bank notes as toilet paper, and how government department austerity measures lead to a humorous three page capitalistic, neo-liberal justification of how piles of toilet paper in an office environment can be considered a fire hazard, and not be tolerated.
The book is genuinely gripping stuff throughout, with a healthy sense of humour, lots of action, and a very male gaze painted across its pages, mainly to the nature of the protagonist, who is amusingly (and potentially ironically) called "Hiro Protagonist". This feels like a joke at first, but at the very least, the damsel in distress isn't called something like "Damsel D. Distress", instead there's ... two; Y.T, a courier, and Juanita, who is an old flame of Hiro.
While there's not a lot of romance here, there's a lot of action, a surprisingly deep examination of what language, and by extension code means to the human condition.
What is overwhelmingly incredible about this tale of a sole-hacker man unwinding an enormous conspiracy is how "in touch" a title published in 1992 is with contemporary writing styles. It feels like a book written for a Tik-Tok generation, and is so far ahead of its time.
Perhaps this astounded me because I genuinely don't read very much (this is changing) - or perhaps because my "out of touchness" with relatively recent science fiction (beyond the wonderous works of Arhtur C Clarke) - leading me down a rabbit hole that has led me to commence a reading of "Cryptonomicon", which was published in 1999.
I'm sure I will get some incredible surprises from that book as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see Snow Crash turned into a TV series or a film at some point in the future.
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I've been a big fan of Neal Stephenson for a long time. I've loved all of his books...except the last two.
Any particular reason why the most recent ones aren't up your alley?
I have read that book many times and never get board of it, mainly because of the writing style. I even quote from it.
“A hormone pumped bull that’s just been nailed in the ass by the barbed probe of a picador”
I enjoyed the description of Hiro's car in the opening stages of the book. I've put it on the bookshelf now, but I remember the parts about traction resonating pretty well.
interesting I will find a way to get this book.
A greeting, anyone can be able to make a good reading and enjoy it, you just need a little imagination for the magic of the letters to enter your world, good thing you discovered this book that encouraged that. A hug.