Friday, 21 October 2022 11:10 pm
Book Review: Snow Crash
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deckardcanineI may have given up on William Gibson, but I wasn't turned off from all cyberpunk literature. After all, I've enjoyed the genre on screen many times. Surely there would be a suitable book for me. So I took a chance on my first Neal Stephenson novel.
No date is given, but judging from the abilities of a Vietnam veteran, it must not be set much later than our present, 30 years after publication. By this time, official governments have vastly declined in influence, leaving businesses, gangs, and cults to fill the void. People in what used to be the U.S. hardly know the president by name or face. They still use dollars, but hyperinflation means that there are now billion-dollar bills, nicknamed "Gippers," so no points for guessing who's on them. Open racism is back in style, with some areas practicing apartheid.
Still, as dystopias go, it sounds quite livable. There's no evidence of a mass die-off or widespread poverty where there wasn't before. With the various sovereign domains, you'd probably find a place that suits you. Technology has advanced, and everyone has some access to the entertaining and informative Metaverse. (Yep, that must be where Mark Zuckerberg got the idea.)
Speaking of meta, the protagonist actually calls himself "Hiro Protagonist." He's something of a celebrity among programmers and boasts the best swordsmanship in the world, but he prefers an intense job as a Cosa Nostra pizza "Deliverator," believing his life will be forfeit if he's a second late. The deuteragonist is a rebellious teen "Kourier" who calls herself "Y.T.," short for "Yours Truly." Her method is to skateboard and grab motor vehicles like Marty McFly, only with a magnetic harpoon. You can guess how Hiro and Y.T. meet; it's initially adversarial, but she finishes the delivery for him, so they work out a loose partnership.
Most of the narration is in the present tense, presumably to make it easy to tell when we get a brief flashback (usually still the future to readers). It's all in the third person, typically centered on Hiro or Y.T., but there are several other focal characters. One of them is a cyborg dog, with rather simple thoughts, so he's not in the spotlight for long.
Anyway, Hiro becomes aware of the data file "Snow Crash" when a stranger in the Metaverse offers it like a drug, which doesn't make sense to him. Programming buddy Da5id foolishly opens it out of sheer curiosity, crashing his computer -- and his mind. From there, Hiro's quest for answers gets him in touch with old comrades, strange bedfellows, and enemies to challenge his prowess. He discovers a conspiracy for power, but that's not half of it.
To give you an idea, Hiro asks whether Snow Crash is a drug, a virus, or a religion and is met with "What's the difference?" We get the boldest claims about religious history this side of Dan Brown, albeit with slightly more esteem. What the characters piece together sheds a whole new light on not just that but civilization, language, free will, and biology in general. It's so mind-blowing that compelling evidence of sapient ETs comes up only briefly and never again. How Hiro can explain it all in one go and not have his listeners confused, disbelieving, or locked up in an existential crisis is beyond me.
Fortunately, it's not the next Stranger in a Strange Land. Stephenson tries to explain everything scientifically enough to be credible. I won't say I'd believe it, but at least he doesn't blur the line between sci-fi and outright fantasy. Nor does it read like wishful thinking.
The other character I found particularly interesting is, well, maybe not the main villain but certainly the most brutal. "Raven" is so obsessed with past injustices toward Aleuts that there is no number of people he won't kill. Not many he can't, either, with his mad skills and equipment. This doesn't stop him from being a gentleman when the mood strikes him, as when the pay is good.
The story actually doesn't take place nearly as much in the Metaverse as I was led to expect. That may be just as well, because Snow Crash is about the only thing that can pose a dire threat there; anything else amounts to getting booted off a server at worst. Hiro does eventually enhance himself to the point that he can do things in RL and the Metaverse at the same time, but we don't see much of that, because it's dizzying.
Stephenson can be good at painting a picture, but I did get a bit lost at a few points, not least in the pseudo-geographic sense. The future people do travel a lot. Sometimes I was glad not to fully envision a scene; it gets ugly. Still, the action is exciting when it comes. (There's also plenty of swearing and some semi-graphic statutory rape.)
Several blurbs describe the book as funny. I had trouble telling which parts were meant as parody rather than half-serious prediction. At least the U.S. government, where Y.T.'s mom works, has become a caricature of itself.
I took a while getting through 550+ pages, but to me, it was worth the trek. SC is nothing if not mentally stimulating, and the punk element isn't rotten enough to make me stop caring what happens. I might check out more of Stephenson; he didn't write a sequel to this, so I hope the next one's pretty different.
My next read is Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It's been praised by other minority female fantasy authors.
No date is given, but judging from the abilities of a Vietnam veteran, it must not be set much later than our present, 30 years after publication. By this time, official governments have vastly declined in influence, leaving businesses, gangs, and cults to fill the void. People in what used to be the U.S. hardly know the president by name or face. They still use dollars, but hyperinflation means that there are now billion-dollar bills, nicknamed "Gippers," so no points for guessing who's on them. Open racism is back in style, with some areas practicing apartheid.
Still, as dystopias go, it sounds quite livable. There's no evidence of a mass die-off or widespread poverty where there wasn't before. With the various sovereign domains, you'd probably find a place that suits you. Technology has advanced, and everyone has some access to the entertaining and informative Metaverse. (Yep, that must be where Mark Zuckerberg got the idea.)
Speaking of meta, the protagonist actually calls himself "Hiro Protagonist." He's something of a celebrity among programmers and boasts the best swordsmanship in the world, but he prefers an intense job as a Cosa Nostra pizza "Deliverator," believing his life will be forfeit if he's a second late. The deuteragonist is a rebellious teen "Kourier" who calls herself "Y.T.," short for "Yours Truly." Her method is to skateboard and grab motor vehicles like Marty McFly, only with a magnetic harpoon. You can guess how Hiro and Y.T. meet; it's initially adversarial, but she finishes the delivery for him, so they work out a loose partnership.
Most of the narration is in the present tense, presumably to make it easy to tell when we get a brief flashback (usually still the future to readers). It's all in the third person, typically centered on Hiro or Y.T., but there are several other focal characters. One of them is a cyborg dog, with rather simple thoughts, so he's not in the spotlight for long.
Anyway, Hiro becomes aware of the data file "Snow Crash" when a stranger in the Metaverse offers it like a drug, which doesn't make sense to him. Programming buddy Da5id foolishly opens it out of sheer curiosity, crashing his computer -- and his mind. From there, Hiro's quest for answers gets him in touch with old comrades, strange bedfellows, and enemies to challenge his prowess. He discovers a conspiracy for power, but that's not half of it.
To give you an idea, Hiro asks whether Snow Crash is a drug, a virus, or a religion and is met with "What's the difference?" We get the boldest claims about religious history this side of Dan Brown, albeit with slightly more esteem. What the characters piece together sheds a whole new light on not just that but civilization, language, free will, and biology in general. It's so mind-blowing that compelling evidence of sapient ETs comes up only briefly and never again. How Hiro can explain it all in one go and not have his listeners confused, disbelieving, or locked up in an existential crisis is beyond me.
Fortunately, it's not the next Stranger in a Strange Land. Stephenson tries to explain everything scientifically enough to be credible. I won't say I'd believe it, but at least he doesn't blur the line between sci-fi and outright fantasy. Nor does it read like wishful thinking.
The other character I found particularly interesting is, well, maybe not the main villain but certainly the most brutal. "Raven" is so obsessed with past injustices toward Aleuts that there is no number of people he won't kill. Not many he can't, either, with his mad skills and equipment. This doesn't stop him from being a gentleman when the mood strikes him, as when the pay is good.
The story actually doesn't take place nearly as much in the Metaverse as I was led to expect. That may be just as well, because Snow Crash is about the only thing that can pose a dire threat there; anything else amounts to getting booted off a server at worst. Hiro does eventually enhance himself to the point that he can do things in RL and the Metaverse at the same time, but we don't see much of that, because it's dizzying.
Stephenson can be good at painting a picture, but I did get a bit lost at a few points, not least in the pseudo-geographic sense. The future people do travel a lot. Sometimes I was glad not to fully envision a scene; it gets ugly. Still, the action is exciting when it comes. (There's also plenty of swearing and some semi-graphic statutory rape.)
Several blurbs describe the book as funny. I had trouble telling which parts were meant as parody rather than half-serious prediction. At least the U.S. government, where Y.T.'s mom works, has become a caricature of itself.
I took a while getting through 550+ pages, but to me, it was worth the trek. SC is nothing if not mentally stimulating, and the punk element isn't rotten enough to make me stop caring what happens. I might check out more of Stephenson; he didn't write a sequel to this, so I hope the next one's pretty different.
My next read is Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It's been praised by other minority female fantasy authors.
no subject
I would skip SevenEves, it has an interesting premise, but a villain is introduced by means of an idiot plot move, and that's when I abandoned the book.
There's also Zodiac, an environmentalist polemic in the tradition of Edward Abbey's MonkeyWrench Gang and Hayduke Lives.