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Snow CrashThe science fiction novel Snow Crash (1992), written by Neal Stephenson, follows in the footsteps of the cyberpunk novels by such authors as William Gibson and Rudy Rucker, though Stephenson breaks away from the typical "techno punk" stories by embellishing this story with a heavy dose of satire and jet-black humor. Snow Crash (Stephenson's third novel) rocketed to the top of the fiction best-seller charts upon its release and established Stephenson as a major science fiction writer for the 1990s. Like many postmodern novels, Snow Crash has a unique style and a chaotic structure which many readers find difficult to follow. It contains many arcane references to geography, politics, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, history, and computer science — some of which may be difficult to understand until one consults an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. Background The story takes place in a semi-America of the future, where corporatization, franchising, and the economy in general have spun wildly out of control. Snow Crash depicts the absence of a central powerful state; in its place, corporations have taken over the traditional roles of government, including dispute resolution and national defense. The United States has lost most of its territory in the wake of an economic collapse; the residual remains of the federal government are weak and inefficient and are used by Stephenson for comic relief. Much of the territory lost by the government has been carved up into a huge number of sovereign enclaves, each run by its own big business franchise (such as "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong" or the various residential burbclaves). This arrangement bears a similarity to anarcho-capitalism, a theme Stephenson carries over to his next novel The Diamond Age. Hyperinflation has devalued the dollar to the extent that trillion dollar bills, Ed Meeses, are little regarded and the quadrillion dollar note, a Gipper, is the standard 'small' bill. For large transactions, people resort to alternative currencies like yen or "Kongbucks" (the official currency of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong). The Metaverse, Stephenson's successor to the Internet, permeates ruling-class activities, and constitutes Stephenson's vision of how a virtual reality-based Internet might evolve in the near future. Although there are public-access Metaverse terminals in Reality, using them carries a social stigma among Metaverse denizens, in part because of the low visual quality of the avatars (the Metaverse representation of a user). In the Metaverse, status is a function of two things: access to restricted environments (such as the Black Sun, an exclusive Metaverse club) and technical acumen (often demonstrated by the sophistication of one's avatar). See Second Life, The Palace, Uru, and Active Worlds. The latter is based entirely on Snow Crash. Plot The story centers around Hiro Protagonist, an out-of-work hacker and swordsman, and a streetwise young girl nicknamed Y.T. (short for Yours Truly), who works as a plank Kourier for a company called RadiKS. The pair meet when Hiro loses his job as a pizza delivery driver for the Mafia, and decide to become partners in the intelligence business. The setting is a near-future dystopian version of Los Angeles, where franchising, individual sovereignty and automobiles reign supreme (along with drug trafficking, violent crime, and traffic congestion). The pair soon learn of a dangerous new drug, called "Snow Crash" - both a computer virus, capable of infecting the brains of unwary hackers in the Metaverse, and a drug in Reality being marketed through a nearly-untraceable chain of sources. As Hiro and Y.T. dig deeper (or are drawn in), they discover more about Snow Crash and its connection to ancient Sumerian culture, the fiber-optics monopolist L. Bob Rife and his enormous Raft of refugee boat people, and an Aleut harpooner named Raven, whose ambition is to nuke America. The Snow Crash metavirus may be characterized as an extremely aggressive meme. Stephenson spends much of the novel taking the reader on an extensive, impeccably-researched tour of the mythology of ancient Sumeria, while theorizing upon the origin of languages and their relationship to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Asherah is portrayed as a deadly biological and verbal virus which was stopped in Ancient Sumer by the God Enki. In order to do that, Enki deployed a countermeasure which was later described as the Tower of Babel. The deeper meaning of the novel can be summed up with a quote from William S. Burroughs: "Language is a virus from outer space". The book also reflects ideas from Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976). Characters - Hiro Protagonist As the name suggests, the hero of the novel, a hacker, swordsman, and sometime pizza delivery man.
- Y.T. --- A teenage courier.
- Da5id --- Friend of Hiro, co-creator of the elite Metaverse club The Black Sun. First to fall victim to the Snow Crash virus.
- L. Bob Rife --- All-around magnate, plies the seas in an aircraft carrier with a city's worth of boat people lashed to it.
Editions - ISBN 0553380958: Paperback (Bantam Spectra Book)
- ISBN 055308853X: Hardcover (Bantam Spectra Book)
- ISBN 1586211110: Audio cassette (abridged)
- ISBN 1586211137: Audio cassette (unabridged)
- ISBN B0000D1BR2: e-Book (Adobe Reader)
- ISBN B0000D1BR3: e-Book (Microsoft Reader)
- Audio download from audible.com
See also External links
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