Snow Crash MP3 CD – MP3 Audio, April 15, 2014

This is a book that is about Mind Blowing. And some other things. Stick with it. It will blow your mind.

0101 1100 1101 00011111 0010 0101 1010What if looking at these seemingly innocent binary numbers could not only affect your computer, but your brain as well? After all, your brain is simply a biological computer itself.This is one of the main themes in Stephenson's SNOW CRASH, a becoming-more-recognizable future where people divide their time between Reality and the Metaverse.The other theme is more complex, but tries to draw parallels between Sumerian mythology and computer viruses. It's interesting in that it challenges the reader to alter their view of history, but the analogies are not as well drawn as they could be.Fortunately, these two suit-and-tie topics are woven into a story that features an eccentric cast of characters and an action-packed storyline. I couldn't use the phrase "colorful cast of characters" as some of them are literally black and white in the Metaverse!For example there's the main hero, Hiro Protagonist. I haven't come across a name that creative since Prince S., a character in Dostoyevsky's THE IDIOT.The sword-wielding, motorcycle-riding Hiro reminded me heavily of Cloud from the famous FINAL FANTASY 7.Then there's the skateboarding Y.T. (not Whitey!), a 15-year old, skateboarding female Kourier that reminded me of the rebellious John Conner of TERMINATOR 2.The locations are just as interesting, where people live in storage units or the neighborhoods of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, The Sacrifice Zone, Nova Sicilia, Narcolumbia, et al.It's not exactly Mister Roger's Neighborhood either as each place has their own rules and lots of security to keep out unwanted people.Just off the shore of the West Coast (where most of the story takes place) is a mass of ships called The Raft. Very similar to Mieville's ship-city of Armada in his book THE SCAR (written many years after this book). It is here where Hiro and gang meet up with several of the major antagonists as the novel draws to a close.With so many crazy ideas all into one book, it is understandable that the first hundred pages read like SNOW CRASH FOR DUMMIES, complete with laugh-out-loud humor, to make your transition into this world easier than Orientation Day at school or work.After those first hundredish pages, the story races along like a mechanical guard-dog on a straight highway.The mythology portions come up about halfway, but are presented by a Librarian. The best way to imagine the Librarian: What if GOOGLE could talk? or What if that stupid paperclip in MICROSOFT OFFICE actually did something useful for once?The ending, while action-packed and exciting, is where I felt some disappointment. The last line is good, but there is not much closure on what happens to the characters and the chapters that were previously ~15 pages are rapidly narrowed down to ~5 pages--a sign of an author who can't contain his excitement at almost finishing his book.But on the whole, I found this novel much more enjoyable and understandable than William Gibson's earlier NEUROMANCER.If Hiro were rating this book, he would give it 0100 out of 0101 Stars.

Easily one of the best books of all time, I have now read this book three times and each time I read it I pick up something new.

I read this book because it is legendary. I went in with high expectations due to all the praise. That’s my fault.I found a book that has fun elements, cool cyberpunk themes, and a main character I kinda never really enjoyed. Couple that with some SUPER troubling occurrences later in the book, and I just found myself kinda wishing I hadn’t read it. The ending is also just….bad. That may have actually soured the book for me even more. It was well written, had some cool elements and characters, but overall I think it’s just a book that didn’t age well and is a bit overhyped.

I was 308 pages into this book when I realised that I had no idea what it was about, yet I was still turning the pages and there were 255 pages to go. Now, when I say that I had no idea what it was about I’m being somewhat ingenuous, if not misleading. I’d picked up on the metaphor on which the story hung (pretty simple as you will discover) but I couldn’t understand what was making me turn the pages, because the normal rules of plot construction weren’t there. Yes, the main characters were interesting, and they faced extreme physical challengers, but they weren’t vulnerable or admirable in any human sense. That’s because they were avatars. It didn’t matter if they got cut to pieces or vaporised because they’d end up somewhere else down the line if the author found it useful to his then current scene.Ah, my problem lies right there. I can’t identify with avatars. That may not be a problem for anyone born in the last 30 years, but that’s possibly going to be the defining difference between people born in the 20th versus 21st centuries, because I can see that the digital world, particularly virtual reality and artificial intelligence, is changing concepts of human struggle and social involvement.What is fascinating about this book is that it represents the Rubicon between the two ages. Snow Crash was written in 1992 and it’s set in a world of real and virtual fluidity. The book imagined the metaverse long before the term found its way into dictionaries, and its characters move so seamlessly in and out of it that you’re never sure where they are. Not that it matters, because the author, Neal Stephenson, is such an energetic and creative wordsmith that you just stumble along after him, letting him take you wherever he wants to go. By the end, I concluded that the most stimulating and inspiring metaverse is the mind of a truly creative writer.It's a book you need to own.