Snow Crash: A Novel

Neal Stephenson

Aug 2003 · Sold by Spectra

About this ebook

Now featuring never-before-seen material, the “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators

Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions.

Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary.

But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state).

Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian priesthood. He’ll be joined by Y.T., a fearless teenaged skateboard courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.

Ratings and reviews

This novel kept my attention with every page. Mr. Stephenson paints a picture of a unique imaginative cyberpunk world as a backdrop to a story that on the surface appears to be about hackers and corporations and spies and drugs and bombs and plots and experiments. However, underneath it all it is about wonderful characters interacting and connecting in surprising and wonderful ways. And a dog who is the goodest boye ever. Yes he is.

Really an easy and enjoyable read into a future that is much more likely than most sci-fi futures I read about. I own the real book, but Google Books won't let me tell it I already own it. Google has a long way to go to catch up to Amazon in little ways like this. Still: prefer the google play store over all.

Interesting concepts explored in-depth with some poking jabs at various story-telling aspects (main character's name comes to mind). One scene will leave you feeling very uncomfortable, but I think that was the intent. All the threads woven neatly with room for the reader to make some educated guesses. Definitely worth your time if you like the genre.

About the author

Neal Stephenson is the author of New York Times bestsellers including The Diamond Age, Zodiac, Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World, REAMDE, Anathem, Seveneves, Fall: or Dodge in Hell, and Termination Shock, as well as nonfiction works such as In The Beginning . . . Was the Command Line. He has worked for Blue Origin and Magic Leap, and more recently co-founded Lamina1, a startup creating an open metaverse platform.