"Snow Crash"
(Reviewed by Judi Clark FEB 28 1998)
This is another great virtual reality novel, one which I read shortly after Gibson's "sprawl" trilogy.
Hiro Protagonist, a pizza delivery driver/hacker and Y.T., a female skateboarding courier, join forces to find out about a new designer drug that can crash hackers and computers alike.
In a lot of ways, this books is more accessible than Neuromancer and probably more technically correct, but then Stephenson is what they call second generation cyberpunk. I like a lot of what he imagines in the near future. I am still waiting for avatars and the whole 3D experience of the "metaverse" (Internet) as described in this book. Another aspect of the novel that I like is Stephenson's ability to point out what's still physically necessary despite cyberspace - such as couriers and pizza delivery. Now that I'm thinking about it, it is time to get another copy of this book and read it again.
- Amazon.com reader rating:
from 563 reviews
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Bibliography: (with links to Amazon.com)
- The Big U (1984)
- Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller (1988)
- Snow Crash (1992)
- The Diamond Age (1995)
- Cryptonomicon (May 1999)
The Baroque Cycle
- Quicksilver (September 2003)
- The Confusion (April 2004)
- The System of the World (October 2004)
Non-Fiction
Written as Stephen Bury (with his uncle J. Fredrick George):
- Interface (1995)
- The Cobweb (1997)
- Artists' Multiples, 1935-2000 (February 2002)
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Book Marks:
- The official Web site for Neal Stephenson
- Official Cryptomonicom Web site
- Short story, The Great Simoleon Caper by Neal Stephenson
- Review of Zodiac
- Review of Interface
- SFBook.com review of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age
- SFsite review of The Cobweb
- The New York Times review of Cryptomonicon
- MostlyFiction review of Quicksilver
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About the Author:
Neal Stephenson was born in 1959 in Meade, Maryland and grew up in in Ames, Iowa. He graduated from Boston University in Massachusetts with a B.A. in Geography with a minor in Physics. Bruce Sterling has said that Stephenson "is the first second-generation, native cyberpunk science-fiction writer. Unlike most of the original '80s cyberpunks, he grew up in the new technoculture and, with a hacker's background knows how it really works." Neal Stephenson lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife and two children.
