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"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 614 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 (999)
• Anathem (2008)
• Reamde (2011)

The Baroque Cycle

• Quicksilver (2003)
• The Confusion (2004)
• The System of the World (2004)

Non-Fiction

• In the Beginning... Was the Command Line (1999)
• Some Remarks (August 2012)

Written as Stephen Bury (with his uncle J. Fredrick George):

• Interface (1995)
• The Cobweb (1997)
• Artists' Multiples, 1935-2000 (2002)

 

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Book Marks:

• The official Web site for Neal Stephenson
• Wikipedia page on Neal Stephenson
• Review of Zodiac
• SFsite review of The Cobweb
• MostlyFiction.com review of Quicksilver & The Confusion
• MostlyFiction.com review of Anathem
• MostlyFiction.com review of ReamDe

 

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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.