スノウ・クラッシュ

I ordered this thinking I’d get what was pictured. Not some raggity alternate edition that makes feel like I’m gonna break it if I touch it!

Time’s 100 best English-language novels. This is the second book of Neal Stephenson that I read after Seveneves with a totally different premise and writing style. Set in a dystopian future where organizations run empires, online world is more interesting than reality and where everything is privatized. Detailed descriptions are provided of technology that is close to what we have today. A great contribution to cyberpunk scifi, this book is highly recommended.

An absurdist, dystopian science fiction novel dealing with elements of history, linguistics, anthropology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics and philosophy. Primarily, the plot revolves around information and how it affects humans. The difference between the workings of a man (Or for that matter, a beast) and a machine is frequently blurred to great effect. The book also popularised the term avatar meaning a virtual persona. Would recommend.

If you love cyberpunk, you'll love this! This is probably the sixth time I've read Snow Crash. It's one of those books you can re-read and see something new each time. It's darkly funny and smart. It will leave you wanting for a Y.T. and Hiro Protagonist sequel novel.

One of the most influential and seminal novels of the cyberpunk genre.Brilliant,intelligent and original,this book is a must read for anyone who loves science fiction.

Could not keep my interest but I can understand liking it.

A classic.

Great book, I never read it because I thought it would be "dated". Not really the case, still relevant tech. Excellent characters and story.

2.7/5
I've been wanting to read this one for a long time due to all the hype surrounding it, but after finishing just half of it I couldn't see what all the fuss was about.
It starts out fine, and builds this great cyberpunk/LitRPG environment, and made pizza deliverers seem like the coolest people in the world. I was into it, and was enjoying all the descriptions and car chases and character introductions (Y.T. is probably the best).
But once I hit the halfway point everything just stalled. The cyberpunk feel and atmosphere was gone, and it turned into just walls and walls of textbook-like information about history and religion (literally a quarter of the book is this). For the rest of the book it just got slower and less interesting for me. The main character, Hiro, even got less enjoyable, to the point where I didn't even want to read his chapters anymore. But the female protagonist, Y.T., continued to be pretty cool.

There were some cool and unique characters, and moments, but just nothing that could save this book for me.

Still one of my all time favorite novels. Written in a time before GPUs and Xbox and PS VR, it’s amazing how many of Mr. Stephenson’s ideas have become tropes within the development of the VR environments. This work has inspired so many other writers and movie makers, and you can almost always find a little nod to Snow Crash in every influenced story, movie, or game.

I read Snow Crash mainly because of the comparisons to Ready Player One. But other than a young protagonist and the metaverse/oasis, they are very different novels. I did not enjoy Snow Crash nearly as much. It is not as much fun as RP1, and is too cynical for my tastes.

There is also a LOT of content about ancient religions, and a strained attempt to compare religion to a virus, both of which I found largely unnecessary and a drag on the story telling. Its like Stephenson figured, I did all this research into religion and mysticism, so I am going to impress you by putting EVERYTHING I learned in my new book.

Not that Snow Crash is bad. It is inventive. There is some good, smart writing. As a programmer, Stevenson's descriptions of computing systems ring true. If you are interested in cyberpunk and ancient Sumaria, and don't mind the bleak outlook, then you will probably enjoy it.

Another great read from Neal Stephenson where the dualistic action takes place in the Metaverse and in a dystopian reality driven by the ancient programming of the human BIOS. Also there is the humor of such great silly lines as "the galley so low"!

A fun read!

Mir gefiel dieses Buch sehr. Ich werde es in Zukunft bestimmt nochmals lesen. Ich kann mir virstellen, dass es nicht für jeden ist..

Great book. Read it.

The writing is quite good and kept me reading. The problem is that the absurdist elements never really created a consistent critique that I would expect from satire and undermined the book if intended as serious speculative fiction.

The ending was also unsatisfying for me. It felt like it ended the way it did simply because the author didn't feel like writing anymore rather than actually bringing the book to a conclusion. There was no payoff and, ultimately, it made the book feel unplanned and unstructured. It's really a shame because there are some compelling ideas throughout the book but I will remember this book as a disappointment rather than for cool concepts like lingual hacking and the rise of consciousness.

I love this book, and I needed a copy for my Kindle!

Fun read! I read this years ago and did it recently.

I found it incredibly hard to read. It was more like stream of consciousness than a real novel, and it was very uneven. The characters were not fleshed out, nor were they very likeable. If there is a sequel I will not bother reading it.

America in the not-so-far future (?), where everything is privatized and franchised by big and small corporations/fiefedoms (including the Mafia). Hiro Protagonist, master hacker/programmer, world best Katana Artist, ex-pizza Deliverator-lives alternately in "real" and in Metaverse where his avatar meets the other avatars. His main source of income - selling info to CIC (the corporate heir to CIA). He encounters YT, a fifteen-year-old Kourier, riding the latest RadiKS Mark IV Smarwheels board. YT is street smart to the nth degree and possibly knows more about the world than her fortyish mom, who works for the security-obsessed Feds (who work dilligently doing probably nothing at all). Hiro and YT weave in-and-out between real and Metaverse facing challenges and unspeakable dangers. But they meet their match and possibly their doom at the hands of Raven, a collosal Aleut who wields glass-tipped harpoons and a smallish H-bomb designed to take revenge on America. While Hiro attempts to avoid his bane, YT and Raven fall for each other creating a major maelstorm of passion. Raven is in cahoots with a quadrillionaire, who attempts to take over the entire planet by accessing the lowest-level language that disappeared with the disappearance of Sumer and the beginning of the diversification of languages (i.e. the fall of ther Tower of Babel). The writing is good, fast, furious, and often funny. An avalanche of information about programming, gaming, computers, genetics, biology, sociology, history, linguistics, etc etc is woven into the narrative where everything is a spoof, a social criticism, a tongue-in-cheek comment on the way this world goes. However, and this is a big however, the author fails to explain how the web still exists, how the technology advances by leaps-and-bounds, and how things still function (mostly) in his mega-fragmented universe. Besides, he often succumbs to an overwhelming urge to catechise and explain everything. The blatant case is Hiro's monolog where he explains the world of computers, linguistics, and ancient history to several people, including Uncle Enzo. Despite Uncle Enzo's main occupation of running Mafia International, he glibly swalows all this information at the most arcane level. Not everything has to make sense, but the obvious pitfalls loose the book its fifth star, at least for this reader.

Very poor