There isn’t anything that Neal Stephenson doesn’t use in his novel to poke fun of a futuristic society which doesn’t seem far removed from the America I’m living in today.
We’ve got a teenage girl named Y.T. who is a Kourier, riding a plank (skateboard) and pooning (harpooning) cars in traffic to catch a ride.
We’ve got Hiro Protagonist, part Japanese and part African American, with two crossed swords as his weapons of choice, who lives in a U-Stor-It unit in reality, but is a warrior in the Metaverse into which he can goggle in through his computer.
We’ve got a religious cult with a leader named Rife, a drug known as Snow Crash, and a mafia group run by Uncle Enzo.
We’ve got the Aleutian named Raven, who is not only immensely powerful physically, but has made knives out of glass sharper than any made of steel.
We’ve even got vehicles as mundane as those annoying minivans so popular in the burbs that Stephenson has named them “bimbo boxes”.
This is an action packed Sci-fi novel which leaves no major theme untouched: war, weapons, language, religion, politics, and power. It’s done at the hand of the master, Neal Stephenson, who has us glued to our seats as if we were watching the whole thing unfold on a massive screen before us.
I read it for Carl’s Once Upon a Time Challenge VII, as well as for the Times’ list of 100 best books written since 1923. Snow Crash was nominated for both the British Science Fiction Award in 1993, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1994.
Here is a book I've never even heard of before! It sounds like “believable” sci-fi.
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I love love love this book. It's amazing. Makes me sad I am reading so much YA lately for my group on goodreads. Sometimes I want to step down and make more time for other novels again!
Angie
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I've heard great things about Stephenson's novels but haven't read one yet — they might be too sci-fi-y for me!
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Went through a Stephenson phase a few years ago & remember enjoying this one as well as Zodiac, Diamond age & a couple of others, also enjoyed William Gibson around this time, keep meaning to try both again.
PS another one worth trying is Bruce Sterling.
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The only other Neal Stephenson novel I've read is Cryptinomicron which I'm not even sure I understood the ending of. He's a great writer, though normally Sci-Fi is not my favorite genre. Thanks for leaving me the names of other authors you recommend.
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They are Sci-Fi to be sure,
But extremely well written. Not only is the plot interesting, but the characters are well drawn, and the sarcasm is wonderful!
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I can't get too involved in group reads, or one genre, or I get sad, too.
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Believable in the sense that even though it's
bizarre and futuristic, one can totally identify America and her woes.
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I have heard so much about Stephenson and have his Baroque trilogy sitting on my shelves. But his SF novels look great to and I hope to finally get to him soon.
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He is a fascinating author, ven for someone like me who does not feel terribly passionate about Sci-fi for fantasy. I could easily try reading everything he's written.
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I loved this one when I read it a few years ago but it's amazing at how much of it seems to be a reality in these days when it was so futuristic when Stephenson wrote it. I haven't tried anything else by him but would like to one day–I remember hearing a lot about REAMDE a year or two ago.
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