Andy's Bookshelf: Snow Crash
Sep. 26th, 2011 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_andySnow Crash, Neal Stephenson
I have a love/hate relationship with Snow Crash, but it doesn't have anything to do with the book itself: when I took the train from Seattle to Harrisburg to visit Chris (a THREE DAY trip) it was the only book I had. Oops. And it's a fast read. Oops squared. I read it twice and then tried to sleep for the remainder of the trip.
There's plenty not to like about Snow Crash, too much to list here (google a review or ask me questions in the comments if you're interested). Why I do like it, and why I've liked each subsequent Stephenson progressively less, is that Snow Crash is fun. It knows it's silly, and cyberpunk Mary Sue-ish, and has fun with it. It's in on the joke. What Neuromancer tries to sell you with a straight face, Snow Crash realizes is stupid-awesome and revels in it.
I think Stephenson's later works try to bury the fun in serious historicalness, and what enjoyment there is in them has to sneak around the edges when nobody is looking. I don't know whether he's trying to make his information technology fetish more palpable to "serious" readers or if this is what he wants to do, but I don't enjoy it as much. But then, I hated the Diamond Age, which everyone else wants to marry, so maybe I'm just weird.
Snow Crash is about Hiroaki "Hiro" Protagonist, a half-black, half-Japanese sword master, expert hacker, and pizza delivery boy. That sentence either made you laugh out loud or roll your eyes so hard you sprained your face. That's the test for if you'll find this book amusing or not.
The book is rough and uneven and has problematic bits and is definitely not for everyone (and drops an essay about the Sumerian language in towards the end). But I appreciate a book that says, "lets take all this random awesome cyberpunk shit and admit it's stupid and fun and play with it." It's like what you wished all your Shadowrun games were like.
I have a love/hate relationship with Snow Crash, but it doesn't have anything to do with the book itself: when I took the train from Seattle to Harrisburg to visit Chris (a THREE DAY trip) it was the only book I had. Oops. And it's a fast read. Oops squared. I read it twice and then tried to sleep for the remainder of the trip.
There's plenty not to like about Snow Crash, too much to list here (google a review or ask me questions in the comments if you're interested). Why I do like it, and why I've liked each subsequent Stephenson progressively less, is that Snow Crash is fun. It knows it's silly, and cyberpunk Mary Sue-ish, and has fun with it. It's in on the joke. What Neuromancer tries to sell you with a straight face, Snow Crash realizes is stupid-awesome and revels in it.
I think Stephenson's later works try to bury the fun in serious historicalness, and what enjoyment there is in them has to sneak around the edges when nobody is looking. I don't know whether he's trying to make his information technology fetish more palpable to "serious" readers or if this is what he wants to do, but I don't enjoy it as much. But then, I hated the Diamond Age, which everyone else wants to marry, so maybe I'm just weird.
Snow Crash is about Hiroaki "Hiro" Protagonist, a half-black, half-Japanese sword master, expert hacker, and pizza delivery boy. That sentence either made you laugh out loud or roll your eyes so hard you sprained your face. That's the test for if you'll find this book amusing or not.
The book is rough and uneven and has problematic bits and is definitely not for everyone (and drops an essay about the Sumerian language in towards the end). But I appreciate a book that says, "lets take all this random awesome cyberpunk shit and admit it's stupid and fun and play with it." It's like what you wished all your Shadowrun games were like.
