Snow Crash

By: Neal Stephenson

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison - a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about Infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous...you'll recognize it immediately.

©1992 Neal Stephenson (P)2001 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Brilliantly realized...Stephenson turns out to be an engaging guide to an onrushing tomorrow." (The New York Times Book Review)
"Fast-forward free-style mall mythology for the 21st century." (William Gibson)

Ok

Was kind of hard for me to get into but I stuck around and was able to get into a bit more. Not the best book I’ve ever listened but definitely not the worst lol.

So distracting

The general performance and quality of the story were great .. but at every section break and chapter break there was this assault of noise. Some of it was meant to be background babble (from the story), but not only was that too much, all the other noises made for a high distraction.

A little harsh, hearing Cyberpunk satirized

I've been taking William Gibson's novels inseries. I took a break for this. It was grating, hearing, in the audiobook, Gibson's genre satirized llike this. Still, the faux historical concepts (I did look them up - no such things as nam shuds) and the expositinal elements were compeling but everything else, although well described, were fantastical elements bolted on to a satriracle storyline. However, the voice actor did a superlative job at delivering the story. Its worth the audiobook just to hear him perform it.

Ha Funny Some

Good performance by the reader. Some amusing parts in an otherwise over geeked lame yet pretentious narrative. Seems like the author was trying for a movie contract.

Fun and exciting early cyberpunk novel.

It is not easy to make a pizza delivery exciting. But when the delivery takes place in a dystopian future and the pizza franchise is owned by the Mafia and the punishment for late delivery is severe, it can get your pulse racing. And Neal Stephenson makes this happen in the opening scene of "Snow Crash".

Hiro Protagonist is the hero and protagonist of this novel. He is a deliverer of pizzas, a hacker, a music promoter, and an expert swordfighter, who fights most of his battles inside the Metaverse - a virtual reality world with its own rules and laws.

The United States government has collapsed, and hyperinflation has devalued its currency a trillion-fold. In California, each suburb is now its own autonomous nation. Hiro helped create the Metaverse, where he discovers a new virus that infects both computers and people. After some research, he realizes that the virus is an ancient one - predating computers by thousands of years and that it attacks the human brain in the same way a computer virus attacks the files and memory of a machine. This virus is so ancient that it may have inspired the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

Hiro encounters a religious cult, artificial intelligences, crime lords from various factions and nations, a rebellious teenager, and a psychotic Aleut.

I loved the way that Stephenson combined linguistics, history, cybercrime, and characters. He tells the entire story in the present tense, which gives it a sense of immediacy. Stephenson includes satire of commercialism and capitalism. Most of the suburb-states are controlled by corporations. The church exists for the personal financial benefit of its founder and is bankrolled by a telecommunications tycoon. And he includes a hilarious description of the bureaucratic regulations on the use of toilet paper.

The book is not without its faults. After an exciting start, it fails to maintain that same energy throughout the novel and the ending felt a bit rushed. Some of the characters could use a bit more development. Y.T. and Juanita - the most important female characters - were at least as intriguing as Hiro, but we did not get to know them as well as I would have liked.

A potential flaw is that this book contains several extended scenes in which Hiro or an Artificial Intelligence explain world history and background information in great detail. Usually, I prefer to learn things in a novel as the action unfolds, rather than having someone explain it to me; but I found their lectures interesting and illuminating - especially as they compared and contrasted the stories from various religions. And the author offsets these monologues/soliloquies with many scenes of intense action. Hiro and Raven the Aleut are the two badassest people on the planet - Hiro with his sword and Raven with his harpoon, so their battles tend to be epic.

This was not the first cyberpunk novel published, but it established Stephenson as a master of the genre.

Decent

overall interesting story. parts were compelling but other parts made me nod off. kinda like reading a book and getting to the end of the page and not knowing what you just read. the ending seemed a little abrupt and unresolved

interesting story, get way too deep on details.

I was brought to this book because it was recommended if I like ready player one and Ready Player Two. The only thing that those books in this book really have in common is a dystopian future, and a Oasis like virtual reality environment. Story itself is pretty good, pretty entertaining. a gripe I have with the audiobook as a whole, is the sound effects between chapters, which is very distracting, and frankly kind of annoying. another issue I have is certain parts of the book get overly detailed about stuff that doesn't really move the storyline along, and gets very monotonous. overall, if you like dystopian future type books, it's worth a listen, just be prepared to be bored out of your wits from time to time

Dear goodness the music/babel interludes render this pointless

This book is ruined by the production decision to have every plot point/chapter break be punctuated by borderline racist “babel-ings” and laser sound effects. All the momentum is eaten up by these obnoxious stingers, which is a shame because the audio quality is already so poor you’d think it was recorded in the 80s on a TalkBoy tape recorder, in a closet, on the moon.

AWESOME!

Always a great read...Hero is my hero & WT is the best. Long live Fido!!!

Uniquely interesting

This book meandered about but not in a boring way. Despite its length the ending comes on quick. Very enjoyable. A lot to think about.