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)

good story, old crappy audio. needs remastered

good story, poor audio, needs to be remastered. sounds like it was recorded in the '70s.

A lot of babble from Babel

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I didn't "spend" time listening to this book, as always I am a captive of traffic. It was an okay listen.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Abrupt!

Any additional comments?

I listened to this because I really enjoyed Diamond Age by the same author. The Story was good but the lessons from the “librarian” were too long and repetitive. Worse, the premise is flawed, hackers do not read binary in the manner the story indicates… I wrote my first program back in 1969 and still code today. I used to write in mainframe assembler (assembly) and I was an ace at debugging memory dumps. These are not spewed out in binary, they are in hexadecimal. Unlike decimal which is based on 10, hex is based on 16 with “numbers” ranging from 0 to F with F having a value of 15. A hex value of “10” is sixteen a hex value of “1F” is 31, hex “20” is 32. See, just like decimal but you carry 1 to the left on 16 instead of 10 and this is how machine code is presented. Yes, we also know the binary representation e.g that same “1F” (31) above would be 0001 1111 in binary but I have NEVER seen any type of computer present code or data in that manner, only on TV. Clearly it would be counterproductive to present binary when hex serves the purpose.

Anyway, enough of the tech lesson, I hope somebody finds it a little interesting. Getting back to the book, the characters were interesting and the story would have been great if it had moved along a little quicker… get rid of the librarian!

Great

Loved it. Loved the story, excellent narration. Looking forward to listening to more by Stephenson

Great Ideas But Overlooks Quite a Bit

Would have been 5 stars if it weren't for the highly unnecessary and outrageously detailed statutory rape. He reminds us numerous times of a character's age only to continually objectify them ultimately leading to an end that was as obvious as it was useless to the plot of the book. For all his oversight and attention to detail it was points in the book like that one that stood out as all the more jarring.

one of the first cyber punk

Ended up really enjoying the book. Took a bit to get into and the noises at the end of chapters was a bit hokey...but they mostly make sense later

Excellent, deep story, marred by one annoyance.

The story is what you come for, and that is excellent. The narrator is always excellent as well, I've listened to his other works just because it was him.

The only issue with this audio book is the between chapter bumper... I get the idea of the babel concept, but it grates on my nerves to have a loud glossolalic punch to the eardrums ever few minutes out of left field.

But I'll still listen to this again and again

A slog

I heard this was one of the inspirations of ready player one. It's interesting, but hard to get through.

a little dated but still fantastic

some things have not aged well (l.t and Raven, r word, ethnic things) but has lots of depth and we'll worth the listen.

have to listen twice

you have to listen to it twice for a lot of it to make sense but holy cow is it good

Hit all my button.

loved everything about this book. with themes of anthropology, scifi, religious undertones, and action; this book really satisfied me. Loved all the characters, and the dialogue was pretty good. The world Stephenson created was great.