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)

Doesn't live up to the hype

I heard about this book on a podcast and that it was very popular in Silicone Valley. I enjoy dystopian science fiction so I thought I would give it a try. Some parts were just tedious to get through. I struggled to finish and had to go read a plot summary. The performance is great, but the story is not. There are some interesting elements of technology for the future but that doesn't make s great story.

Good story.

A very interesting and curious melding of ancient theology and cyberpunk distopia... Be nice to dogs.

Good story, annoying chapter transition

The story and narrator were all fine, but there is this annoying chanting as you transition between every chapters.

what a dense (with content) book. great read

new writing style had to adapt but great once it was settled. great read

Good story, weird recording

Good story, what you expect from Neal Stephenson. However the audio recording is just weird. Odd sound efects etc. I think its just old.

Fantastic book

Got this by a friend who recommended it and I was quite impressed. Despite the age of the book lots of the details and concepts still hold up today.

Best novel of the 1990s

Exciting, amusing, deeply sarcastic and unbelievably prescient. Excellent choice for book clubs because there’s so much to discuss. Unlike most Sci-Fi, this book has female characters who stand on their own.

Great Main Story

The main story of a driver who helped create the metaverse but didn't invest in stock options so now he's a courier is great. My only issue is there's a LOT of religious themes and entire chapters explaining how Bible stories are like computer viruses. It was interesting but really heavy handed.

Also, there's a sex scene with a 15 year old girl and an adult man.

Vivid interesting characters

A great read. I revisit it periodically. This performance of it is spectacular. Keep an eye out for Y. T. in Diamond Age

Interesting plot, but a bit soiled by the anti-Asian racism and glorification of the Italian mafia

The plot was fantastic and i appreciated how there was a connection made between the classics of old and the modernist technocratic portrayal of VR.

What distracted me however was the distraction of gratuitous anti-Asian racism juxtaposed with the protagonist supposedly being of mixed-race Black/Japanese personage. As a reader who is also a person of color, the one-dimensional way certain characters were portrayed actually betrayed the fact that this story was written by a cis-gendered white male with no personal connection to any of the cultures he portrayed. What drove this point further home is how the Italian mafia was overly gloried throughout the novel. There is an apparent caste system here, and it’s clear where the author feels each ethnicity belongs in this futuristic tale.

Would recommend this read, but with a grain of salt.