Snow Crash

Snow Crash



Consumed this book this weekend, and it was a great mind-F***, similar to the first time you watch "The Matrix".

Where to begin? The central character, Hiro Protagonist (You have to admire a man with the stones to call his protagonist Mr. Protagonist!), lives in a dystopian future overrun by corporations, in which the world is split in two--Reality is, well, the real world, and the Metaverse is the hipper virtual world where everyone has avatars and can interact via being 'Goggled-in'.

Hiro is a pizza delivery boy / katana-wielding swordsman in the real world, and a Hacker God in the Metaverse. He works for the CostaNostra (yes, the Mafia) as a pizza delivery boy, whose motto is 'Delivery in 30 minutes or ELSE!' The novel opens as Hiro tries to get a pizza pie door-to-door in less than 10 minute, along the way attracting a 15 year old jailbait skateboard Kourier named 'Y.T.' (Stands for 'Yours Truly').

The plot centers around a 'virus' that someone wrote which can infect people's software--namely, their brain stem, turning them into mindless automatons. This virus is delivered via a drug, known as 'Snow Crash', and the drug exists in both the real and virtual worlds. As Hiro learns more and more, the novel becomes a techno-thriller in which Hiro, Y.T., and a motley consortium of the powers-that-be try to stop the folks behind Snow Crash from taking over the world.

...Along the way, we have lots of Heinlien-esque conceits in which Hiro dialogs with the Library of Congress computer about the nature of many things--language, religion, and human history. Along the way, he posits (in true Platonic dialog fashion) that organized religion is, itself, a virus. That it spreads, civilizes, controls, and enslaves (at least, that's what I took away from it!)

That's why this book is a MindF***...it causes you to re-examine stuff. In my pre-religious, atheistic days, I used to wonder if Civilization invented religion, along the lines of Marx's "opium for the masses," as a way to control the masses and make people satisfied with their crappy lot in life. Snow Crash turns that idea on its head, suggesting that religion invented civilization as a way of spreading religion.

Stephenson is a real geek, and it shows in his writing--Powers of 2 abound, everything has an order and a taxonomy, and his female characters are essentially men with vaginas--they're practical, logical, and oversexed. But anyway, I've been on a bit of a geek binge in the past 3 weeks, and this book was a fine capstone for that.

Now I'm off to see if I can integrate a Future with my uber-fast SNMP client.

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