Snow Crash

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, technically falls within the sub-genre of Cyberpunk. It contains the necessary elements: virtual reality hackers, a fascination with Japanese culture, a gritty dystopia. I feel a little uncomfortable putting Snow Crash in that box though. Snow Crash constantly subverts and toys with the rules and conventions of noir. For god's sake, the main character's name is Hiro Protagonist. Like Slaughterhouse Five, Snow Crash is bigger and better than any labels that could be attached to it. It may not be great literature, but it is a great read.

Perhaps the best way to describe Snow Crash is listing what the author prioritizes in writing it. Stephenson's first and foremost concern is humor. Snow Crash isn't quite out and out wacky like a Terry Pratchett novel, but it is basically hilarious. The next most important thing in Snow Crash is being cool. There is just a lot of badass stuff in the book, enough that the characters sometimes actually comment on it. Which leads us into the tertiary goal of Snow Crash: crazy bombastic action. Finally, surprisingly, Snow Crash is about fascinating hard science fiction with a core of thoughtfulness that serves as ballast, keeping the lighter parts of the book from drifting off into the realm of pure fluff.

The story revolves around Hiro Protagonist: hacker, swordmaster, pizza deliveryman. He is drawn into an ever expanding fight against a new drug called Snow Crash. He races through a fun setting where each suburb is its own little country; populated by rad skate punks, the Mafia, and cyborg doggies.  To go into more detail would spoil the enjoyment, so I'll leave it at that. I will note that the book came out in the early '90s and has a sort of undefinable '90s attitude to it. Snow Crash, like many sci-fi books, extrapolates a future out from it's own decade. So the obsessions of the 1991 are all touched on, the malls, the fresh 'tude, the burbs, etc (think the movie Clueless). What can I say, it was an innocent time.

Snow Crash is kinda like this!

If it wasn't clear from the review, I loved Snow Crash. The humor, the action, the science- it all worked for me. This is the part where I always quibble but I've got to say, I'm really scrounging here. Um, the end was kind of abrupt? The characters kind of rely on the reader to sketch in their personalities a bit, maybe? I don't know, it was great, everyone should read it. 14 out of 15 boats destroyed!