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Snow Crash [Paperback]

Neal Stephenson (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Publication Date: 2 Jun 2011

After the Internet, what came next?

Enter the Metaverse - cyberspace home to avatars and software daemons, where anything and just about everything goes. Newly available on the Street - the Metaverse's main drag - is Snow Crash, a cyberdrug. Trouble is Snow Crash is also a computer virus - and something more. Because once taken it infects the person behind the avatar. Snow Crash bleeds into reality.

Which is really bad news for Hiro - freelance hacker and the Metaverse's best swordfighter (he wrote the code) - and Y. T. - skateboard kourier, street imp and mouthy teenage girl - because reality was shitty enough before someone started messing with it . . .

Exploring linguistics, religion, computer science, politics, philosophy, cryptography and the future of pizza delivery, Snow Crash is a riveting, brake-neck adventure into the fast-approaching future.

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Product details

  • Paperback: 448 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin; Re-issue edition (2 Jun 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0241953189
  • ISBN-13: 978-0241953181
  • Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 2.7 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 7,306 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon Review

From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible. --Acton Lane --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Stephenson excels in marrying geekspeak with riotous action (Guardian )

A cross between Neuromancer and Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. This is no mere hyperbole (San Francisco Bay Guardian )

Brilliantly realized. Stephenson [is] an engaging guide to an onrushing tomorrow (The New York Times )

A fantastic, slam-bang-overdrive, supersurrealistic, comic-spooky whirl through a tomorrow that is already happening. Stephenson is intelligent, perceptive, hip (Timothy Leary )

Like a Pynchon novel with the brakes removed (Washington Post )
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 39 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Great book, poor kindle edition 22 Oct 2010
By Ferrious
Format:Kindle Edition
Lets get this out of the way: I adore this book. It's cyberpunk with all the fun put back in, and there are scenes that are literally worth reading the entire book for.

However, the Kindle Edition lets the book down significantly. OCR errors abound in another Kindle Edition that has obviously been hurriedly thrown together without much care. There's no attempt to make the formatting Kindle-friendly either. Now these errors don't ruin the book, it's still a great yarn, but they drag you out of the story rather harshly when they line up several times in a single paragraph.

Bottom line: Read this book, but if you can do it in paper form. While I love my Kindle to bits, I simply can't recommend getting this particular book as an ebook.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Good yarn based round a vision of the future of the internet 20 Dec 1999
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Not one I'd recommend for its complex, intricate plot with a clever twist at the end - because it doesn't have either - but the setting of the novel, where the Metaverse [cyberspace] exists alongside reality, is described in such detail, and sounds so plausible, that it is well worth a read. For a vision of the future of the internet, and one which could be here in a very few years, it's the best I've seen.

The novel is also about the rampant progress, if progress is the right word, of consumerism, and is rather more chilling if that aspect of it is to be taken as a vision of the future we're heading for. However, this element of the story seems to me to be something for the much more distant future at least.

In its description of the society of the future at least, "Snow Crash" is reminiscent of Michael Marshall Smith's "Only Forward" - another five-star candidate in my book.

Buy them both today.

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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid the Kindle version! 16 Oct 2010
By Lyndon Rosser
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
OK, first up, this is a great book which every SF fan should read, but for heaven's sake buy the paperback!

The Kindle edition is the most atrocious piece of typesetting I've ever had the misfortune to read. It has clearly not even been spellchecked, let alone proofread. At one point chunks of words from one line were being randomly inserted into words in the line above, rendering the paragraph into complete gibberish. The first introduction of the crucial Babel/Infocalypse term is completely mispelled, despite it being in bold and a triple sized font.

I'm astonished that Amazon has the barefaced cheek to charge nearly five quid for this shoddy garbage, and I've half a mind to demand my money back.
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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Style over Substance 3 Feb 2000
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
A book with brilliant ideas and plenty of substance, but even more style. Every cariacature and cliche is here, but taken to the slickest, coolest, and baddest end.

It's not a complex plot, but it's a complicated one. With multiple story threads, that means that when the time for a re-read rolls around, you'll feel like you're reading a different story. I'd like to believe this was intentional on his part (the Diamond Age has a similar feel to it)

The scope of this book ranges from the bizarre to the absurd, from the civilised to the savage. The future Stephenson shares with us is hopefully not prophetic, but is realistic enough to come true, and is still near enough to the real world to see trends in society making it come true.

Inspiring, frightening, exciting and amusing all at once, I don't think I've read any book more times than Snow Crash.

Read 'The Diamond Age' (same author), 'Interface' by Stephen Bury (pseudonym). Also excellent books.

As another reviewer mentioned. For a similar style of read, read the also excellent 'Only Forward' by Michael Marshall-Smith.

Buy it, now.

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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, poor Kindle edition 4 Sep 2010
By SiD
Format:Kindle Edition
I own the paperback version of Snow Crash so wouldn't hesitate in rating it five stars, but it would seem that for the Kindle edition the publishers lazily OCR-ed a paper copy without proofreading it.

Many words are misspelt (e.g. corner becomes comer, run becomes rum), punctuation is missing and the occasional word (mostly abbreviations) is replaced with blank spaces. There is at least one mistake every three or four pages (though often several on one page) which really rips you out of a very enjoyable read.

Definitely one to buy as a paperback.
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45 of 52 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Deliverator 1 Oct 2003
By Matthew Wharton
Format:Paperback
Snow Crash was Neal Stephenson's breakthrough novel and is the one that saw him being labelled inaccurately as a cyberpunk novelist. Snow Crash is a brilliant witty science fiction adventure.

In the near future the nation state of America has broken down and people live in corporate owned mini city-states. The Mafia control pizza delivery and Hiro Protagonist a samurai sword wielding deadbeat hacker is a Deliverator of pizzas. Hiro is drawn into a complex plot to enslave people's minds when a computer virus/drug called Snow Crash is released onto the Metaverse. Trying to stop Hiro in his quest to save the world is Raven an Aleutian psychopath with razor thin glass knives and a Nuclear Weapon strapped to his motorcycle.

This book is responsible for bringing into public consciousness many cyberspace concepts that are now becoming commonplace. The concept of the Metaverse and Avatars is now mainstream in MMORPGs such as Everquest and The Sims Online. Also the idea that the human brain is programmable and is capable of crashing has become accepted by neuroscientists and can be seen in the science of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Stephenson demonstrates an ability here to dump a lot of information into your brain without you noticing, and although there are a few missteps along the way generally his science is sound unlike many SF writers.

The one failing of the book is that the over-arching threat posed by L. Bob Rife and his plan to take over the world never seems threatening enough and dwindles in comparison to the actual physical threat of Raven.

The world conceived of in the book is both a brilliant backdrop to the plot and a credible possible future that we may be facing....

If the first 25 pages don't get you hooked then put the book down, step away carefully and go numb your mind by watching television game shows. Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars Grammatical Error
I got as far as "He is roll model." at location 121 and stopped dead. Given the glowing reviews from elsewhere I may give it another go but this is not a promising start, is it?
Published 8 days ago by C. NEWPORT
1.0 out of 5 stars Awful
If you think that the first paragraph of any book should start with bad metaphors like comparing bullets bouncing off armour to that of a wren flying into a patio door, then this... Read more
Published 23 days ago by foo2000
4.0 out of 5 stars Snow Crash
Its a real Marmite book. You either like it or hate it...or even understand it or not!

I found it intriguing but quite a hard read. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Mr. David J. Barton
5.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining read that provokes serious thoughts about the...
Truly (near-)futuristic when it came out, for a new reader this might seem a bit old hat, but for me the pace of the plot and the vividness of the writing still seem fresh. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Richard M
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
This book is a masterpiece I have read it about four times - I keep lending it out never to be returned.
I will be keeping this copy.
Published 4 months ago by Brian Dunne
5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Novel
In order to fully appreciate this book you need to set your mind back to 1992 when it was published. Read more
Published 4 months ago by bunglenutter
1.0 out of 5 stars Childish and Stupid
I was looking for a modern sci-fi novel to compare with the likes of Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon; Snow Crash has left me irritated and disappointed. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Shopper Z
5.0 out of 5 stars My favourite book. Funny, insightful, prescient, action packed &...
If I didn't describe it well enough in the title, just read the first chapter, hell the first few paragraphs. If after that you cn put it down, then do so. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Alasdair
4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable Cyberpunk Adventure
Reading "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson was my first ever venture into the Science-Fiction sub-genre of Cyberpunk. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Killie
5.0 out of 5 stars Much more than just Cyberpunk
"Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing--is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?"
Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference? Read more
Published 7 months ago by Frank Wetzig
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