Get Your Hands On Snow Crash Scripted By Neal Stephenson Offered As Digital Edition

had great world building, great concepts, and great satire, but story wise the lastcompletely falls apart.
I was a little disappointed by the ending, Also, I had a hard time with the active voice used throughout this book, Reading it felt like a friend pitching a movie to me,

The languageasprogramming concept was terrific though, even though I think that Max Barry obviously influenced by this book wrote a much more compelling story using the same high concepts when he wrote Lexicon.
.stars. On my list of All Time Favorite novels, While reading this book, I was constantly thinking to myself "WOW, what a great concept" and "HOW did Stephenson think that up" Without giving away too much in the way of spoilers, I was particularly amazed at the way the author took computers, vitual reality and the metaverse and tied it into ancient religions, philosophy and the origin of language.
I thought this aspect of the novel was absolutely mindboggling, Add to that a great antihero, a superb villain actually several villains and a brilliantly detailed and quirky view of a dystopian future and you have a one of kind reading experience.
HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!!

Nominee: British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel
Nominee: Arthur C, Clarke Award for Best SF Novel
Nominee: Locus Award for Best SF Novel
Nominee: Prometheus Award for Best Novel Cyberpunks next generation pretty much began here.
Written by someone who unlike William Gibson actually knows computers, this anime in novel form is one of those rare SF books that is read by many nonSF readers.


On a personal note, this is probably the only book Ill ever read whose main character is half black and half Japanese, just like me! When I first read it, I was working at a pizza place, just like the protagonist, and I actually got fired around the same time I got to the point of him losing his job as well.
Also, my first name is Hiroshi and he goes by Hiro, Cool, huh OK, aside from those neat little coincidences, we are not at all alike, It just made reading it all the more fun for me, Plus I hated that job,

Admittedly, there are certain aspects of this book that are a tad dated now it was written in, and he cant quite get past certain stereotypes of Japanese people that many Westerners harbor.
Still, there is some fun bit of social commentary and parody on just about every other page, and Stephenson satirizes globalization years before most people even knew what globalization is.


There is also some really fascinating stuff involving the concept of memetic viruses, which he ties to Sumerian mythology and the Tower of Babel.
I know that a lot of people find this part of the book to be boring, but I was fully engrossed.
The kind of thing I live for when I read SF,
sitelinkNeal Stephenson's characters and I seem share quite a few interests some of which are, admittedly, not for everybody.
Though sitelinkSnow Crash seems to be Stephenson's most popular book, I wouldn't give it the kind of universal recommendation status merited by the likes of sitelinkZodiac .
However, I think it would appeal to a broader audience than say, sitelinkCryptonomicon , or sitelinkReamde only in part due to the fact that those two each clock in at over,pages.


So, let's get that snow crashing! Ok, so it's not an avalanche survival story, but what do I really have to contribute to the body of Snow Crash commentary out there if not vaguely related Archer clips
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Our protagonist, appropriately named Hiro Protagonist, is a freelance hacker, and pizza delivery guy which, given that pizza is a mafiarun industry which takes its promise of delivery inminutes or less very seriously, is not an occupation without risk.
He's also the Greatest Swordfighter in the World, Hiro's imaginary report card would read:

“Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills.
”

The gear in this futuristic world is really half the fun, Hiro aka The Deliverator has a uniform made of an “arachnofiber weave” that would put the tactical turtleneck to shame any day.
Even the relatively lame Metacops get to have night vision goggles,
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Hiro's cooperation skills are put to the test when our other lead character,yearold courier YT it's supposed to stand for Yours Truly, but Michael Jackson's PYT kept getting stuck in my head, saves his skin by bailing him out of a nearmiss pizza delivery.
Couriers, of course, travel by skateboard, “pooning” passing cars to speed about the city,
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I don't even know where to begin with the whole cyborg situation a certain world's greatest secret agent would be decidedly uncomfortable in this Stephenson verse.
I'll just say that there are some, and not all of them are good duh, I mean, can you really even kill those things
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Science or Fiction
As in the other Stephenson books I've read, the sheer power of his intellect is on display in this one.
After complaints from the reading public that Stephenson failed to cite sources with respect to Riemann Zeta function cryptography, Stephenson sent sitelinkan email to “real life” mathematician/cryptography expert Michael Anshel in which he noted “that many readers of fiction underestimate just how much of a novel's content is simply made up.
”

But, guess what Stephenson There's a reason “that many readers seem to have difficulty in identifying the boundary between fact and fiction” in your books.
And, for my money, that's not necessarily a bad thing! Sure, I should probably go and check out some of the bits about Sumerian etymology before I go tossing them around as fact, but at least now I'm interested enough to do so! This book has style and furious energy, like all Neal Stephenson, but it doesn't really make sense.
Well if you casually invent the Metaverse while telling a rattling good story, who cares about a logical hole or nine And the incidental details are terrific.
My favourite was the biker who is a nuclear power in his own right, but there were many others.



I happened to look at the Wikipedia article, and was immediately entranced by the plot summary.
The anonymous author's deadpan delivery is perfect, For your amusement:

The protagonist is the aptly named Hiro Protagonist Hiro being a homophone of hero, whose business card reads "Last of the freelance hackers and Greatest swordfighter in the world.
" When Hiro loses his job as a pizza delivery driver for the Mafia, he meets a streetwise young girl nicknamed Y.
T. short for Yours Truly, who works as a skateboard "Kourier", and they decide to become partners in the intelligence business selling data to the CIC, the forprofit organization that evolved from the CIA after the U.
S. government's loss of power.

The pair soon learn of a dangerous new drug called "Snow Crash" that is both a computer virus capable of infecting the brains of unwary hackers in the Metaverse and a mindaltering virus in Reality.
It is distributed by a network of Pentecostal churches via its infrastructure and belief system, As Hiro and Y. T. dig deeper or are drawn in they discover more about Snow Crash and its connection to ancient Sumerian culture, the fiberoptics monopolist L.
Bob Rife, and his enormous Raft of refugee boat people who speak in tongues, Also, both in the Metaverse and in Reality, they confront one of Rife's minions, an Aleut harpoon master named Raven whose motorcycle's sidecar packs a nuke wired to go off should Raven ever be killed.
Raven has never forgiven the U, S. for the way they handled the Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands see Aleutian Islands Campaign in World War II or for the nuclear testing on Amchitka.


Hiro, at the prompting of his Catholic and linguist exgirlfriend Juanita Marquez, begins to unravel the nature of this crisis.
It relates back to the mythology of ancient Sumer, which Stephenson describes as speaking a very powerful urlanguage.
Sumerian is to modern "acquired languages" as binary is to programming languages: it affects the entity be it human or computer at a far lower and more basic level than does acquired/programming language.
Sumerian is rooted in the brain stem and related to glossolalia, or "speaking in tongues"a trait displayed by most of L.
Bob Rife's convertees. Furthermore, Sumerian culture was ruled and controlled via "me," the humanreadable equivalent of software which contains the rules and procedures for various activity harvests, the baking of bread, etc.
. The keepers of these important documents were priests referred to as en some of them, like the god/semihistoricalfigure Enki, could write new me, making them the equivalent of programmers or hackers.


As Stephenson describes it, one goddess/semihistorical figure, Asherah, took it upon herself to create a dangerous biolinguistic virus and infect all peoples with it this virus was stopped by Enki, who used his skills as a "neurolinguistic hacker" to create an inoculating "namshub" that would protect humanity by destroying its

ability to use and respond to the Sumerian tongue.
This forced the creation of "acquired languages" and gave rise to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
Unfortunately, Asherah's metavirus did not disappear entirely, as the "Cult of Asherah" continued to spread it by means of cult prostitutes and infected women breast feeding orphaned infants this weakened form of the virus is compared to herpes simplex.
Furthermore, Rife has been sponsoring archaeological expeditions to the Sumerian city of Eridu, and has found enough information on the Sumerian tongue to reconstruct it and use it to work his will on humanity.
He has also found the namshub of Enki, which he is protecting at all costs,

Hiro makes his way to Rife's Raft, a massive refugee flotilla centered around Rife's personal yacht, the former USS Enterprise aircraft carrier.
Juanita has already infiltrated this floating caravan for the express purpose of helping overthrow Rife, Y. T. has been captured by Rife's followers and is taken to the Raft, where she becomes romantically involved with Raven for a short time and is eventually taken hostage by Rife personally.
While hostage, Y. T. delivers the namshub of Enki to Hiro, who together with Juanita uses it to save the virusafflicted, Hiro then accesses the Metaverse and foils Raven's attempt to widely disseminate the Snow Crash virus to a grouping of the hacker elite.
Meanwhile, Y. T. is brought to the mainland by Rife, but she escapes, Rife and Raven proceed to an airport, where they are confronted by Uncle Enzo the Mafia kingpin, A critically wounded Enzo disarms Raven, while Rife is killed and his virus destroyed when Fido, a cyborg "ratthing" who had previously been rescued by Y.
T. , propels himself through the engine of L, Bob Rife's plane at beyond Mach, incinerating Rife and his plane, The novel ends with Y, T. driving home with her mother, and with hints of a future rekindled relationship between Hiro and Juanita, .