Snow Crash

Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Spectra-Bantam, 1992.[1]

Excellent novel, set in a near-future dystopic USA that excels in music, movies, computer software, and the rapid delivery of pizza (3); handles cyberpunk tropes with sensitivity and humor — or mockery.[2] See for cyborg dogs (and sequences from the point of view of a very sympathetic canine), cyberspace (the Metaverse),[3] computer/mind viruses, and the superimposition of the very high-tech upon pizza. For tone (and quality), cf. The Space Merchants by F. Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth. Note Ng in his van: "Where the driver's seat ought to be, there is a sort of neoprene pouch about the size of a garbage can suspended from the ceiling by a web of straps, shock cords, tubes, wires, fiber-optic cables, and hydraulic lines. It is swathed in so much stuff that it is hard to make out its actual outlines. [* * *] "where you'd sort of expect to see arms, huge bundles of wires, fiber optics, and tubes run up out of the floor and are seemingly plugged into Ng's shoulder sockets" (210). Ng is in cyborg relationship with his van, or, alternatively, the van is a huge prosthetic for Ng; cf. and contrast the swaddled Vashti at opening of E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" and the radical prosthesis for the protagonists in D. Knight's "Masks" and F. Pohl's Man Plus; for serial prostheses see "Limbo" and "Futurama: “The Six Million Dollar Mon"

In his review of Omnitopia Dawn, Ed Carmien notes in that book "avatar combat to protect computer systems that tastes of Snow Crash" (SFRA Review #294 [Fall 2010]: 11).[4]]

Discussed at length in Daniel Grassian's "Discovering the Machine in You: The Literary, Social, and Religious Implications of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash."

RDE, Initial Compiler, 03/07/95; finishing 29Dec18, 22Jan19, 30Ap19, 31Dec21