Snow Crash

Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
read: 2011
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

I read Cryptonomicon a few years ago and enjoyed it, and friends had recommended Snow Crash, so I was looking forward to reading it as I work my way through the Time 100 Novels list.  And I did enjoy it, quite a bit.  But it was kind of the same book as Cryptonomicon.  Both were epic, long, ambitious, and full of digressions.  The romantic relationships in each were less-than-well-developed.  Hiro Protagonist, the, er, protagonist of Snow Crash, is very similar to Cryptonomicon's Randy Waterhouse: a talented underachiever who comes through when challenged by a major threat.

The biggest difference is that Cryptonomicon takes place in our world, or at least a world very similar to our own, while Snow Crash is science fiction, taking place in a future world.  Stephenson had to imagine not just a world (Mafia-controlled sprawl, skateboards with wheels that adjust to terrain, cyborg attack dogs), but two worlds, as much of Snow Crash takes place in a virtual reality that foreshadowed some of what the Internet would eventually become.  This is the part of Snow Crash that's most enduring, and probably why Time put it in their list of 100 greatest novels.

A random note: Snow Crash's villain L. Bob Rife, who may be the anti-Christ, is a Rice grad in the novel, like me.  He's probably not going to make the Owlmanac alumni magazine anytime soon.