Snow Crash
September 3rd 2007 12:15
This is the best Cyber punk novel I have ever picked up. In all honesty, I had never thought much of the genre. I think that the closest I got to it was to read the odd kind of sci-fi novel wasn't based in either the Battletech or Star Wars universes. Now I am wanting to read a whole bunch more of them. Warning, there are a few spoilers in this.
Neal Stephenson writes with edge, power and a highly addictive sensation that destroys your brain cells in a flash of wonderful goodness. It's like snorting coke that's been covered with powdered glass. Not that I have ever done drugs, but hey, that's a pretty good similee. This little gem, describing a car, is written on the first few pages:
The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the asteroid belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens.
I stopped for five minutes after reading that, just to recover.
But the crafting of the words is hardly the only reason to read the novel. After a few chapters, one might think that you were only reading a good sci-fi novel, complete with awesome internet (metaverse) sequences, sword fighting and bad motherf%^&erdom. Thankfully, Mr Stephenson proves us wrong.
The novel branches out into history, religion, philosophy, ethics and pretty well everything else. Imagine this, a virus is going through not the computers of the world, but through the heads of the people that program the computers of the world. They start having religious experiences and speaking in tongues.
Personally, I haven't picked up a book this good in a very long time. I want more.....MORE!! That being said though, the ending is exactly what it should be. Everyone gets whats coming to them and it is open enough that the reader can use their own imagination to do the rest of the work.
JZ
Neal Stephenson writes with edge, power and a highly addictive sensation that destroys your brain cells in a flash of wonderful goodness. It's like snorting coke that's been covered with powdered glass. Not that I have ever done drugs, but hey, that's a pretty good similee. This little gem, describing a car, is written on the first few pages:
The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the asteroid belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens.
I stopped for five minutes after reading that, just to recover.
But the crafting of the words is hardly the only reason to read the novel. After a few chapters, one might think that you were only reading a good sci-fi novel, complete with awesome internet (metaverse) sequences, sword fighting and bad motherf%^&erdom. Thankfully, Mr Stephenson proves us wrong.
The novel branches out into history, religion, philosophy, ethics and pretty well everything else. Imagine this, a virus is going through not the computers of the world, but through the heads of the people that program the computers of the world. They start having religious experiences and speaking in tongues.
Personally, I haven't picked up a book this good in a very long time. I want more.....MORE!! That being said though, the ending is exactly what it should be. Everyone gets whats coming to them and it is open enough that the reader can use their own imagination to do the rest of the work.
JZ
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