Science fiction at its best, 2005-02-28Snow Crash is well written, with a strong well-paced plot and an interesting, well realised, cast of characters. Most importantly it bristles with ideas. I loved his bizarre vision of the future. The USA in terrible economic decline (worthless trillion dollar notes) with no law, just a franchise system of government (or independent Burbclaves). A brilliant reworking of the Babel myth utilising a type of direct linguistic programming - allowing people to be directly controlled through language. On first reading I was impressed with the Metaverse (a kind of equivalent of Gibson's cyberspace) but 10 years later it is much less impressive - it is far too literal and too closely modelled on reality to fire the imagination.
The action proceeds at breakneck speed - Hiro is a good hero and Raven is a fantastic bad guy. His physical threat almost leaps from the page (although he is such an excellent character that he does tend to overshadow the more sinister threat of the main villain L. Bob Rife).
I love Stephenson's work, particularly the early books, but as other reviewers have noted endings are not strength. This is one of his better efforts (certainly better than the ending of the otherwise excellent The Diamond Age) but is still rather abrupt and not entirely satisfactory.
None of the problems really matter, at the end of the day they are just quibbles - it is still a totally fantastic book!
Buy it, read it, enjoy it
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