Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

When you're waiting for a class to end or for your mom to stop shoe shopping, time seems to go on forever. That said, this book seemed long. I say that because, it really did. I don't much like Sci-Fi, but in the end, after reading his book on and off, I actually liked this book (thats saying a lot of cyberpunk). As scarily realistic as it sounds at times (hehehe), the book had an engaging story and a satirical feel (the main characters name is a good indication of that for one, but the book seems to not really take anything seriously. Regardless, the Snow Crash has a lot of modern day Sci-Fi themes and models, but this one seems more original to me. The concepts are great and make for an interesting take on the present,...oh! I mean...future.....it is really scary how well thought out the book gets at times. I really thought it was interesting that the author was able to take something extremely old and make plausible stories with plausible outcomes to effect the main plot. What was even more interesting is that it almost seemed like the book was verging on "magic" themes, since a lot of fantasy relies on "old forgotten" things or "long ago in a far away land" type models. The snow crash virus was almost like a "spell" of sorts, since it revolves around language, which, lets face it, is a popular theme in fantasy novels, (Tolken anyone?). It also reminded me again about Babel 17, seems language, be it computer language, Sumerian, or whatever, itself can make for a great plot line.

The main characters were clever and likable. As a video game nerd, the idea that the internet (called the metaverse in the book)) is now sort of like a huge MMO (massive mult. player online game) where everyone has an avatar and is represented that way and that the two "worlds" are so intertwined made things exciting and...confusing. Sometimes I'd get confused , about who was talking, or how or what snow-crash was, or the back story of snow-crash, yeah, a lot of that I had to reread because for some reason I couldn't get it from the audio book, (had to find a pdf to read).

Over-all the book was very cyberpunk, it had pretty much everything any cyberpunk would want and then some. The concept that America was divided among big business and that even currency was dependent on corporations made the culture of the book very interesting for me, and was one of the many things about the book that I enjoyed learning about (aside from the metaverse). I think Stephenson made it so believable in a way, like, chaotic of course, but it just sort of, worked.
A pretty good read in my eyes, even if it's sci-fi.