Snowcrash - Neal Stephenson

Many people regard William Gibson’s Neuromancer as the definitive Cyberpunk Novel. It can be safely assumed that these people haven’t read Snow Crash. What this book achieves and what Neuromancer fails to do, is give you a highly imaginative cypberpunk story that ISN’T confusing to read. It also leaves you in no doubt of the authors intentions. Something I found lacking in the deeply confusing Neuromancer. The book sets off in what can only be described as “one hell of a pace”. The first chapter will leave you gasping for breath. Trust me, from that moment on – it just gets better. Set in the near future, in a ...  Read the complete review

It had to happen really after months of reading and writing reviews on this site the two things finnaly come together and I am writing an opinion on a book that I bought based on opinions in Dooyoo. With comparisons to Gibson and Michael Marshall Smith under his belt Neal Stephenson had allready been pushed in my mind as a bit of a contender. I bought Snowcrash for two reasons one I am in desperate need of a new author, as a bit of a book head I go through at least one a week and can rapidly run out of books. Secondly it got an excellent review in Dooyoo. And I was not disappointed in fact I was blown away, the book is fast paced, dramatic and ...  Read the complete review

Snow Crash is the second Stephenson book I've read, and since I had had it recommended by a friend, I was expecting good things. Luckily, I was not dissapointed. SC is a great novel by a great author (at least I think so from the two books I've read so far). It is everything a cyberculture novel should be. A good story with a large added dollops of techno-cool and a good bit of humor. It is also surprisingly visionary for a book written so long ago (sometime in the early '90s if I remember rightly). The story is set sometime in the near future I think (the date is never actually stated) and centers around the exploits of the sword carrying, mixed ...  Read the complete review

This book, by Neal Stephenson (author of the mammoth Cryptonomicon, recently nominated for, I believe, the Author C Clarke prize for science fiction), is another in the recent spate of post-cyberpunk novels. Taking the genre invented by William Gibson, but injecting a modern twist, Stephenson is one of the foremost writers (along with Michael Marshall-Smith) in this area. Anyway, enough of the biography. In this book me meet Hiro Protagonsist (and that's really his name), Deliverator for a mafia Pizza firm and author of the futuristic internet software. And a very nice bloke he is too. He's joined by Raven, bad guy with a nuke rigged to his heart, and an ...  Read the complete review

I read Snowcrash by accident. Coincidentally I was sitting in a hotel waiting for it to snow. Hiro Protagonist is a hacker who winds his way through the cyberverse as an avatar (A little computer person, but in SC they are 3D and the user feels as though they are actually inside the metanetaverse) , a phrase that has been coined now and is used on many crappy interactive websites. This is definitely internet3 stuff from Donaldson though, as Hiro tries to prevent a multi-faceted virus, that eats systems and scrambles brains, from destroying everything. Many of the things in the book (Written about 6 or so years ago IIRC) are happening already, so it makes the book even ...  Read the complete review