Rating:  Summary: A Journey at Hyper-Speed into the Future Review: What most people consider the talent of Stephenson's Snow Crash is the whip lashed pace of the cyber-punk fiction from beginning to end. However, the greatest feat achieved by the author is the wide range of literary tolls that lead us from joy to pain to disgust to desire. Combining this pace with tongue-in-cheek humor as well as staggering symbolism, Stephenson delivers a ticket to a most mesmerizing ride inot the last, great,unknown frontier known as "the future." For a virtual "rookie" to the sci-fi fantasy world, and a less than avid reader, Snow Crash provided a breath of fresh air from the monotony of required school reading. However, my cynicism leads me to be skeptical of a lowly pizza delivery boy, albeit a Samaurai master swordsman, saving the virtual future with the aid of his hacker girlfriend. The aggressive undertones of violence denoted by an occasional sword fight or two convey Stephenson's distaste for the world's shortcomings causing him to create a virtual realm which has been set up to compensate for these inequities. Despite this motive, the actual storyline and resolution of the plot in and of themselves make Snow Crash an entertaining thrill ride through dementia and ultimately into utopia.
Rating:  Summary: This was a great read, I laughed I learned I liked this book Review: I am usually a reader that avoids the hype and sticks to authors and books that I know will provide an entertaining read.After reading the Amazon synopsis and a few of the other reader reviews I decided to buy this book and another of the author's books, "The Diamond Age". Snow Crash was one of the best books I have read in a long time. It was very funny and written with a very entertaining flow with lots of wit and energy. Now in the year 2000 some of the ideas he wrote about don't seem so far away but even now the book loses nothing of its edge and is still a great story. I loved both of the characters but Y.T was a rip! She was a great character and I would love to see a continuation of her character's story in another book. Thank you very much Neal for this story and I am very much looking forward to reading The Diamond Age. Write something else with Y.T. I am sure everyone else who reads this book will agree she truly makes the story. Hiro is a great character too. It is nice to read a book where the characters actually do what the reader thinks they should do and doesn't have people doing totally stupid and unreasonable things just to keep the story going longer and longer to a drawn out ending. This book had totally believable characters and situations from start to finish. I can't wait to lend the book to a friend so I can talk to them about it. A truly great find.
Rating:  Summary: Good, but not Gibson Review: Snow Crash is an excellent book. The first chapter is terribly funny tongue in cheek humor that sets the scene for a slightly more humorous look at the cyberpunk world than is offered by most authors. But the book does not continue like this. It progresses onwards, garnering a plot in the process. It does not possess the darkness that makes true cyberpunk (William Gibson) so great. Not to say that the book is not worth reading, but keep your expectations low.
Rating:  Summary: proceed with caution Review: I really wish that I liked this book. It was obviously well reseached and entertaining in some parts. But I just completely lost interest after about 100 pages. It tried to get to serious, and for me, this ruined the book. I can see why some people would love this book, but it is not for everyone. I hate books that take themselves to seriously when they dont have to. This book should have been about 100 pages shorter by cutting out all the useless information that was in it. I liked the pace of the book but the things that were happening were boring.
Rating:  Summary: Mildly entertaining Review: I really don't understand why so many people rate this book so highly. The book starts out with what I thought was a firmly tongue-in-cheek rendition of a cyberpunk world. World government has collapsed, resulting in each housing subdivision becoming a separate country. Everything is franchised, right down to police and jails. Freeways are privately owned and operated. And the main characters' names are Hiro Protagonist and Y.T. (Yours Truly). I snickered all the way through the first chapter. Then comes the well-researched but heavy-handed explanation of speaking in tongues and how these sounds may be the microcode of the human brain. Pages and pages of such explanation, very seriously discussed, clashing garishly with the whimsical setting of the book. At the end of the book, I still liked the setting and the characters. I just wished Stephenson could have found a whimsical story to go with them.
Rating:  Summary: Snow Crash Review: If you enjoy science fiction books, then knock yourself out, enjoy the book and move on with your life. I did not enjoy the book. I live a normal life and I do not find these types of books interesting. I only read it upon the recommendation of one of my friends-apparently we have different taste in literature. Other than being extremely confused with the book, I did find it helpful on those sleepless nights. If you like this kind of book, then I recommend it. If you do not like this type of book, move on in the reviews.
Rating:  Summary: Snow Crash Captivating and Enjoyable Review: I found Snow Crash to be a captivating and very enjoyable cyberpunk fiction book. Despite its enjoyability, I did at times find it hard to follow the story to the end without repeating certain areas. Neal Stephenssen leaps into the near future by weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything imaginable together to bring us this thriller of the information age. I find that this story is rather complex, but Stephensen does a good job of keeping the action hot and the characters engaging. The main character, Hiro Protagonist, is a freelance programmer who comes upon a conspiracy that threatens hackers with a virus leaving them in a vegatative state. Hiro takes on the challenge of deciphering who is behind it and how to stop them. Joining him is a young skater who has gotten the attention of the Mafia King. I had fun reading this book. This is my first cyberpunk novel, leaving the others to try to compare to this. The scary thing about this story is its wild and eerie view of the future that may before long prove accurate if things continue at the speed they are now.
Rating:  Summary: Snow Crash Review Review: I think that it is evident that Neal Stephenson put a lot of time into the creation and development of the plot. At first the book seemed to jump around and not have any pattern, but as I continued to read the book seemed to fall into place. Hiro Protagonist, who is the main character of the book, is a man of many trades; pizza-delivery man for the Mafia, greatest samurai sword fighter in the Metaverse, and last freelance hacker. Together with his girlfriend, Y.T., they set out to destroy the culprit of the computer death virus known as Raven. This death virus if not stopped could end America. For me, the novel seemed to drag at points, it was a hybrid of worlds. At times the book moved at a neck-breaking pace only to yield a subsequent chapter that crawled as if it were a tortoise. This created a schism in the plot and put me in a polar mode; "I love it, I hate it, I love it, I hate it." For this reason it was mediocre at best.
Rating:  Summary: Virtual Reality Review: This book was definitely for the science fiction lover. It takes place in the future where everything is computerized. The main character, Hiro Protagonist, is a hacker, a pizza deliverer, and swordsman. He creates an alterntive world called the Metaverse. Anyone can go to the Metaverse through any computer. A "drug" is being distributed through Metaverse called snow crash. this drug crashes your computer and your brain. Hiro joins up with a couple of his friends and trys to stop the spread of this "virus". This book wasn't really my style, because I really don't like science fiction. But, it did keep me interested. I expected more action and explanation in the ending. Overall, I thought it was a decent book and I would recommend it to anyone, science fiction lover or not.
Rating:  Summary: Snow Crash Review: In the pages of Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson offers his readers action packed adventures in a futuristic society that holds pizza, bimbo boxes (mini-vans), and virtual living in the Metaverse as top priorities. Hiro Protagonist and his teenage Kourier partner, Y.T., join the ever-powerful Mafia in attempting to save the world from a devastating virus that destroys the hard drive of computers as well as humans. Once this virus strikes, the victims are left to function with nothing more than snowy transmissions with no possibility of recovery. Although images like teenagers riding bionic skateboards attaching themselves to the back of unsuspecting motorists have been seen before, Stephenson takes his description of this society to a higher level. When describing something as simple as Y.T.'s plank (skateboard), he provides micro detail all the way down to its "RadiKS Mark II Smartwheels with sonar, laser rangefinding, and millimeter-wave radar to identify mufflers and other debris before you even get honed about them." Stephenson successfully uses satire throughout the novel to make implications about the poor values of our society. The use of satire is obvious in his continued return to the issue of the obliviousness of Y.T's mom. She doesn't have a clue about her daughter's Mafia connected, professional Kourier livelihood filled with drug dealers, murders, and cults. Stephenson stresses the over-dedication of Y.T.'s mom to her profession rather than to her child. The final pages of the story provide an effective summary of the neglect present in one-parent homes, portrayed in numerous portions of the book. The most intriguing aspect of the story comes when Stephenson connects drugs, viruses, and religion to be one in the same. Hiro says to Juanita, "This Snow Crash thing-is it a virus, a drug, or a religion? Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference?" Using such seemingly opposing topics throughout the plot makes it nothing less than captivating. Stephenson did a remarkable job depicting a futuristic world filled with dehumanized individuals. Any society that would sooner "goggle in" to a virtual world than interact with other human beings has lost touch with natural tendencies. This attitude is further exemplified by his direct correlation between the hard drive of a computer and the human brain. If nothing sets mankind apart from these machines, then what qualities do we, as humans, have to offer society? Aside from occasional deviations in sequential order and a lack of clarity at the conclusion of the novel, Stephenson supplies his readers with plenty of sex, technology, drugs, and religion that no American could ever resist. What better way to describe the future of our society than to build on topics that have already been shaping our society over past centuries?
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