Rating: 
Summary: Well, I gotta admit ...
Review: ... I have never considered myself a fan of "science fiction." I've even gone so far as to state, on more than one occassion, that I, ahem, hate "science fiction." Well, Neal Stephenson has proven me a liar and a hypocrite. Snow Crash, though, is a far cry from the elves and dwarves that I dare say I still hate, but nonetheless I've got to say this book is great. If you're hesitant like I was, read on below and take these people at their word. I did. And I'm glad I did.
Stephenson creates an apocalyptic, not-too-distant, futuristic world and compliments has savvy (read: unlikely?) vision with a cast of characters that are not only engaging, but thoroughly alive within the confines of the written word. Hell, when an author can create a character that makes you gasp when that character comes close to peril you've got something special in your hands.
Do yourself a favor, naysayers, read Snow Crash. It might not turn you on to vampires, elves, dragons and their ilk, but it's a hell of a ride
Rating:
Summary: The book Neuromancer should have been.
Review: This is the kind of in-your-face, down-and-dirty futurism I was expecting when I picked up Neuromancer. But while William Gibson bores you with his vaporous descriptions and lifeless characters, Neal Stephenson shocks you back awake with a fully-realized landscape of technological possibilities. It only seems a matter of time before Stephenson's vison of huge pizza conglomerates running the world becomes reality. The book is filled with one engaging character after another, including our two leads: One a pizza delivery driver/programmer/expert swordsman, the other a street-wise courier who makes her deliveries by 'harpooning' cars and skateboarding behind them attatched by a wire. The plot rockets forward at a breakneck pace, only occasionally getting side-lined by some oppressive history lessons used to compare human and computer languages. But if you want to catch a glimpse of the REAL cyberpunk future that may lay ahead of us, expose yourself to Snow Crash
Rating:
Summary: Jack into plutonium powered samurai space ganja mafia pizza.
Review:
I'm not a "reader". I read all of Tolkien and Douglas Adams and
that's about it, but Snow Crash had me in its grasp from the moment I read the first paragraph. After about a year of prodding by
several of my friends I finally picked it up a year ago Halloween
and barely managed to stretch it out past voting day (~one week).
I think that other reviewer here must have read it backwards! This book
starts out in high gear and only runs down enough by the end to let
you not feel TOO bad that it's over. Still, I wish this were a serial publication. ...are you listening Neal!?!? Only now I'm afraid
to read anything else for fear of being let down. ;-)
Rating:
Summary: Move over William Gibson - This is the Future!
Review: The near future: America is the poorest country on earth, with everything from Mafia controlled Pizza Delivery to a publicly floated Library of Congress and CIA. A land of franchises, where the only thing produced of value is the Three Ms: Music Movies and Microcode.
Enter Hero Protagonist - sometime hacker and Pizza delivery ninja. Something smells in the Metaverse, a global fibre optic virtual reality realtime what-we-want-the-internet-to-be place, more real than the REALITY. Something is destoying the hackers that mke the Metaverse run. It's upto Hero to find out what and save himself and his friends from a fate worse than death: snowcrash. But Hero discovers that outside the Metaverse, there is a plan to horrible to contemplate...
With a collection of partners including 'YT', a smart talking road Kourier grrl, Hero sets out to defeat a threat that would make James Bond, Arnie, Sly and others tremble.
This is a compelling book. Start Friday night and don't plan anything for the weekend. Snowcrash will make you read it all the way through. By turns funny, philisophical, historical and action packed, Snowcrash is a must read for anyone interested in a vision of the near future. READ IT NOW! But beware, you'll find the Internet very boring after reading this book. :-
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, a frightening fore-sight into what lies ahead.
Review: The book was great. Although it starts out rather slowly, (first few chapters), it soon gets you hooked. From dealing mr. super pizza delivery man who goes home and becomes super virtual reality hacker... You gotta read the book, then look
at communications technology today. Frightning.
Rating:
Summary: A surrealistic yet highly probable look at the future!
Review: The moment I started reading this book I couldn't stop. It offers not only insight into today's society and psychology, but shows what could really be the future of America. This is also one of the first books I have read that accurrately depicts hackers. It's fast paced fun with some interesting intellectual discussions
Rating:
Summary: Your basic over-the-top chock-a-blockbuster
Review: This book is worth the price even if you do nothing more than read the opening set-up piece involving a dedicated Mafia "Deliveror" (aka pizza delivery boy). This book defies any easy explanation, and I am convinced that Stephenson's next book _Diamond Age_ won the Nebula Award primarily out of regret for failure to grant the award to this book a year earlier. _Snow Crash_ is the perfect example of a book where the whole is less than a sum of its parts, but there are so many wonderfully bizarre characters, out-of-left-field (and sometimes silly) subplots, and gonzo goings-on in this book that it was to me a mind-blowing reading experience. Those who demand tight plots and dislike loose ends may find this book frustrating. Those who liked, for instance, the movie "Buckaroo Banzai" (and don't mind that they never found out why the watermellon was in the vise) will not want to miss this book
Rating:
Summary: Read this book and find out why Neuromancer was wrong
Review: Wahay! What a wild ride this was, blending the deeply implausible with the plausibly prophetic, wrapping it all up
with a comicbook plot and heading on out there to kick ass.
This is possibly the best piece of science fiction I've read
this decade -- it's certainly up there with Bruce Sterling's
Heavy Weather.
Rating:
Summary: This book was spooky-cool.
Review: Imagine a science-fiction writer who doesn't impale himselfon
geek-technology but rather uses it to free us from the morassof
reality- to explore human nature and history.
Definitely a fun read for everything from conspiracy nuts
to priests ;)
Rating:
Summary: i would recommend it to a friend. :-)
Review: Neal took me someplace I'd never been before... someplace no-one's ever been to before... and convinced me it's real... What escapist fun. I also had great respect for his ability to weave in accurate(?) social commentary on current reality, not just future reality.
thx neal, a 10 because we need more 10s.
ps apologies in advance for stealing a word for my nom de email.
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