Rating: 
Summary: A little too derivative
Review: Y.T. is too close to Chevette Wilson of Gibson's "Virtual Light" for comfort - young women who use high-tech bicycles/skateboards as inner city messengers. I hope the type doesn't become generic."Snow Crash" is a good cyberpunk read otherwise.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic book, if it is your subject matter
Review: Published shortly before the Internet boom, this book is a hopeful but realistic look at the future of humanity, ecology, religion, computers and business. None of these really interest me as simple subject matter to base a book on, but this book covers all of these topics in such a wonderful way. Characters maintain their personalities throughout the book, but Stephenson has a brilliant way of making you change your mind about them without changing the characters personality, making them more realistic and relatable. The humor is subtle in most parts, which doesn't make the author seem like he's trying too hard and the writing is fantastic. The only drawbacks were located in the middle of the book, where an entire background on almost every religion imaginable was introduced, making it seem like a thesis in religious studies rather than a novel, but it does raise some interesting alternative views, and all in all is related to the story and it's characters even though I found my mind straying through many of these parts and had to re-read them. Overall, a great book I'd highly recommend for anyone who reads.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic start, intriguing middle, predictable finish
Review: The first third of the book sweeps the reader off his feet, with the pacy careless style of narration the author conjures up a flashy "gizmotic" but hilariously identifiable picture of a not so distant futuristic (American) society, which is fragmented in all senses. The biggest achievement here is, obviously, the concept of 'metaverse', and one should recall the the general scenario of the internet in 1992 (when the book was finished) to really appreciate the author's run of imagination. The middle portion of the book explores the advent of occidental concept of religion in a refreshing manner, which succeeds in widening the scope of the book, giving it some pseudo scholarly touch. Although it suffers from being pretty minuscule throughout, the plot thickens during this part of the narration. Here the author's achievement lies in developing the parallelism between software and biological virus, both converging into a single entity inside the human body, the most complicated creation of the universe (as far the knowledge stands now!!!). But the last third portion of the book is disappointing, in the sense of being predicatable in the lines of numerous thrillers being written and filmed which follow a general formula churned out by the publishing houses and the movie companies. The freshness of the first two-thirds is lost, as if the book turns into a product to be marketed according to very stringent customer sartisfaction regulation based on past records, the story line more or less guided by the editors of the publishing house not ready to take unnecessary risk. Overall, definitely a very good read.
Rating: 
Summary: Snow Crash--Less Filling Tastes Great
Review: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is Cyberspace masterpiece. Moving with the swiftness of a pulp fiction detective story and more action than most Japanese Magna. Snow Crash stars Hiro Protaginist(Great name) a Cyberspae Samurai, spy and Mafioso Pizza Deliverator and his partner the thrahsing cyberpunk GRRL Y.T. as they try and stop a billionare from .... well to tell you would ruin the story. Also They go against one of Sci-Fi's up and coming Villians who has all the markings of a bond villan. with quirky characters Snow crash is a great read one i have read multple times.
(P.S. if you get the chance download the AUDIBLE VERSION it bring the story to life.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting and fun story...
Review: This is a review of the abridge audiobook version: 1) The reader of the book did a very good job of having different voices and attitudes for the differen cast of characters. The acting was very well done! 2) The story starts of very fun and exciting...but then as one other reviewer put it,"The long passages with Hiro and the Librarian are not only unnecessary, but incredibly tedious. Totally snooze-inspiring." I too could have done without all this and I was dealing with the abridge version...hate to see what people had to deal with when reading the unabridged version. 3) The future world created is fun, imaginative and interesting. 4) I love the lines in the book, "Hiro Protagonist. What a stupid name," says Y.T. "Yeah, but you'll never forget it," replies Hiro. So true! 5)Overall the story made you want to find out what happens in the end and the end is statifying.
Rating:
Summary: Cool concept "Crash your brain"
Review: This book introduces the concept that if you are exposed
to the correct visual stimuli, your brain can crash -- i.e.
become a vegatable, or mentally impared.
This concept is plausable since we know that epelectic seizures
in children can be caused by video games.
I enjoyed the characters, and the virtual worlds the book placed me in. I didn't give it a perfect 5, as I reserve this
for works like the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, but Cryptomocron
gets a 5 which is another of his books.
Rating:
Summary: "Rollerball" The Movie Meets "EverQuest" The Game
Review: A fast action book that takes place in a future corporate controlled world and in an internet virtual world. Lots of satirical humor, or is it scary forsight? A little hard to get into, but give it two chapters and you'll be hooked.
Rating:
Summary: Whew!! Some serious fun.
Review: During the Montreal Jazz Festival this past Summer (2002), I had the opportunity to talk at some length with an early-twenty-something guy with a BS in computer science from Harvard who works in NYC. He also has a Black Belt in Martial Arts. He told me I had to read a book called Snow Crash. [I knew who Neil Stephenson was as I have three of his books; alas, though, as with so many other books, an unread part of my library]. But, as I so enjoyed the parley of ideas with this guy, I was convinced. When I got home I picked it out and read it. I hadn't read any so-called cyberpunk fiction before.
Wow. It was hard putting it down to go to sleep at night (my only time for novels). A seriously cool book. What made Snow Crash if not revolutionary, then certainly evolutionary SF 10 years ago(1992), is Stephenson's literary device of cyberspace as fictional space. It is the Librarian, coupled with Hiro's inquisitiveness, - i.e.., his theorizing about the meaning of certain Sumerian/Biblical myths and the origin of language, and how language itself may contain mental/behavioral "viruses" and how that relates to the idea of a virus in relation to the vast internetwork that will be cyberspace - that really make Snow Crash such a brilliant tour-de-force of an SF novel. Snow Crash is about an Idea (and SF is, if nothing else, at its best, about an Idea) - the possibility that our cerebral faculty, and hence our behavior, can be compromised (i.e., reprogrammed) by a destructive virus contained in language itself. A serious thought in a world where people blow each other up because of words. In sum, read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Wild, tech-geeky, crazy ride.
Review: Twisted and manic, with a touch of spookiness, Snow Crash is a white-knuckle ride through cyberpunk, post-punk, cryptography, and ancient history. This may well be one of the 50 best SF books ever written. Indeed, how can a book whose main character is named "Hiro Protagonist" _not_ fail to utterly amuse? In many ways, Snow Crash is a biting, satirical take on society. The typical cyberpunk libertarian streak has grabbed Stephenson: the Federal government is reduced to a hyper-paranoid enclave called "Fedworld"; giant corporations battle each other over efficiency and speed in pizza-delivery services; competing superhighways are built to cater to the discriminating driver; and gated neighborhoods with private police abound. Frightening for some, inspiring for others -- Stephenson sees the future, and it ain't pretty. The denoument of the book is too incredible for description; and, besides, doing so would be a definite spoiler. If you cut your teeth on William Gibson and grew up with Bruce Sterling, you should by all means turn to Neil Stephenson. Your brain will thank you, once it's finished spinning.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not Gibson
Review: My rating is based on a comparison with William Gibson's books. This is the first non-Gibson cyberpunk that I've read, and I was reasonably entertained by it. Actually, I liked it a lot, until the end, which seemed a little disappointing. It could have used an extra chapter or two to conclude the story. I've read reviews that mention this as a shortcoming of other Stephenson books. But then again, there's a sequel on the way for Cryptonomicon, so its okay to end that book prematurely.
The technical details that Stephenson goes into are pretty much accurate, except for a few things here and there. I still have major problems with certain tactical aspects of the fighting in the book, but that's just me. Looking beyond that to the historical/philisophical content- there is certainly some interesting data that Stephenson has pieced together for his story. I do like the subtle comparison of religion and virii (and drugs?), but Stephenson actually merges them together in a way that could maybe be seen as not sacrilegious...
blah blah blah, I give it 4 stars. I was gonna give it 3 stars because I just finished it and I thought the ending stunk, but it does probably deserve 4.
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