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boilerryno 's review for:
Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
It seems to me that Mr. Stephenson had a historical idea/topic that he found interesting. He wrote about 10-15 pages of his theory about it, then wrote a modern story around that theory. Many have said, and I agree, that the ending is sudden and not comprehensive. Knowing this going in seemed to help me realize that this book is less about writing a completely vetted and resolved story about its characters but more about delivering through modern means an origin story of sorts about viruses, communication, and religion. I have been critical in the past of Mr. Stephenson's overindulgence in detail with out advancing a story (see Quicksilver,) but reading this book makes me want to dive into his longer works to try to pull out the wonderful theories he has about these types of topics.
I was fascinated by and loved the way in which he delivers the background about all of the world's religions and ancient cultures back to Sumer and their use of religion as a delivery method of data. It's always been an interesting concept that speech and communication develop in humans from birth. Language and speaking is so natural and inherent that we often forget that it is a method of data delivery and that computers and binary code have become the modern language of the world. This leads to the postulation that language is a form of virus. Also, the fact that this book was written in 1992 is shocking as the author seems to effortlessly predict the way that our society has evolved technologically to present day. I won't reveal too many details about the theory so you can explore and experience it for yourself, but the sections of the book during which Hiro is researching with the Librarian daemon all of Lagos' compiled research are worth the read alone.
The characters and story that run alongside the delivery of the theory are interesting, and one does develop the will to know how they are impacted. This is where the ending falls short. YT seems to have her story resolved (with a little effort on the reader's part,) but Hiro's, Raven's, Uncle Enzo's, D5vid's, and Juanita's fates are all left unresolved. It's a bit difficult to completely discount this annoyance even though I really liked the theoretical portion. It seems like the point was to deliver a theory, watch the characters struggle to stop catastrophe, and once the catastrophe was averted, the curtain draws without much left for you to draw your own conclusions even if you do like for an author to not close all the ends off.
I was fascinated by and loved the way in which he delivers the background about all of the world's religions and ancient cultures back to Sumer and their use of religion as a delivery method of data. It's always been an interesting concept that speech and communication develop in humans from birth. Language and speaking is so natural and inherent that we often forget that it is a method of data delivery and that computers and binary code have become the modern language of the world. This leads to the postulation that language is a form of virus. Also, the fact that this book was written in 1992 is shocking as the author seems to effortlessly predict the way that our society has evolved technologically to present day. I won't reveal too many details about the theory so you can explore and experience it for yourself, but the sections of the book during which Hiro is researching with the Librarian daemon all of Lagos' compiled research are worth the read alone.
The characters and story that run alongside the delivery of the theory are interesting, and one does develop the will to know how they are impacted. This is where the ending falls short. YT seems to have her story resolved (with a little effort on the reader's part,) but Hiro's, Raven's, Uncle Enzo's, D5vid's, and Juanita's fates are all left unresolved. It's a bit difficult to completely discount this annoyance even though I really liked the theoretical portion. It seems like the point was to deliver a theory, watch the characters struggle to stop catastrophe, and once the catastrophe was averted, the curtain draws without much left for you to draw your own conclusions even if you do like for an author to not close all the ends off.