Consumed this book this weekend, and it was a great mind-F***, similar to the first time you watch “The Matrix”.
Where to begin? The central character, Hiro Protagonist (You have to admire a man with the stones to call his protagonist Mr. Protagonist!), lives in a dystopian future overrun by corporations, in which the world is split in two–Reality is, well, the real world, and the Metaverse is the hipper virtual world where everyone has avatars and can interact via being ‘Goggled-in’.
Hiro is a pizza delivery boy / katana-wielding swordsman in the real world, and a Hacker God in the Metaverse. He works for the CostaNostra (yes, the Mafia) as a pizza delivery boy, whose motto is ‘Delivery in 30 minutes or ELSE!’ The novel opens as Hiro tries to get a pizza pie door-to-door in less than 10 minute, along the way attracting a 15 year old jailbait skateboard Kourier named ‘Y.T.’ (Stands for ‘Yours Truly’).
The plot centers around a ‘virus’ that someone wrote which can infect people’s software–namely, their brain stem, turning them into mindless automatons. This virus is delivered via a drug, known as ‘Snow Crash’, and the drug exists in both the real and virtual worlds. As Hiro learns more and more, the novel becomes a techno-thriller in which Hiro, Y.T., and a motley consortium of the powers-that-be try to stop the folks behind Snow Crash from taking over the world.
…Along the way, we have lots of Heinlien-esque conceits in which Hiro dialogs with the Library of Congress computer about the nature of many things–language, religion, and human history. Along the way, he posits (in true Platonic dialog fashion) that organized religion is, itself, a virus. That it spreads, civilizes, controls, and enslaves (at least, that’s what I took away from it!)
That’s why this book is a MindF***…it causes you to re-examine stuff. In my pre-religious, atheistic days, I used to wonder if Civilization invented religion, along the lines of Marx’s “opium for the masses,” as a way to control the masses and make people satisfied with their crappy lot in life. Snow Crash turns that idea on its head, suggesting that religion invented civilization as a way of spreading religion.
Stephenson is a real geek, and it shows in his writing–Powers of 2 abound, everything has an order and a taxonomy, and his female characters are essentially men with vaginas–they’re practical, logical, and oversexed. But anyway, I’ve been on a bit of a geek binge in the past 3 weeks, and this book was a fine capstone for that.
Now I’m off to see if I can integrate a Future with my uber-fast SNMP client.