I was somehow unaware of the hacker classic Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson until DEFCON 32, where during the EFF trivia, a question was asked about the book.Later, while listening to an interview between Shawn Ryan and the legend YTCracker, he mentioned Snow Crash again, this time as the source of the first part of his handle "YT". This peaqued my interest, so I bought a copy.
The book follows the quite amusingly named hacker Hiro Protagonist and courier YT as they investigate a new "drug" called Snow Crash targeting hackers in the metaverse. Slowly they uncover a plot by media monopolist L. Bob Rife to create a mind control virus, blending technology and ancient Sumerian myth.
I thoroughly enjoyed the premise of the book. The blend of technology and ancient Sumerian myth was extremely interesting, drawing parallels between programming/hacking and ancient linguistic magic. I can't say that's what I was expecting the book to be but I was pleasantly surprised with how well the concept was executed. The world of Snow Crash was also very interesting and fun, a toned down version of classic cyberpunk dystopia. In fact Snow Crash is one of the founding members of the cyberpunk genre, at least to my knowledge.I loved the mega corporations within Snow Crash, as I'm sure is typical, my favorite had to be Nova Sicillia and its corporatized neo-italian mob.The Metaverse, its surrounding technology and the general discourse on hacking and programming was really fun. It’s the reason I picked up the book in the first place, as I can never get enough cyberpunk and hacker media. The Snow Crash virus itself was also very fun, a scroll filled with binary data that would infect hackers minds due to their ability to read and comprehend binary. Even the name Snow Crash was a reference to the computer error in the book which causes computers to spit out white pixels on a black screen, appearing like snow.The characters themselves were fairly flat, not providing much depth beyond their surface presentation but they still served as efficient and fun vessels to experience the story and world through, which as mentioned previously, is where I think this book really shines. I will say, somewhere around between the middle and two-thirds of the way through the book, I felt a strange shift in the writing, almost as if we were taking a violent left turn to get to the end, which was another disappointing part of the book. It also introduced the first real filler of the book, from the beginning it was fairly go-go-go, everything was relevant to the story, so the introduction of the filler of Hiro's fight on his way to the raft and YTs interactions with the feds felt sort of jarring.The concept of the Raft was intriguing to me and I enjoyed the time we spent there towards the end of the book, with the exception of the relationship between YT and Raven, which made me fairly uncomfortable, seeing as YT is 15 and from context Raven is a full grown man. I enjoyed the setup of the ending as well, with the mob, Mr. Lee, Hiro and YT all coming together to take down L. Bob Rife. Unfortunately, once Hiro's purpose has been served, we just never hear from him again, no closure or explanation just gone. The ending itself also left me dissatisfied. A Rat Thing mentioned briefly in a sort of off hand way early on in the book comes out of nowhere to save the day. Overall I enjoyed most of the book but it was not perfect for sure. Solid 7/10 in my mind, probably worth a reread in the future.
I really enjoyed the main story and world, some of the writing threw me off and the ending was unsatisfactory I'd give it a 7/10.