Book Review: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Reading Snow Crash was like being on Snow Crash—the drug-virus, that is. Neal Stephenson crams so many images and ideas into each sentence that it fried my brain. I mean, how many images, metaphors, acronyms, and obscure references can you take in one paragraph?
Reading Snow Crash was like being on Snow Crash—the drug-virus, that is. Neal Stephenson crams so many images and ideas into each sentence that it fried my brain. I mean, how many images, metaphors, acronyms, and obscure references can you take in one paragraph?
Here’s an example:
"The Deliverator knows that yard. He has delivered pizzas there. He has looked at it, scoped it out, memorized the location of the shed and the picnic table, can find them even in the dark--knows that if it ever came to this, a twenty-three-minute pizza, miles to go, and a slowdown at CSV-5 and Oahu--he could enter. The Mews at Windsor Heights (his electronic delivery-man's visa would raise the gate automatically), scream down Heritage Boulevard, rip the turn onto Strawbridge Place (ignoring the DEAD END sign and the speed limit and the CHILDREN PLAYING ideograms that are strung so liberally throughout TMAWH), thrash the speed bumps with his mighty radials, blast up the driveway of Number 15 Strawbridge Circle, cut a hard left around the backyard shed, careen into the backyard of Number 84 Mayapple, avoid its picnic table (tricky), get into their driveway and out onto Mayapple, which takes him to BellewoodeValley Road, which runs straight to the exit of the Burbclave..."
Brain hurt yet?
Neal Stephenson reads like Harlan Ellison on steroids. Or maybe Robert Anton Wilson on acid, which is almost redundant. You know, Neal, you don't have to write everything that comes into your head. It's just TMI. Many authors write a backstory that feeds the motivation of the characters; in this book, you make the audience privy to all of the backstory. You include all the backstory of all the minutiae of each and every character, setting, and crack in the sidewalk. Reading this is like reading a data dump when you're debugging programming code (something I had to do repeatedly when I was writing machine-language programs in college--it's not a pretty sight). And as you read the 160,000+ words in this book, you can't help but wonder--is all this germain to the plot?
"The Deliverator knows that yard. He has delivered pizzas there. He has looked at it, scoped it out, memorized the location of the shed and the picnic table, can find them even in the dark--knows that if it ever came to this, a twenty-three-minute pizza, miles to go, and a slowdown at CSV-5 and Oahu--he could enter. The Mews at Windsor Heights (his electronic delivery-man's visa would raise the gate automatically), scream down Heritage Boulevard, rip the turn onto Strawbridge Place (ignoring the DEAD END sign and the speed limit and the CHILDREN PLAYING ideograms that are strung so liberally throughout TMAWH), thrash the speed bumps with his mighty radials, blast up the driveway of Number 15 Strawbridge Circle, cut a hard left around the backyard shed, careen into the backyard of Number 84 Mayapple, avoid its picnic table (tricky), get into their driveway and out onto Mayapple, which takes him to BellewoodeValley Road, which runs straight to the exit of the Burbclave..."
Brain hurt yet?
Neal Stephenson reads like Harlan Ellison on steroids. Or maybe Robert Anton Wilson on acid, which is almost redundant. You know, Neal, you don't have to write everything that comes into your head. It's just TMI. Many authors write a backstory that feeds the motivation of the characters; in this book, you make the audience privy to all of the backstory. You include all the backstory of all the minutiae of each and every character, setting, and crack in the sidewalk. Reading this is like reading a data dump when you're debugging programming code (something I had to do repeatedly when I was writing machine-language programs in college--it's not a pretty sight). And as you read the 160,000+ words in this book, you can't help but wonder--is all this germain to the plot?
No--but the plot takes a back seat to the setting. Every little detail contributes to a highly complex and developed world.
Random ideas:
• As girl "kourier" Y.T. careens through the roads of L.A. on her board, ‘pooning onto passing vehicles and watching the landmarks pass with a blur, we careen through this novel in a similar manner. We plow through so many images and ideas that eventually it’s an overwhelming blur. Hold on tight or you might fall of and forget what you just read.
• As girl "kourier" Y.T. careens through the roads of L.A. on her board, ‘pooning onto passing vehicles and watching the landmarks pass with a blur, we careen through this novel in a similar manner. We plow through so many images and ideas that eventually it’s an overwhelming blur. Hold on tight or you might fall of and forget what you just read.
• Being a native of Los Angeles, I really enjoyed the geographic product placement of locations and culture of L.A. Any references to Wilshire Blvd. and the 405 freeway always make me smile.
• I have a problem with books that rely heavily on dreams or other virtual worlds to advance the plot. I really can’t take anything that happens in a dream seriously. So when we first walked into the virtual Black Sun with the avatars of our characters interacting, I had trouble caring what happened to anyone while in there. The whole hook of the book, though, is that something that happens in the virtual world can actually affect you in the real world (i.e. the Snow Crash drug-virus). So, it made me care just a little bit.
But that’s not to say I didn’t like or appreciate this book. Don't get me wrong. Snow Crash is a really fine piece of science fiction, which is why I rated it so highly. Neal Stephenson takes a few ideas and evolves them as we jettison into this strange commercial world. To be honest, the trajectory was so far-out-crazy-believable (once you accept the science fiction as fact), that it made me want to get out of L.A. before all this happens. Nice job, Mr. Stephenson.
And now? It's time for a good SnowScan.
And now? It's time for a good SnowScan.
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