Hiro… Protagonist… This is the greatest name ever conceived that didn’t need to be conceived.

I read this book and was blown away by how much it predicted about vr and the metaverse considering when it was written. I also picked up Ready Player One a month later and was blown away by how much it ripped off Snow Crash.

There's a line in the book about Hiro's car having the power to launch a pound of bacon into the asteroid belt, which is stupid and ridiculous on multiple levels, but sounds badass... and that sums up so much of Snow Crash. By the way I love this book.

Neil Stephenson is a pretty legendary Cyberpunk author, glad you're covering this classic! Snow Crash is a very important part of the "Cyberpunk canon" imo.

One of the little things I love about this book is how good the made up slang is. It feels natural in a way that very few other writers are able to capture when they do the same.

What's fascinating is, we actually might be headed axactly that way- Dystopia with sugar coating. Even when humans are down in shit, we'll convince ourselves that nothing's really THAT bad. Snow Crash may be more prophetic than be currently realize.

The thing that really astounded me about the book's prediction powers was the idea of buying and selling "property" like real estate but in a VR world. Paying real money for digital space. And then when The Sims became popular, and other things in the 2000s, suddenly that became reality: a digital estate market with real world value. Fascinating stuff. I also liked the little detail that what made people really buy into the VR world was getting facial heuristics right.

From Neal Stephenson I would recommend Cryptonomicon, it's a weird story about 90's hackers trying to create a digital currency / tax haven while navigating the problems of a startup growing into corporation. It also has a parallel story in WW2 about decrypting nazi transmissions and applying information theory to warfare. So Neal not only predicted the metaverse, also bitcoin.

I got the feeling that Snow Crash was intentionally off putting in a lot of ways. Like, Neal really leaned into the punk part of cyberpunk and dared anyone who didn’t like it to see Reason. If you’re doing foundational works of cyberpunk, you have to do The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester. He basically invented the genre back in the 1950s and it’s criminal that these books are largely forgotten.

I recently read snow crash for the first time and at first I was worried it was gonna be weird and then hiro protagonist with his nuclear decimator vehicle or whatever it was, turned out to be a pizza driver and I was in. The joke landed and the critique was sound, I was in.

The opening of this book is one of the best steady realizations of the world, the hero, and his current job ive ever read. I listen to this openijg occasionally just to get fired up. Its soooooo fricking cool.

It’s hard for me to analyze snow crash independently from diamond age as I feel like some of your critiques of the ending are addressed there, but obviously as a stand-alone work it does have some problems. I read this more than 20 years ago and I’m glad it’s still being received so well, thanks for the review

Linguistics in the plot was interesting enough to drive me through the slow parts but I will admit that's probably a me thing. I also love ns tendencies to just end the book where the action ends because I agree with your assessment that the problems aren't gonna be solved, it feels like the book sits with you for a while after.

Neal Stephenson is my absolute favorite author. I was immediately sold after the lengthy description that led to the declaration of Hiro as "The Deliverator". I thoroughly implore folks to check out his work. Zodiac, Cryptonomicon, the whole Baroque Cycle... All SO good!

Whenever I recommend this book to people, I warn them about the info dumping. I think the story itself is great and it would be amazing on film.

If you like computers, his book Cryptonomicon is a must (and a pretty big book also, around 1000 pages long) Also, his essay into operating systems (In the beginning was the command line) was also a pretty interesting read

Neal is my favorite author, so glad to see your dive into his work. Enjoy!

funny, the Idea of a virus that is simultaneously digital and biological also makes it's way into tsutomu Nihei's "BLAME!" - which is a pretty cool manga (if you can take a manga that has almost no dialogue and is all wandering a cyber-apocalyptic city, with bursts of action and cryptic dialogue. It's a bit of a meme, but there is something reminiscent of dark souls in the way the reasons behind the narrative are evoked rather than spelled out.

"Neal Stephenson is just going to end a story when he feels like it..." *eyes Seveneves nervously*

I read this book recently and was flabbergasted that more people weren't talking about it with the recent obsession with metaverse etc. Cool that the word 'avatar' we use in videogames comes from this book.

Now I want to run SnowCrash through an algorithm that converts everything to past tense and see if it is even better.

I agree with the pulled back ending. I don't think it nihilism to not expect the overall world problems being solved in one book. More was addressed in the diamond age anyway but realistically if you want to solve the great problems in this world ( take that either way you want to) you're going to need to do the work in incremental steps

Fascinating... of all the cool things in this weird book, I love the conversations with the librarian most. I mean, Uncle Enzo is cool, YT is of course great, Raven is an awesome "villain", the adventures on the raft are gripping, the entire heist nature of getting the drug from the distributers and the posse of deeply bizarre people behind that heist, the world-building itself, all of it is fun, but especially on re-reads (or rather re-listens as an audiobook), I enjoy the conversations with the librarian and the "detective" work of Hiro trying to figure out the nature of the virus and "L. Ron Hubbard"'s plan the most by far! (As to the unsettling sexualization of YT, yeah, I think there is a little bit of genuine 90s unenlightended creepy titillation in there, but given the ending of YT's arc, and also given her very clear thoughts and agency on everything, from the backstory with Roadkill to even the problematic encounter with Raven, I think the book manages to scrape by on the side of the angels. In the end it is clear that as far as the world sexualizes her, while she is a curious teenage girl, she is clearly barely interested in men in a sexual way, and when she is, it is only on her own terms. In the end, all the other relationships - to her mother, to Fido, to her job, to Enzo, and even to Hiro [who thankfully has zero interest in her in any creepy way] - are the ones that determine her character. And she is such a badass, that I for one am willing to forgive the slight missteps.) All other structural flaws the books has (personally I find the adventures in the second act leading up the trip onto the raft the bit where the tension sags the most) are more than balanced out by the sheer incredible amount of fascinating ideas, characters, and scenes. Few books are this densely entertaining.

Read that book when it first came out back in the 90's I was a cyberpunk scifi addict back in my early 20's. Now that I am in my early 50's I am a DoorDash driver and I can't help but think of myself as The Deliverator whenever I go out to do my deliveries, I guess the book had an effect on me as I am also a martial artist and a somewhat capable coder. Although I don't carry a kata with me, I do own a sword. I am such a nerd. Great review by the way!

Literally just finished it and it creeps me out how accurate the Librarian is to basically basic AI rn.

So glad I found this channel! I literally just finished reading Snow Crash a few minutes ago. The first time I heard about it was in Tim Roger’s Action Button Review of Cyberpunk 2077. This book fucking rocks, full stop! The moment I fell in love was when it described the pigs (oops, police officers) that wear dinner plate sized badges that read, “DIAL 1-800-THE-COPS. ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS.” This was my first time reading classic cyberpunk literature. I’ve seen Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, and the original Ghost in the Shell, but the tonal whiplash of this book was exhilarating. Stephenson is a vocabulary maximalist and I loved it. How well his description of the metaverse has aged is obviously impressive, but for me the scenes of reality are just as if not more enthralling. Third person present tense doesn’t bother me at all, and I actually found the info dump intensely fascinating. However, I’m also a history dweeb 🤓

Snow Crash is definitely a favorite of mine. I too noticed the third person present tense, but always seem to forget it once I'm far enough along in the book. But damn, THAT infodump sccene.... scenes?.... it always pulls me out just a little. I feel like the subject matter, and the mystery at the heart of the novel, keep me from ever being fully pulled out by the info dump though. It definitely doesn't absolve the info dump fully to me. But damn, Stephenson is one of those rare authors that I feel like handles them fairly alright. As long as it's interesting topically I'll read whatever info dump Stephenson puts in there, lol.

Yay, another book review! I'm not sure this book is in my interest, but book review videos are what brought me to the channel and are still my favorite content. Thank you!

I think the info dumping would have been more interesting when the book first came out. The internet, VR, 3D graphics, and a lot of other technical things the book relies on weren't understood by most people. Nowadays, talking about clipping 3D models could be tedious, but back then it may have been more engaging.

While opening with High Stakes Pizza Delivery is an *insane* choice, it is *more insane* that this pays off in the last act of the narrative.

"truly this book is... oh shit" sums up Snow Crash pretty well lol.

I like how the editing clearly went up a notch in this video. Great work gobbo

Reamde is a silly action movie. Cryptonomicon is probably my favorite but it's mostly WW2 codebreaking and not really heavy Sci-Fi. Seveneves was awesome if you like harder Sci-Fi stories, surviving in space, and humanity banding together. Can't wait for your thoughts on Berserk.

Great video!

"Conversations I've had with Siri" It's creepy how you have phrased that.

Good luck 😉 with ur channel and life too!!! Always watch ur videos!! 🎼📝🎬

Loved this review!! Would 100% recommend Seveneves - my favorite NS by far, awesome hard scifi and spectacular worldbuilding

Thanks for the insight!

Glad you got around to reviewing this book, I think I sent it to you like 2 or 3 years ago. Good review.

Everyone: I can't believe the main character's name is Hiro Protagonist! Me: YT was actually the protagonist. And her name is just as ridiculous and perfect.

My biggest complaint about this book is that Juanita is not a fleshed out character. Feel like all of the infodumpy sections with the Librarian would’ve been much more interesting from Juanita’s perspective. I get that Hiro is both hero and protagonist, but it felt like his character was overburdened in the structure of the story. Adding Juanita as a POV character would’ve raised the dramatic irony as we learned about the world from Hiro’s perspective. Pretty underwhelming execution of a really fantastic premise for a story

This book was way ahead of its time, but I always thought The Diamond Age was even better.

Glad to hear you finally got around to this book. It's been years since I read it, but the scene I still remember best from that book is the chapter with the perspective shift to the AI Security Dog. It had that weird mix of both things real dogs do and the mix of "I could see computers/bots doing that." Ex: [Security Robot] Dogs howling out in ultrasonic frequencies to alert other cyberbot dogs that "shits going down, be on alert!" left me laughing and scratching my chin in contemplation.

For another great cyberpunk dystopia you should watch Serial Experiments Lain. A bit slow and it requires some investment but it's completely worth it.

I remember reading this in high school and saying "Wow, this was pretty amazing. Good thing we don't have to worry about this ever happening." Me rereading this in my mid-thirties. "Oh. *shit*."

Likely it's just the I.T. professional in me but Cryptonomicon is my favorite Stephenson book by a good bit. On the other hand, I finished the first book of the System of the World series and was baffled; it was interesting and well written, but it had no plot; it went nowhere and had no indication of what it was trying to get to eventually.

Hearing about how Facebook rebranding itself into Meta as a way to directly admit it’s influence which apparently condemned the concept in the first place. Makes me want to write a short story where an author writes a dystopian novel about the dangers of world ending technology, is warned by another author to not do it, publishes it anyway, and then sees the next generation of tech geniuses make the technology and destroy the world.

He said in an interview with Lex Friedman, that Snow Crash is making fun of cyberpunk

You got me excited to read this! As a suggestion - Seveneves by Neal Stephenson! Re-read it twice and I love it!

I'm a big Stephenson fan. Others have suggested Cryptonomicon which I would endorse, as well. If you have any familiarity with massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft, you would find Reamde fascinating. I was blown away by the characters and the incredible global scope of that novel. Regarding POV - I admit 3rd person present tense is a bit jarring to read. What has been your take on 1st person present tense? For me, that is actually a storytelling voice that is more accessible.

Just finished this today and after getting past the third person present and the quirkiness of the naming etc I really enjoyed most of the story. The info dumps with the librarian get ROUGH, and the ending was a bit unsatisfactory for me, but still a solid book. You should make a video recommending Cyberpunk books based on all the ones you’ve read for your research!

I quite hated the characters when I read this years ago but I couldn't stop reading because of the world it crafted

thank you for saving me the time!

Looking forward to reading this book👍👍

I read this back in the early 90's and loved it. I think that novel and Gibson's Neuromancer are still two of my favorite books.

I've only read The Diamond Age from him, I should probably check this one out since its the work of his I hear about most.

If you are getting into the cyberpunk canon, also get True Names by Vinge. Written 11 years before but it started it all

I love this book. Me and my dad listened to an audio book version while driving across the country

YT is the coolest character ever. She's in Diamond Age too.

(1) I loved Snow Crash. (2) It's a short story by NS standards.

Loved this book!

This was actually an assigned reading for me in English 102! Definitely the best required reading I've ever had. I read it in 2010 and had no idea it had been published WAAAAY back in 1992, the speculative writing and the world are eerily familiar to ours.

Loved the video. Random question Daniel, have you read SEVENeves at all?

So, I just finished this book. I went in 100% blind, had no idea when it was written or what it was about. I saw the cover while browsing Barnes and Noble, read the back cover, and decided to make this my impulse buy of the day. I feel like I need to get a few things off my chest about this book. (Spoilers) 1) I swear to Christ, Snow Crash has the single BEST first chapter I have ever read. 2) The infodumping you talk about near the middle of the book was pretty annoying. And honestly, I almost liked it more when we didn't know what the virus was. I'm all for way out there Sci-Fi, but I thought the virus as explained in the book was a bit of a stretch, even for my tastes. Although, as the book went on, I became more okay with the concepts at play. 3) I for one adore the ending, and thought it tied up most of the plot points in the book fairly well. Yes, "SC" is still out there, but the group that was really responsible for it is pretty much annihilated, and Hiro has created a program that can detect and block "SC," which it looks like he's going to monetize at the end, so maybe he'll stop living in such a dump once people realize how dangerous the Metaverse actually is in that world. Hiro's showdown with Raven was really fun, and the final scene with Fido was great. 4) Y.T. was such a fun character, and I admit I was a bit disappointed with where her character was taken near the end. I can understand the leers and looks she got throughout the beginning of the book, as she's nearing adulthood and is clearly sexually active already. The stuff on the raft was absolutely unnecessary though. It kinda sucked that Y.T. went from an absolute bad-ass, to a damsel in distress, to literally losing her autonomy (as with a later passage where Hiro is explaining about how the right spoken words could overwrite common sense, which seems to be what happens to Y.T. during 'that' scene.) I dunno, I would have been at least 'okay' with it had everything Y.T. done been of her own volition. Maybe the idea was to make Raven even more of an absolute scumbag, in which case, that was a success. 5) I had no idea this was written over 30 years ago. The first few chapters felt so fresh and informed, that I thought that it was a newer release. It's really crazy how well this book has aged. I dunno, this book is absolutely flawed, but I adored it all the same. The world was so interesting, the characters were super cool, the concepts at play were so fun... Honestly it didn't feel like a 550 page book, it felt more like 200, and like there should have been more.

Subscribed because of the intro sketch.

My dog's name is Hiro Protagonist. My other dog is Pips. Both very good boys.

I'll add that to my tbr

I really enjoyed this video, the critique to skit ratio was just right imo

You should absolutely read The Diamond Age which is a sort of sequel (it's set in the same world and when you figure out which character is in both books, you win a (virtual) kewpie doll). He's one of my two favorite living authors and I think it's his best book. It will also show you an early step along Stephenson's path toward significant improvement as an author on info dumping. Snow Crash definitely has an issue on that (it's my biggest complaint with the book) but he does get better and better at delivering information without pages and pages of uninterrupted didactacism.

I literally bought Snow Crash a little over a week before this came out and began reading it last night. I cant watch the whole thing until I'm finished, but I am excited. I want to see how I feel about this book my own since it is my first step into Sci-fi.

The present tense narration makes it seem more active. To me, it sort of takes place like a film in my mind. It might bother me if all literature used this device, but I don't mind it at all in Snow Crash. I think it's rather effective for that story.

This was the first cyberpunk novel I read when I was 14 and it blew me away, the sarcasm, cynicism and humor in it is so good

I agree, Snow Crash is better than Anathama. I also think that Neal Stephenson only uses a fiction frame to throw all of his philosophical musings at the reader. Reading him, you probably aren't going to get a really tight story, but you _will_ have a whole bunch of random interesting things to think about, and you kind of just need to go in there knowing that.

This is a good review. I personally didn't mind the infondump in the middle because it was fascinating info, but I can see,hownit mihht be an issue for others. I recommend reading Diamond Age at some point it's a really fun novel and I think you'd get a kick out of it

This book is now at the top of my reading list! I feel like my book idea is just a copy of it.

This is one of my favorite books. Neal Stephenson is great

I really love that new book cover. And I’m a sucker for katanas.

Read more Neal (some Jack Shaftoe? Seveneves is brialliant). Read more Gibson (Blue Ant, Bridge, the most recent stuff is brilliant, too). I love that you're getting into these guys - my favorite authors alongside Jordan and Tolkien (who you've covered...extensively). Honorable mention to Martha Wells, too. :)

Now it feels like my nails are popping off, thanks.

I have only read it once and as you said the infodumping bothered you more on a second read so maybe it will for me too. But I think the infodumping was my favorite part of Hiro's side of the story! I think I gave it an 8/10 when I made a review of it. The near-parody, dry, kind of sarcastic tone of it was really fun! Funny enough though . . . I never noticed it was present tense. I literally had to grab my copy and check because that had never occured to me to think about.

what you were talking about with the ending just ENDING reminds me of a LOT or older movies. like 70s and older just cut to black without any post climax

Glad you finally read the book I suggested a year+ ago! As for the ending; It's sudden ending didn't bother me. It left me wanting a sequel. Story wise, how it was written, I probably appreciated it more for the world building. That large info dump? Loved it, but I'm weird that way.

About the tense used, took about 10 minutes for me to get used to it. After that it was a stylistic choice I enjoyed.

Yay... My favourite book getting a review

That's funny, the present tense prose is part of what I love about this book. If anything I wish it would catch on more.

He gives the book high praise, because deep down, he knows it's best to Listen to Reason...

I think this is pretty much what I remember from reading Snow Crash quite a long time ago: Hiro, YT, the badass dude hooked up to a nuclear bomb, the pizza wars and I think there was some high-speed rollerskating (or maybe hoverskating?). I'm sure there was a plot, but I have no idea what it might have been.

My second favorite book. Now I wanna read it for the third time

Sci-Fi Authors: Here’s a book warning you that if you do X it will be very very bad. Tech Company: Great idea!! Sci-Fi Authors: W-wait no.

I would put Snow Crash firmly in the middle of Neal Stephenson's work. I've read everything but the Fall and his latest. The Confusion is clearly his masterpiece - those are 3 books that combine alternate history, fantasy and sci-fi in the most Neal Stephenson way possible. But Daniel's review of Snow Crash has picked up on some of NS's more annoying quirks. He always chooses a cool phrase or scene over streamlining for plot and continuity. I think we can look at a NS book as a collection of tapas rather than a full meal, but each scene will be stellar. NS is a deep thinker who is actually involved in space and tech; his ideas have more heft than almost any other author in the field, but his authorial quirks can obscure that depth quickly.

The middle of the story *definitely* drags with Hiro's story. But that's when you get the chapter about YT's mom working in the government office, so I'll allow it.

Man, I never even noticed it was in 3rd person present. I think it really works tbh

I'd be very curious to get your take on Seveneves. It's one of my favourite speculative scifi books and personally shows Stephenson's range and growth as an author (I enjoyed snowcrash much less in comparison).

I read this in the early 90s shortly after it came out. Since I had been a pizza delivery guy during the 30-minutes or its free era, I could relate to the edginess of it all...at the time, I was also getting into virtual reality, early internet stuff, cyberpunk and cyberpsychedelia and also I had a fascination with Sumerian mythology. Oh, and I'd read Julian Jaynes' 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' in university, which was both very influential on me and Stephenson. So, as you can imagine, Snow Crash was pretty much THE perfect novel for me! And of course, I absolutely loved it, and it remains one of my all-time favourites to this day.

John Scalzi's recent book Kaiju Preservation Society references this novel a lot, so I've been curious about it. Cyberpunk isn't always appealing to me, but I'm going to check it out.

XX by Rian Hughes The payoff / payload of this book is insane An uphill climb with an immense roller coaster plunge at the end

Of all the books about not inventing the Torment Nexus this one has had all of its Torment Nexuses invented the hardest,

Omg wait I did start this book and I completely forgot, only remembered after hearing the name.......'Hero Protagonist '......🤣

Snow Crash was a great influence on Second Life.

I looooove your book reviews. Such a fun way to discover new books! Thank you Daniel!