Conference noted::sf

1101.0. "Neal Stephenson" by TECRUS::REDFORD () Sat Aug 29 1992 12:16

    "Snow Crash"
    Neal Stephenson
    Bantam Spectra, June 1992 (trade paperback)
    
    Lurid, but a lot of fun.  Cross Thomas Pynchon with the comic book
    "American Flagg!" and you have a taste of the style.  A sample is
    given below.  Our hero (whose name is actually Hiro Protagonist)
    does most of his work on "The Street", which is a virtual reality
    MUD, established by "the computer-graphic ninja overlords of the
    Association for Computing Machinery's Global Multimedia Protocol
    Group".  The Street is a common space viewable through stereo
    goggles:

        "When Hiro goes into the Metaverse and looks down the Street
        and sees buildings and electric signs stretching off into the
        darkness, disappearing over the curve of the globe, he is
        actually staring at the graphic representations of a myriad
        different pieces of software that have been engineered by
        major corporations.  In order to place these things on the
        Street, they have had to get approval from the GMPG, have had
        to buy frontage on the Street, get zoning approval, obtain
        permits, bribe inspectors, the whole bit.  The money
        corporations pay to build things on the Street all goes into a
        trust fund owned and operated by the GMPG, which pays for
        developing and expanding the machinery that enables the Street
        to exist. ... "The sky and the ground are black, like a
        computer screen that hasn't had anything drawn on it yet; it
        is always nighttime in the Metaverse, and the Street is always
        garish and brilliant, like Las Vegas freed from constraints of
        physics and finance.  But people in Hiro's neighborhood are
        very good programmers, so it's tasteful.  The houses look like
        real houses.  There are a couple of Frank Lloyd Wright
        reproductions and some fancy Victoriana...

        "In the real world - planet Earth, Reality - there are
        somewhere between six and ten billion people.  At any given
        time, most of them are making mud bricks or field-stripping
        their AK-47s.  Perhaps a billion of them have enough money to
        own a computer; these people have more money than all of the
        others put together.  Of these billion potential computer
        owners, maybe a quarter of them actually bother to own
        computers, and a quarter of these have machines that are
        powerful enough to handle the Street protocol.  That makes for
        about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any
        given time.  Add in another sixty million or so who can't
        really afford it but go there anyway, by using public
        machines, or machines owned by their school or their employer,
        and at any given time the Street is occupied by twice the
        population of New York City...

        "The Street is a hundred meters wide, with a narrow monorail
        track running down the middle.  The monorail is a free piece
        of public utility software that enables users to change their
        location on the Street rapidly and smoothly.  A lot of people
        just ride back and forth on it, looking at the sights.  When
        Hiro first saw this place ten years ago, the monorail hadn't
        been written yet; he and his buddies had to write car and
        motorcycle software in order to get around.  They would take
        their software out and race it in the black desert of the
        electronic night..."

    Hiro runs afoul of Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza, of a seriously
    sinister dude named Raven, and of Bob Rife, media overlord and
    master of the Raft, a floating refugee camp that makes the
    Haitian boat exodus look like a weekend yacht outing.  
    
    Stephenson has written two other very funny books that you might
    want to find: "Zodiac" and "The Big U".  "Zodiac" is about a
    chemist and eco-terrorist who has the perfect means of getting
    around Boston - a Zodiac raft with an outboard.  Downtown to
    Fenway Park in five minutes!  He battles polluters all over
    Massachusetts with the help of his nitrous-whiffing metalhead
    roommates.   "The Big U" is a thinly disguised satire of Boston
    University, with its mega-dorms and its terrifying president
    Septimus Severinus Krupp, lately candidate for governor.  He's
    not a writer for the delicate of sensibility, but if you're a
    color-loving technoid, give him a try.
    
    /jlr

re: Snow Crash

As far as I'm concerned this is the best "Cyberpunk" genre book I've read.
It leaves Gibson, et al, way behind.  My only complaint would be that it
is very busy (many different things going on).  It also represents the abstract
computer world (and the way people attach to it) in very plausible ways.
It also ends somewhat abruptly, another 50 pages would have been nice.

					/Brad

    is this guy capable of writing  simple sentence? gawd he runs on....

Probably not! :-)

What's interesting was that it was supposed to be the storyboard for a
graphic novel.  Maybe it will be yet...


					/Brad

    Interesting that .0 found this novel "lurid."  I thought that
    underneath the action and attitudes was a pretty decent exploration of
    the idea "language is a virus."  _Snow Crash_ is better than the
    somewhat similar cyberpunk distopia _Synners_.
    
    Wes

    I just finished Snow Crash last week (mostly on airplanes and in hotel
    rooms).  I thought it was a great read, with some unique and interesting
    concepts.  I found it somewhat less "off the wall" than a lot of the
    cyberpunk genre; "lurid" seems a bit overstated.  Recommended.
    
    len.