Ideology is a virus.

In Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson introduces an anarcho-capitalistic world full of chaos. Set in the near future, the book primarily follows the story of Hiro Protagonist, a freelance hacker in the Metaverse and pizza deliverer for the Mafia franchise. While this book is advertised as a virtual reality book (in fact the book that coined the term Metaverse), I would say that Stephenson focuses much more on making a statement against capitalism and showing the toxicity of personal freedom.

The heart of the novel circles around the concept of ‘snow crash’, a computer virus that lives in the real and virtual world that is capable of infecting anything that it touches while frying the brain of anyone who hosts it. The book hones in on how technology affects the world, and how it is distributed according to social class and wealth - and how this power imbalance can lead to dangerous games of power and politics.

Despite the interesting concept, it’s very disappointing when a novel leaves me in a state of indifference after attempting to build up the characters for hundreds of pages. The characters lack dimension, and seem like they were created as an embodiment of how a teenager interested in computers wants to be seen. To make things worse, the interesting characters that show glimmers of promise (Uncle Enzo and Juanita in particular) suffer from a lack of development, and only seem to exist as an afterthought.

In conclusion, the novelty of the writing style of Stephenson while unique, grows unbearable rather quickly. After reading the first few pages, it is clear to me that this book would have served better as a comic book or a movie. The clumsily thrown together infodumps, unsteady narrative, and infinite layers of complexity within the plot, lead this book feeling extremely awkward and disjointed. I came into this book hearing the highest praise from notable computer scientists, but was ultimately disappointed with what I got. While Stephenson creates an interesting world, encompasses a lot of interesting concepts and entertains with his satire, it all inevitably falls apart and crashes in the end.

DNF