Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

[lightreads]

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Oh Neal Stephenson, never change. Because who else writes occasionally hilarious punkified SF with a swordsman hacker and a skateboarder saving the world from mind control memes, I ask you?

Wait, no, you can change in a few ways. You can write better endings, which I realize you've been working on in subsequent books. Because this book does not actually end, it just sprints face-first into a brick wall. It's about as pretty as you think it is. Youch. You can also write better romantic relationships, because that one made my eyes water in the really not good way. You can get funnier, which I say only because I know that you have since 1992, because this book is funny, but you have some rough timing and there's something a bit off-center about the delivery here that you have a better handle on in Cryptonomicon, say.

You don't really have to work on your computers, because the way you wrote about programming and hacking in 1992 is so fundamental and universal that it still makes perfect sense. And the really weird thing is that you don't have to work on tightening up your books, because this one was pretty tight by your sprawling, vast standards. This book had sort of a through line, and you didn't toss much out that you didn't pick up again later. And the really weird thing is? It didn't work for you as well as the enormous flood of your later books. Who else can say that, either?

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