Snow Crash

May 4, 1992
In California of the near future, when the U.S. is only a ``Burbclave'' (city-state), the Mafia is just another franchise chain (CosaNostrastet Pizza, Incorporated) and there are no laws to speak of, Hiro Protagonist follows clues from the Bible, ancient Sumer and high technology to help thwart an attempt to take control of civilization--such as it is. When he logs on to Metaverse, an imaginary place entered via computer, Hiro encounters Juanita Marquez, a ``radical'' Catholic and computer whiz. She warns him off Snow Crash (a street drug named for computer failure) and gives him a file labeled Babel (as in Tower of Babel). Another friend, sp ok/pk Da5id, who ignores Juanita's warning, computer crashes out of Metaverse into the real world, where he physically collapses. Hiro, Juanita, Y.T. (a freewheeling, skateboard-riding courier) and sundry other Burbclave and franchise power figures see some action on the way to finding out who is behind this bizarre ``drug'' with ancient roots. Although Stephenson ( Zodiac ) provides more Sumerian culture than the story strictly needs (alternating intense activity with scholarship breaks), his imaginative juxtaposition of ancient and futuristic detail could make this a cult favorite.

October 1, 2001
One of the added pleasures of the success of Stephenson's recent books (Cryptonomicon, etc.) is this better-late-than-never audio version of his third (and arguably best) novel, which continues to be a paperback bestseller. Snow Crash
(1992), which helped earn the word "cyberpunk" a place in history, is set in the not-too-distant future where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the U.S. is a vast, mall-like patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and young Hiro Protagonist (yes, that's the hero protagonist's name) uses his computer game wizardry and pizza delivering skills to combat a deadly new designer drug (and computer virus) called Snow Crash. Actor/writer Davis is the ideal choice for bringing Stephenson's crackling, poetic language to life, and the author-approved abridgement sacrifices none of his hilariously skewed, eminently believable vision—a stew of concepts from Sumerian myth to Japanese anime—of the commercially sponsored fate that sits waiting in a giant shopping mall, coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Based on the Bantam Doubleday Dell paperback.

April 1, 1992
Hiro Protagonist, delivery boy for Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza and freelance hacker in the virtual reality called the Metaverse, tangles with religious cultists, computer virus/drug dealers, and a human bomb known as the Raven in a freewheeling first novel that picks up where cyberpunk left off. Rapid-fire action scenes interspersed with snippets of Sumerian mythology and vignettes of a franchise-dominated 21st century combine to produce a heady, surrealistic pastiche of the not-so-distant future. Satiric sf at its best, this novel is highly recommended for all libraries.

Copyright 1992 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 1992
This novel depicts a twenty-first-century America that has turned into the classic urban jungle, with most people plugged into "virtual reality" simulations. A computer virus threatens the electronics, and a new drug called Snow Crash threatens human health. A maverick hacker calling himself Hiro Protagonist winds up with the job of fighting both. The book will not seem all that significant to those familiar with the last 10 years or so of cyberpunk and its relatives, but it does come across well as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek exploration of similar territory by a writer new to sf but basically gifted who's assimilated a good many of the developments in virtual-reality technology since the early 1980s. ((Reviewed Apr. 1, 1992))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1992, American Library Association.)