Stephen Barkley
Try to remember what it was like in 1992 (if you were even alive back then). Microsoft introduced Windows 3.1. IBM introduced the ThinkPad. Intel released the 486DX2 chip. Neal Stephenson published Snow Crash.
There’s something winsome about reading science fiction that was written before personal computing took off. At one point in the narrative, a media mogul has to stop to use a payphone. Admittedly he’s outraged, but the fact that there are still payphones to use remind the reader of the cultural distance a couple decades can make.
Snow Crash is a thrilling novel with a climax that continues for over one hundred pages. The thrills are balanced by the philosophical mystery at the heart of the narrative. Perhaps it’s my training as a theologian, but the way Stephenson brings Eden, Babel, Enki, Asherah, and Pentecostals together is fascinating.
Snow Crash is a riveting ride from start to finish. It is a testament to Stephenson’s insight and imagination that a twenty-five year old dystopian fiction novel can feel so unsettlingly real.
Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books, 2008 (1992).
I just finished a reread of the book last week. It’s the monthly selection of the Face Book Science Fiction Book Club. Like you, I ended up enjoying the philosophical underpinnings of the book more than any other aspect. Perhaps because it was a reread for me, the thriller aspects of the book did not engage me so much. At any rate, it is an important book in the SF canon, and I was glad to revisit it. And your review is quite nice.
Thanks Steve!