In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
Looking through my bookshelves, I recently realized that I haven’t reviewed any of the works of Neal Stephenson, long one of my favorite authors. And it was immediately clear which book I should re-read: Snow Crash. It wasn’t his first book, but it was the one that put him on the map, and not just within the science fiction community. The book was published in 1992, which means this past year marked its 30th anniversary. And the book was certainly attention-grabbing. With its hero bearing the improbable name of “Hiro Protagonist,” the story is a sprawling journey through a fractured and dis-United States, whose government has retreated into armed compounds, leaving law enforcement in the hands of private companies. The Mafia has optimized pizza delivery, skateboarding couriers latch themselves to cars on highways, people spend more and more time in what is called the metaverse, and robber baron capitalists are not only trying to rule the world by capturing the media, but by capturing the very minds of their audiences.
When Snow Crash first appeared, some wanted to slap the label of “cyberpunk” onto it. This, after all, is the book where the term metaverse was coined. Stephenson also pioneered use of the term “avatar” in the context of a person’s representation in a virtual world. But Stephenson’s work, despite its focus on computer networking and virtual reality, didn’t quite fit the cyberpunk label. The sub-genre of cyberpunk, which gained widespread attention with the publication of William Gibson’s Neuromancer in 1984, was a more serious endeavor, with literary aspirations. Stephenson’s Snow Crash, with its lurid characters, satirical worldbuilding, and frantic energy, was anything but serious literature. It reminded me of a literary version of Jack Kirby’s Captain America comics. Not just the ones Kirby drew, with their exaggerated proportions and perspectives, but the ones he also wrote, where the story doesn’t simply progress—it explodes across the pages. Most of all, Stephenson’s work is fun, with a contagious energy that draws the reader into the story.
About the Author
Neal Stephenson (born in 1959) is an American science fiction writer and futurist, who has had a significant impact on the science fiction community and the world beyond it. Stephenson started by writing techno-thrillers, but Snow Crash was his first book that was unabashedly science fiction, and it was a rousing success. He followed it with The Diamond Age, which imagined a world transformed by nanotechnology. The next book, Cryptonomicon, was set in the present and recent past, and looked at the challenges of protecting data and the field of cryptography.
Intrigued by the history of science and mathematics that he’d delved into during his research for Cryptonomicon, Stephenson then wrote a sprawling historical series, collectively referred to as The Baroque Cycle, first issued as three massive volumes, but later published as an eight-book set. The book contains a delightful mix of fictional and historical characters. This was followed by Anathem, a book about mathematical monks whose work ends up stretching the boundaries of reality itself. And there have been quite a few books since then, each distinctive and unique, and rich in the detail Stephenson has become known for. One of my favorites of his more recent novels is Seveneves, a book that sees humanity scrambling to survive the mysterious destruction of the moon and the disaster that ensues, which ends with an intriguing look at a world transformed by the apocalypse.
Stephenson has been nominated for, and won, a number of awards for his works over the years, with The Diamond Age winning the Hugo for Best Novel.
Beyond his role as a science fiction author, Stephenson has played a role in building the world of the future. He has been an advisor to companies including the Blue Origin space launch organization. He has worked as a game developer. And Stephenson is now in partnership to start a company named Lamina1 (that’s a 1 at the end of the word, not a lower-case L), whose goal is to build the foundation for an open metaverse, not tied to any single company or organization.
Literary Excess?
While Snow Crash is a compelling narrative that hooks the reader in from the first page right to the end, it is not without features that some might consider to be literary sins, including a main character who could be called a Mary Sue, the liberal (some might say excessive) use of exposition, and a tendency of characters to “mansplain” at each other.
We’re probably all encountered arguments over what constitutes a Mary Sue and whether certain characters fit the definition. Whether you agree or not, it isn’t difficult to see how the larger-than-life Hiro Protagonist, sword-wielding Mafia Deliverator, architect of the metaverse, and part-time music producer, has occasionally been saddled with the designation.
And Stephenson himself could be called the king of exposition, pausing frequently to explain things to the reader. In the opening pages of Snow Crash, he spends as much time explaining the backstory of his future America as he does portraying the action. The reader not only learns Hiro is delivering a pizza, they also learn how the pizza is made, about the pizza company itself, about the neighborhood the pizza is being sent to, and about the delivery person’s vehicle and weaponry. And this is all before the reader learns Hiro’s name. Sometimes the exposition is presented by the avatar of a library program, sometimes by characters bringing each other up to speed, and at the end there is a long scene where Hiro briefs his teammates in a virtual meeting. But even though Stephenson uses exposition liberally, the way painters build layers of oils or acrylics, he is also eminently entertaining at the same time. He is one of the few writers that can write long, explanatory passages that keep me eagerly turning pages.
Sometimes Stephenson’s characters get a little carried away with expository excursions themselves, especially Hiro. There are more than a few incidents of “mansplaining” in Snow Crash. While initially the term was used to describe men talking condescendingly to women, in recent years it has been used more widely, describing the general practice of talking down to an audience. And Hiro tends to do just that, explaining various things to the people around him at great lengths. At the same time, though, Hiro remains a likable character (and often portrayed as the smartest person in the room), and his long discursions might be taken as a sign of his enthusiasm, not arrogance (though of course, everyone will have their own take on the character and his behavior).
All in all, despite flirting with all sorts of literary excesses, Stephenson ends up pulling off a remarkable feat. For all its unconventional literary embellishments, Snow Crash is a tour de force, eminently readable and exciting.
Snow Crash
The book opens with a Deliverator (our own Hiro Protagonist) screaming through the city streets with a pizza that he received late, but must still be delivered on time for the Mafia, a company that doesn’t condone failure. His car is hit by the magnetic harpoon of a skateboarding courier nicknamed Y.T. (short for Yours Truly), a 15-year-old girl who hides her dangerous profession from her mother. Hiro is worried he can’t make his required delivery time, and tries to lose her. When he makes a miscalculation, and ends up crashing his car into an empty pool, Y.T. takes pity and makes the delivery for him, which attracts the attention of Uncle Enzo, his boss. Hiro, who is an independent intelligence collector for the privatized Central Intelligence Corporation, enlists Y.T. to help him in his efforts.
Hiro drops by a virtual bar in the metaverse (which he helped create), and is approached by an avatar acting like a drug pusher, who wants to give him a free hit of an executable file called Snow Crash. Hiro wisely refuses, but his friend who owns the bar, arrogantly assuming his antiviral software can handle anything, opens a Snow Crash file, and his avatar disintegrates. Later, Hiro finds out that his friend’s brain has been fried in the real world as well. He also meets an old lover, Juanita, who is investigating a mysterious new religion that is being sponsored by the American tycoon L. Bob Rife. She gives Hiro a huge file to look at, tells him to find an information collector named Lagos, then warns him to avoid Snow Crash, and also to beware of someone named Raven.
Back in the real world, Y.T. and Hiro encounter a Rat Thing, a dog that has been given a cyborg body, which saves them from some ruffians who were pursuing them. Despite warnings from Hiro, Y.T. helps the injured Rat Thing, who reminds her of a dog she had to give up when she was young. Her kindness, unusual in the “fend for yourself” world they live in, will end up being repaid abundantly.
Hiro is hosting a concert for his roommate’s band and finds the mysterious Lagos, only to see him killed by the sinister Raven. He starts looking at the information Juanita gave him. It turns out L. Bob Rife has bought a decommissioned aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, and is using it to collect refugees from around the Pacific Rim and, following the Japanese Current, bring them to the United States. Because of the many vessels that have accreted around the carrier, it has become known as the Raft. Rife also is behind a religious revival movement in the United States, Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates, where people speak in tongues. He is also after ancient Sumerian tablets that seem to hold the key to an ancient event where people began to speak and think differently.
Before long, all these different elements come together, and Hiro finds he is dealing with a massive plot to take over the world. He learns that the human brain is like hardware, and language is like software. And some language is like a computer virus, able to reprogram the way a person thinks and acts. There is no central authority in the U.S., and Hiro finds himself working with an odd coalition of business franchise leaders who oppose Rife and his efforts, including Uncle Enzo from the Mafia, Mister Lee from Mister Lee’s Greater Hong Kong, and Ng from Ng Security Industries. Juanita turns out to be a major player in the efforts to foil Rife and his evil plans, and is far more capable than Hiro ever imagined.
The conflict spills out into open but disorganized warfare as all the various players converge on the Raft, which is making its first stops along the West Coast. Hiro has repeated clashes with the mysterious Raven, and learns that their fathers had encountered each other during World War II. Juanita reappears, having been successful in overcoming the mental programming of Snow Crash, and Hiro develops an antivirus to save the hackers of the world, battling Raven in the metaverse as well. Soon Y.T. and Hiro are on the Raft, with a Sumerian tablet as the MacGuffin that drives the plot to an action-packed conclusion (complete with the intervention of cyborg Rat Things).
The cast of characters in Snow Crash is quite diverse and memorable, although I wish Stephenson had aged Y.T. up a few years—I was uncomfortable reading about an underaged character who was sexually active. When I first read Snow Crash, I couldn’t quite figure out when the book was set. Hiro’s age and his father’s service in World War II, along with Uncle Enzo’s Vietnam service and the attitudes of many of the characters, root the book in the time when it was written, but the world it portrays is an America some years in the future. Surprisingly, the book has aged well over the years.While many things are exaggerated, the setting still feels like many of the elements it contains could happen sometime in the next few years, which often isn’t the case with books written about the near future. In fact, some of Stephenson’s ideas have become even more timely in the years since the novel was written.
Final Thoughts
Snow Crash is an improbable mix of satire, adventure, slapstick comedy, and serious speculation about technology and the nature of human consciousness. With all those disparate elements going on, you might think it shouldn’t work, but it works very well, even upon re-reading decades later. It has enough energy to propel a dozen stories, and still feels engaging, fresh, and fun. If you’ve never read it, I would highly recommend it.
Now it’s your turn to chime in. If you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Snow Crash or any of Stephenson’s other work. And I’m curious about your thoughts on exposition in fiction. Do you think, as I do, that Stephenson succeeded in using so much exposition? And are there other authors or works that stand out to you as for the way they convey large quantities of background information?
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.
