Snow Crash

paperback

English language

Published Jan. 5, 2011 by PENGUIN BOOKS LTD, UK.

ISBN:
978-0-241-95318-1
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

View on Inventaire

2 stars (4 reviews)

Snow Crash is a science fiction novel by American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's novels, it covers history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics and philosophy.In his 1999 essay "In the Beginning... Was the Command Line", Stephenson explained the title of the novel as his term for a particular software failure mode on the early Macintosh computer. Stephenson wrote about the Macintosh that "When the computer crashed and wrote gibberish into the bitmap, the result was something that looked vaguely like static on a broken television set—a 'snow crash'". Stephenson has also mentioned that Julian Jaynes' book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind was one of the main influences on Snow Crash.The book presents the Sumerian language as the firmware programming language for the brainstem, which is supposedly functioning as the BIOS for the human brain. According …

9 editions

reviewed Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Invecchiato male

2 stars

La prima metà del libro è un capolavoro, dalla seconda metà diventa sempre più difficile leggerlo fino alla fine. Parte con 150 pagine su sumeri per poi complicarsi e non far capire più niente, oltre a perdere la bellezza della scrittura iniziale che si addentra in descrizione di tecnicismi cybepunk superflui e sempre meno entusiasmanti. Le ultime 200 pagine ti spingono ad abbandonarlo, devi resistere a un caos di scrittura di vari eventi in cui hai ormai perso e non compreso i dettagli della storia.

Disappointing

2 stars

I suspect that I would have enjoyed this a lot more if I'd read it 30 years ago. Reading it now, the cyberpunk stylings all feel incredibly dated and are unable to paper over the many problems with this novel. Starting with the characters, who amount to a collection of one-dimensional stereotypes about which it is impossible to care.

The plot doesn't feel like it's going anywhere for much of the time and when Stephenson starts talking about technology, everything starts to become increasingly ludicrous. This book really hasn't aged well.

reviewed Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Ähnlich schlecht gealtert, wie ich selbst

2 stars

Tja, was soll ich sagen? Hätte ich Snow Crash vor fünfundzwanzig Jahren gelesen, wäre ich wohl ein absoluter Fan. So sind das Buch und ich 25 Jahre älter geworden und werden uns wieder trennen, ohne Freunde geworden zu sein.

Die dystopische Welt kennt man ja beispielsweise aus Filmen wie Blade Runner und Soylent Green, oder auch den Rollenspielen CyberPunk und Shadowrun. Auch die virtuelle Welt, die deutlich mehr an Second Live als die literarisch verkitschte Variante aus Otherland erinnert, gibt einem das Gefühl von Heimat. Wo ich ein wenig kritisch bin, sind die Erwähnungen von eigentlich damals schon absehbar vom Aussterben bedrohten Technologien (FAX, Videorecorder, Münztelefon), was ich aber gerne als gewollten Anachronismus durchgehen lassen will. Meist werden sie so eingebunden, dass ein Gegenspieler dadurch als rückständig diffamiert wird.

Worauf ich völlig hätte verzichten können, war die Sex-Szene. Insbesondere weil es bei einer 15jährigen Protagonistin einen leicht zweifelhaften Touch hat. …