Snow Crash
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| Snow Crash | |
 U.S. version cover shot |
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| Author | Neal Stephenson |
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| Cover artist | Bruce Jensen |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, Postcyberpunk |
| Publisher | Bantam Books (USA) |
| Publication date | June 1992 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 480 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-553-08853-X (first edition, hardback) |
Snow Crash is Neal Stephenson's third novel, published in 1992. It follows in the footsteps of cyberpunk novels by such authors as William Gibson and Rudy Rucker but differs from its predecessors in that it includes much satire and black humor. Like many of Stephenson's other novels it contains references to history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, and philosophy.
Stephenson explained the title of the novel in his 1999 essay In the Beginning...was the Command Line as his term for a particular software failure mode on the early Apple 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'". A similar behavior can be observed on computers with graphic cards after a GPU crash.
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[edit] Background
The story takes place in Los Angeles, in the area formerly known as the United States, during the early 21st century. In this hypothetical future reality the United States Federal Government has ceded most of its power to private organizations and entrepreneurs.[1] Franchising, individual sovereignty and automobiles reign supreme (along with drug trafficking, violent crime, and traffic congestion). Mercenary armies compete for national defense contracts while private security guards preserve the peace in gated, sovereign housing developments. Highway companies compete to attract drivers to their roads rather than the competitors', and all mail delivery is by hired courier. The remnants of government maintain authority only in isolated compounds where they transact business that is, by and large, irrelevant to the booming, dynamic society around them.
Much of the territory ceded by the government has been carved up into sovereign enclaves, each run by its own big business franchise (such as "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong") or the various residential burbclaves (suburban enclaves). This arrangement resembles anarcho-capitalism, a theme Stephenson carries over to his next novel The Diamond Age. Hyperinflation has devalued the dollar to the extent that trillion dollar bills — Ed Meeses" — are nearly disregarded and the quadrillion dollar note — the Gipper — is the standard 'small' bill. For physical transactions people resort to alternative, non-hyperinflated currencies such as yen or "Kongbucks" (the official currency of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong).
The Metaverse, a phrase coined by Stephenson as a successor to the Internet, constitutes Stephenson's vision of how a virtual reality-based Internet might evolve in the near future. Resembling an MMO, the Metaverse is populated by user controlled avatars as well as system daemons. Although there are public-access Metaverse terminals in Reality, using them carries a social stigma among Metaverse denizens, in part because of the poor visual representations of themselves as low-quality avatars. Status in the Metaverse is a function of two things: access to restricted environments such as the Black Sun, an exclusive Metaverse club, and technical acumen, which is often demonstrated by the sophistication of one's avatar.
[edit] Plot summary and major themes
[edit] Plot overview
At the beginning of the novel the main character, Hiro Protagonist, discovers the name of a new pseudo-narcotic, "Snow Crash", being offered at a posh Metaverse nightclub. Hiro's friends and fellow hackers fall victim to Snow Crash's effects, which are apparently unique in that they are experienced in the Metaverse and also in the physical world. Hiro uses his computer hacking, cognition, and sword fighting skills to uncover the mystery of "Snow Crash"; his pursuit takes the reader on a tour of the Sumerian culture, a fully instantiated laissez-faire society, and a virtual meta-society patronized by financial, social, and intellectual elites. As the nature of Snow Crash is uncovered, Hiro finds that self-replicating strings of information can affect objects in a uniform manner even though they may be broadcast via diverse media, a realization that reinforces his chosen path in life.
[edit] Condensed narrative
The hero and protagonist whose story the book follows is the aptly-named Hiro Protagonist (Hiro being an obvious homophone of hero), whose business card reads "Last of the freelance hackers and Greatest swordfighter in the world". When Hiro loses his job as a pizza delivery driver for the Mafia he meets a streetwise young girl nicknamed Y.T. (short for Yours Truly), who works as a skateboard "Kourier", and they decide to become partners in the intelligence business (selling data to the CIC, the for-profit organization that evolved from the CIA after the US government's loss of power).
The pair soon learn of a dangerous new drug called "Snow Crash" — which is both a computer virus capable of infecting the brains of unwary hackers in the Metaverse and a mind-altering virus in Reality — being distributed by a network of Pentecostal churches via its infrastructure and belief system. As Hiro and Y.T. dig deeper (or are drawn in) they discover more about Snow Crash and its connection to ancient Sumerian culture, the fiber-optics monopolist L. Bob Rife and his enormous Raft of refugee boat people who speak in tongues. They have various confrontations, both in the Metaverse and in Reality, with an Aleut harpoon master named Raven whose motorcycle's sidecar packs a nuke triggered by a type of dead man's switch called a "fail deadly". (Raven has never forgiven the US for the way they handled the Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands (see Aleutian Islands Campaign) in World War II). The Snow Crash meta-virus can be characterized as an extremely aggressive meme.
Stephenson takes the reader on a tour of the mythology of ancient Sumer, while his characters theorize upon the origin of languages and their relationship to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Asherah is portrayed as a deadly biological and verbal virus that was stopped in Ancient Sumer by the God Enki. In order to do that Enki deployed a countermeasure that was later described as the confounding of languages in the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
The characters speculate that early Sumerian culture used a primordial language that could be interpreted by human beings through the deep structures of the brain, rendering the learning of what he refers to as "acquired languages" needless. This theoretical language is related to glossolalia — also known as "speaking in tongues" — stating that the babbling of glossolalia is in truth a truncated form of the primordial language. A comparison is made to computers and their binary machine code which exists on a much more basic level than, for example, the human-readable, high-level programming languages and therefore gives those with the ability to speak the language great power.
In the Snow Crash interpretation of Sumerian mythology the masses were controlled by means of verbal rules called me. The characters of Hiro and Lagos compare me to small pieces of software that could be interpreted by humans. The me contained information for specific tasks such as baking bread; they were stored in a temple and their distribution was handled by a high priest, referred to as the en. Within this context, Enki was an en who had the ability to write new me, and is described as the primordial hacker. Also, the deuteronomists are supposed to have had an en of their own, and that kabbalistic sorcerers known as the Baalei Shem (masters of the name) could control the primordial tongue.
Me were erased from people's minds by a meta-virus, a fact theoretically explaining the Tower of Babel myth. Enki then wrote a me called "The nam-shub of Enki", which had the effect of blocking the meta-virus from acting by preventing direct access to the primordial language, making the use of "acquired languages" necessary. The meta-virus did not disappear entirely, though, as the "Cult of Asherah" continued to spread it by means of cult prostitutes and infected women breast feeding infants. This form of infection is compared to that of the herpes simplex virus and to the way religion is acquired.
Hiro and Y.T. each eventually make their way to Rife's Raft. Y.T. is abducted by Rife's outfit but not before getting the nam-shub of Enki to Hiro, who together with Juanita uses it to save the virus-afflicted. Y.T. is brought to the mainland and spotted by a fellow Kourier who invokes the Kourier 'Code' to mass an army of skateboarders who bring down Rife's helicopter with their magnetic harpoons. In a parallel metaverse showdown, Hiro foils Raven's attempt to widely disseminate the snowcrash virus to a grouping of the hacker elite. Rife and Raven proceed to an airport to confront Uncle Enzo (the Mafia kingpin) and Mr. Lee (leader of a series of Hong Kong-esque franchulates). A critically wounded Enzo disarms Raven, who still manages to escape, while Rife is killed and his virus destroyed, when Fido, a dog with extensive robotic implants that provides security for Mr. Lee, vengefully and suicidally attacks the monopolist's plane, causing a massive explosion. The novel ends with Y.T. driving home with her mother, and with hints of a future rekindled relationship between Hiro and Juanita.
[edit] Important characters
- Hiroaki "Hiro" Protagonist
- As the name suggests, the hero of the novel: a hacker, swordsman, and former Mafia-employed pizza delivery man. Hiro is broke in real life, having sold all of his stock in the Black Sun prematurely, but has extensive access to the Metaverse as one of its original developers.
- Y.T. ("Yours Truly")
- A teenage skateboard-riding car-harpooning (or "pooning" as the book calls it) "Kourier" who helps Hiro investigate the mysterious meta-virus. She is Hiro's "partner" in information-gathering for the Central Intelligence Corporation. Her real name is never stated.
- Juanita Marquez
- A computer hacker and techno-mystic, Marquez was involved with Hiro Protagonist. She then left Hiro for his friend and rival, the phenomenally successful Da5id. After her marriage to the latter dissolved, she embarked on a quest to study the upcoming infocalypse. She becomes a key player in the race to avoid the twin threats of the meta-virus of Asherah and the nam-shub counter-virus of Enki.
- Da5id Meier
- Co-creator (with friend Hiro) of the elite Metaverse club The Black Sun. First victim of the Snow Crash virus shown in the book.
- Dr. Emanuel Lagos
- Researcher who discovered the Snow Crash meta-virus and told Rife about it. Developer of the Librarian, explained below. Introduced as a "gargoyle": someone constantly wired into the Metaverse.
- Uncle Enzo
- Head of the American Mafia, which in this hypothetical future operates publicly and freely, and now runs legitimate enterprises such as the Nova Sicilia Inn, CosaNostra Pizza, and the Our Thing Foundation.
- The Librarian
- A complex but non-sapient software application designed by Lagos. The Librarian's conversations serve as simple exposition, giving Hiro background information about Sumerian religion, Snow Crash, and previous research of other characters.
- Mr. Lee
- Head of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, a franchise of which Hiro is a citizen and that helps him numerous times.
- Mr. Ng
- Head of Ng Security Industries, severely handicapped after a helicopter accident in Vietnam, maker of the security pitbull cyborgs commonly called Rat Things and various other futuristic gadgets. Mr. Ng uses an extensively modified, heavily-armored airport fire engine as a "wheelchair."
- Fido
- One of the Rat Things, which are formerly-living dogs that have been turned into cyborgs. They are kept in "hutches" that provide them with nourishment and a virtual reality "canine paradise". Though attack-programmed as guard dogs, they retain strong, warm memories of being real dogs. This is especially evident in the case of Fido, whose memories allow him to form a protective attachment to Y.T. The Rat Things are very similar to the mechanical hounds in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
- L. Bob Rife
- All-around magnate, plies the seas in an aircraft carrier with a city's worth of people living in boats lashed to it — the Raft. His depiction evokes L. Ron Hubbard, who also founded his own religion and spent much of his time on a boat out at sea with his followers. Some have also noted similarities to Ted Turner and John C. Malone[citation needed].
- Dmitri "Raven" Ravinoff
- An Aleut native who works as a mercenary. His preferred weapons are glass knives — undetectable by security systems and reputed to be molecule-thin at the edges — and glass-tipped throwing spears. He travels on a motorcycle whose sidecar has been replaced with a hydrogen bomb that will automatically detonate if his brain ceases to emit electrical impulses. Raven has the phrase "POOR IMPULSE CONTROL" tattooed on his forehead, a sign of being arrested for some violent crime at least once in his life. His stated goal in life is to "nuke America" in retaliation for the historical treatment by America of native Aleutians, such as using their lands for nuclear testing (e.g., at Amchitka). His combination of fighting ability, conscienceless killing, and personal nuclear umbrella prompt Stephenson to refer to Raven in his introduction as "the baddest motherfucker in the world".
- Reverend Wayne Bedford
- Head of Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise, a Pentecostal sect. The franchise is controlled by L. Bob Rife through his majority share in Pearlgate Associates.
[edit] Notable technologies
[edit] Reason
Reason is a needlegun-type rail gun in the style of a Gatling gun that fires small heavy fragments of depleted uranium at such high speeds that they will penetrate nearly anything.
A nameplate on the device contains the phrase Ultima Ratio Regum, Latin for "The Last Argument of Kings". The phrase Ultima Ratio Regum was engraved on all of Louis XIV's cannons, as referred to in Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle.
It consists of a large, wheeled ammunition box, an exaggerated gatling gun configuration, and a nuclear isotope power system that is cooled via a large heatsink that is ideally submerged in a large body of water.
In the story, the weapon was new and had not yet been rigorously tested in the field. Due to a bug in the operating system, the device crashed during Hiro and the Mafia's assault on the Raft.
[edit] Metaverse
The Metaverse is a fully immersive 3D virtual space, an outgrowth of the Internet.
[edit] Literary significance and criticism
Snow Crash rocketed to the top of the fiction best-seller charts upon its publication and established Stephenson as a major science fiction writer of the 1990s. The book appeared on Time magazine's list of 100 all-time best English-language novels written since 1923.[2]
In his book The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History, Walter Benn Michaels considers the deeper theoretical implications of Stephenson's book. Comparing the book with a range of contemporary writers — the fiction of Bret Easton Ellis, Kathy Acker, Octavia Butler, and even Paul de Man and the literary criticism of Richard Rorty — Michaels criticizes the deep claims of Stephenson's book: "And yet, in Snow Crash, the bodies of humans are affected by "information" they can't read; the virus, like the icepick [in American Psycho], gets the words inside you even if you haven't read them."[3]. Michaels especially targets Stephenson's view that "languages are codes" rather than a grouping of letters and sounds to be interpreted. Michaels further contends that this basic idea of language as code ("...a good deal of Snow Crash's plot depends upon eliding the distinction between hackers and their computers, as if – indeed, in the novel, just because – looking at code will do to the hacker what receiving it will do to the computer"[3]) aligns Stephenson, along with other writers mentioned, with a racially-motivated view of culture: that culture is something transmitted and stored by blood (or genetic codes), and not by beliefs and practices. This view entails little to no need for interpretation by people:
The body that is infected by a virus does not become infected because it understands the virus any more than the body that does not become infected misunderstands the virus. So a world in which everything - from bitmaps to blood - can be understood as a "form of speech" is also a world in which nothing actually is understood (emphasis in the original), a world in which what a speech act does is disconnected from what it means.
– Walter Benn Michaels, The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History[4]
Rorty's Achieving Our Country uses Snow Crash as an example of modern culture that "express the loss of what he [Rorty] calls "national hope"...the problem with Snow Crash is not that it isn't true – after all, it's a story – but that it isn't inspirational."[5] This lack of inspiration is offset by something else Snow Crash and other works like it offer: "These books produce in their readers the "state of soul" that Rorty calls "knowingness," which he glosses as a "preference for knowledge over hope" (37)"[5]; this preference for knowledge "contribute[s] to a more fundamental failure to appreciate the value of inspiration - and hence of literature - itself."[5] The Raft, a collection of ragtag vessels bringing poor Asians to California, resembles the "Armada of Hope" described in Jean Raspail's novel The Camp of the Saints (1973), in which a vast flotilla carries a million of India's poor to the southern coast of France[6]; in Rorty's reading, the Raft is emblematic of the final destruction of any sense of community in the United States: "In Snow Crash, the relation of the United States to the rest of the world is symbolized by Stephenson's most frightening creation – what he calls the "Raft"...Pride in being an American citizen has been replaced by relief at being safer and better-fed than those on the Raft."[7]
Snow Crash's influence can be seen in Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. The novel features a Disneyland parade based on Snow Crash.
[edit] Influence on the World Wide Web
While Stephenson was not the first to apply the Sanskrit term avatar to online virtual bodies (the video game Habitat did that), the success of Snow Crash popularized the term to the extent that avatar is now the accepted term for this concept in computer games and on the World Wide Web.[8]
Metaverse-like "worlds" in reality include There, Second Life, The Palace, Uru, Dotsoul, Active Worlds and Blaxxun (originally Black Sun prior to a suit by Sun Microsystems). Some massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) also resemble the Metaverse.
According to its creators, the computer game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst was inspired by Snow Crash. This does not refer to the story or content of the game (which is deeply rooted in the D'ni/Myst universe), but the format of the multiplayer environment, Uru Live.
Many virtual globe programs including NASA World Wind and Google Earth bear a resemblance to the "Earth" software developed by the Central Intelligence Corporation in Snow Crash. One Google Earth co-founder claimed that Google Earth was modeled after Snow Crash, while another co-founder said it was inspired by Powers of Ten.[9]
Elements of Snow Crash are popular among computer professionals and enthusiasts. For example, Microsoft vice-president J Allard uses "Hiro Protagonist" as his gamertag.
[edit] Film adaptation
The novel was optioned shortly after its publication and subsequent success, although it has never progressed past pre-production. John Raffo and Jeffery Nachmanoff both completed drafts under the supervision of director Marco Brambilla while the project was set up at Touchstone Pictures and Kathleen Kennedy's production company, but due to the large budget required, neither was given a green light.
[edit] See also
- Distributed republic - A state of government used by Neil Stephenson in this and other works.
- The Great Simoleon Caper - Another book by Neil Stephenson that appears to take place in the same universe at an earlier time.
[edit] References
- ^ "Snow Crash tells of a twenty-first-century America in which the needs of the entrepreneurs have won out over hopes of a free and egalitarian society." pg 4 of Rorty, Achieving our country
- ^ TIME All-Time 100 Novels
- ^ a b Michaels, Walter Benn (2004). The shape of the signifier: 1967 to the end of history. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 68. ISBN 0-691-11872-8.
- ^ Michaels, Walter Benn (2004). The shape of the signifier: 1967 to the end of history. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 69. ISBN 0-691-11872-8.
- ^ a b c Michaels, Walter Benn (2004). The shape of the signifier: 1967 to the end of history. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 74. ISBN 0-691-11872-8.
- ^ Snow Crash and The Camp of the Saints
- ^ pg 5 of Rorty, Achieving Our Country.
- ^ A Beginner's Web Glossary
- ^ Avi Bar-Ze’ev (from Keyhole, the precursor to Google Earth) on origin of Google Earth
[edit] External links
- Snow Crash publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Neal Stephenson's web site
- Science Fiction Inventions From Snow Crash
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