Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is a classic science fiction book. It contains futuristic concepts married with historical ideas. It’s the first Stephenson book that was a hit and was the start of 7 consecutive best sellers. It’s rides the end of the cyberpunk wave of books (started by Neuromancer) and was one of the capstones on that style of book. But most of all, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Prior to this book, Stephenson had two novels that didn’t sell well (at least until after he hit it big) in The Big U, a college satire, and Zodiac, an eco-thriller. It’s apparent that with Snow Crash, published four years after Zodiac, that Stephenson decided to go back to the basics of writing. You can tell by the main character’s name, Hiro Protagonist, which is as basic a main character’s name as you can get. The plot revolves around a religious cult which is trying to take over the world by using ancient Sumerian language to control people’s minds. The first attempt to do this is a drug that works on computer programmers and shuts down their mind. The drug named Snow Crash and it crashes programmer’s minds.

Hiro, aided and abetted by a young courier (Y.T.), his ex-girlfriend Juanita and mafia don Uncle Enzo (whose pizza restaurants Hiro delivers for in his spare time) leads the charge to save the world. Against him is Raven, an Aleut that owns a nuclear device and L. Bob Rife, the head of the religion. But the plot, while interesting, is only part of the book. To help Hiro (and the reader) understand the connection between computers and Sumerian myths and history, Juanita gives Hiro a metaspace librarian who explains it all in extended digressions. These digressions to talk about Sumerian myths or pizza deliveries or Juanita’s work on avatars either make readers love or hate Stephenson.

The ending of the book is a bit of the mess and the plot comes together a little too quickly at the end. But when reading Stephenson, the plot is a place to hook digressions on. You never know where a Stephenson digression will go. But the journey, not the plot, is the main reason to read Stephenson. Highly recommended classic science-fiction.

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