jonn reviewed Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (A Bantam spectra book)
It's a 3.75 for me. Adams did humour better, Phillip K. Dick did cyberpunk better, and Burroughs did disgusting sex scenes better.
4 stars
TL;DR
This book interrogates a comical and whimsical representation of post-collapse neofeudalism. It's relevant in 2025, but there is not enough substance to be a suggested read.
Review
I wouldn't agree with bookwyrm.social/user/nixnull/review/3404846#anchor-3404846 review which says that it's "nearly perfect". The writing is quite pretentious, but it doesn't feel to me that this book was edited as it had some sentences where the words would repeat within them, ruining the smooth feel of reading some other bits.
The book is not serious at all. It's speculative humorous sci-fi. It has plot and smart twists that a careful reader will see from a mile away and then feel smart about it.
The world-building is very solid, but extremely postmodernist, thus devoid of real philosophy, just cute mental experiments of the author mashed together in an eclectic mash.
It's quotable but insensitive, written with implied white male privilege and contains a scene …
TL;DR
This book interrogates a comical and whimsical representation of post-collapse neofeudalism. It's relevant in 2025, but there is not enough substance to be a suggested read.
Review
I wouldn't agree with bookwyrm.social/user/nixnull/review/3404846#anchor-3404846 review which says that it's "nearly perfect". The writing is quite pretentious, but it doesn't feel to me that this book was edited as it had some sentences where the words would repeat within them, ruining the smooth feel of reading some other bits.
The book is not serious at all. It's speculative humorous sci-fi. It has plot and smart twists that a careful reader will see from a mile away and then feel smart about it.
The world-building is very solid, but extremely postmodernist, thus devoid of real philosophy, just cute mental experiments of the author mashed together in an eclectic mash.
It's quotable but insensitive, written with implied white male privilege and contains a scene that no male should have written.
The book is too long, but at no point I felt like it's dragging too much. If you are as weird as me and would enjoy reading a three-page vignette about toilet paper dispensing in an office building, you won't mind either even though it's quite weird. Douglas Adams would have condensed these three pages into a single sentence because he had a true handle on the language and pace.
I give this 3.75 stars with the hope that Stephenson wasn't serious.
I will probably give him another chance to see if 7 years of learning how to write had a positive impact by the time he released his most impactful work, "Cryptonomicon".
Obligatory quote of the book:
The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream.
Not bad for 1992. It is so ironic that folks like jeffery bezos and other post-capitalism oligarchs decided that it's a blueprint for action rather than a warning. It's even more ironic that Mr. Stephenson decided that it's a great idea to work for bezos later in his life. I guess some people really want to live in neofeudalism, so aptly described in Snow Crash?..
