Play Book Tag discussion

Snow Crash is set in a ruined society in futuristic southern California. Citizens live in heavily fortified ''Burbclaves'' and pizza delivery services are run with military precision by a high-tech Cosa Nostra. If the pizza comes late there are some very serious consequences. There is also the Metaverse, the perceived Internet of the future, a world that can be accessed through any computer, an where a person can move about as an avatar.

Hiro Protagonist starts out as a pizza delivery man working for the mob. Uncle Enzo runs the CosaNostra Pizza company, all deliveries guaranteed within 30 minutes. Someone offers him a hypercard, information that would be transferred to his computer. He resists and it turns out to be Snow Crash, a computer virus and a real virus of a very unusual sort. The author's explanation for the virus is very clever but he does get bogged down in explanation, and he didn't quite make the virus come alive for me.

The numerous characters are very interesting as is the way the author envisions the Metaverse. Written over thirty years ago, the novel accurately portrayed a surprisingly accurate future how many people escape from the real world into the digital world. What was envisioned as a dystopic reality then is at least partially being adopted as normal todnovel. If If you’re a sci-fi fan you might like this sprawling mess of a novel, but if you’re a novice science fiction reader there are much better authors and books out there.

Agree with you. His info dumps were huge and unnecessary as he summarized it all near the end when you needed it.

But I found some of the characters, not just human, endearing, and there is a true badass teen girl.