Emerson Salon – Capitol Hill Seattle

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is one of the great novels of the Cyberpunk genre. Written in 1992, Snow Crash depicts an online world called the Metaverse that in many ways was very prescient of our current environment (Second Life, Facebook, etc) and where we are quickly heading.

Beyond its depiction of the future of computing, the novel is a very well written, filled with witty and endearing prose including an entire diatribe on the belief of everyman that at some point in his life he could become worlds biggest badass. He also paints a semi-distopian world where government and religions have devolved into a series of dysfunctional businesses and the Mafia pretty much rules everything.

Keep in mind that with a main character named Hiro Protagonist who is a part time hacker and ninja, the book is rife with cliches, but most of these were included before they ever became cliches. With the exception of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Snow Crash is probably the most definitive novel in the entire cyberpunk genre.