Oh Lord, I have committed the cardinal sin of bloggers. I have left my blog for months without posting squat! Forgive me, for I have been adulterously posting on other blogs (work ones, no less!).
But now, I have returned to thee, O blog of my heart. I present...Snow Crash! This classic sci fi novel was written in 1992, but reads as if it had been written tomorrow. Stephenson has an incredible, Orwellian gift for accurately describing the future of technology. He covers nanotechnology, biotechnology, computer viruses, and the metaverse (he coined the word) with startling plausibility, and somehow manages to roll this all seamelessly into a smart, sexy cyberpunk story that rolls along at breakneck speed. His social commentary is somehow as spot on as his technological augury; you'll cry rather than laugh when you read about an america patchworked with corporate-franchise city states, and the hilariously commercialized jails.
But all this is merely the bones of a great story. I was totally sold already, but became a Stephenson junkie when he somehow managed to roll in a layer of Sumerian history and linguistics. The story hinges on Chomsky's idea of deep grammar, and goes one step further to imply what might happen when that deep grammer were accessed after language imprinting had occurred.
I think that this book is what sparked my deep interest in linguistics (I first read it several years ago) and Stephenson is obviously drawing on ideas about bicameral brain theory and deep grammar, with some biblical and protohistoric language theory thrown in. His scope, and his mastery of divergent disciplines, is amazing.
In short, Stephenson writes as if he knew the inside of my head. Every word in this book was fascinating, and the story never flagged. He is a true futurist, and I think that instead of Gibson, we should be touting Stephenson as the father of cyberpunk (he's much more readable). Audrey, you have to read this book. I will come and make you sorry if you don't.
1 comment:
Wow, your blogging self is still going! Yay! Your post prompted a debate between Richard and I about whether Snow Crash was the best of Stephenson's books, or Diamond Age. I tend to go with Snow Crash, and he tends to go with Diamond Age. But they both have such good stuff. I've definitely liked his books for a while (though I might argue that he would never have come up with the metaverse if Neuromancer hadn't preceded him!)
I think he kind of went downhill afterwards, though, or my interest in him did, when he started writing historical figures into his stories. At least, figures I know something about. That usually grates on me, but there was enough good stuff in Cryptonomicon that it was ok for him to take liberties with Turing. I've been consistently refusing to pick up the Baroque Cycle, though, since it'll make me cranky for ages if he messes with Newton or Leibniz.
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