Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Shuffled naturally into science-fiction as I was during my childhood, I grew up with the post-apocalyptic noir of the cyber-punk genre, and grew to love the visual aesthetic. I had looked forward to reading Snow Crash for some time, and was immediately drawn into frenzied pace of the first pizza delivery.
Something that good science fiction does is present a statement, often a warning, of the outcomes of current courses of events. One of the markers for good science fiction in my mind is if I’m troubled by the world presented, and can think, “I see how we get there from here.” Science fiction plays with the “what if?” that society needs to read and see to be aware of where we could be headed if we keep doing what we’re doing.
In that vein, the world that Stephenson presents is instantly captivating. Even within cyber-punk, this is the most original setting I’ve read for some time. Within these pages is a wonderful commentary on the ludicrous impulse of the American experiment to privatize everything. This is what happens if the Libertarians take power. The characters are living in the context of the anarchy that complete privatization and lack of government brings. Then, they create the Metaverse (the last peaceful place in existence), but it, too, becomes violent. Man remains unable to find himself benevolent in any way as his narcissistic collection of franchised conformity spirals out of control around him in a hail of bullets.
What took me aback about Snow Crash was the religious component. There’s a theology at work in Stephenson’s thought; a really strange, mish-mashed attempt at a theology, at least, that reaches a disappointing fruition. In cyber-punk, humanity melds itself with technology in an attempt to make it’s own eschatology. Here, Stephenson seems to make a full-blown religion out of man’s technological foray. His thrust is that modern “hackers,” or dualistic philosophers (he ties binary code to philosophical dualism), are simply the modern extension of his own little creation narrative. That creation narrative is complete with it’s own Fall narrative. And Hiro (aptly named) becomes a savior metaphor of sorts. The theology unravels, though, into a nihilism: anything spiritual is notably absent, and only the practice of religion can keep the virus (read: sin) from permanently destroying man. The sin is never defeated, only held back. This doubles back on itself, though, because he’s also painting religion as the “bad guy,” in the sense that the conspiracy for the Snow Crash virus is packaged within religious practice. He’s essentially saying that all religion, despite the fact that it’s holding this virus back, is bunk, or has become that way, as the quantifiable world rules out faith.
So, his theology is a dis-jointed one…almost a theology of an absence of theology.
While Stephenson’s imagination is energizing, his craft is disappointing to me. His writing style smacks of a Hollywood action flick, and many of the fast moving sequences of the book felt like Tron meets the Transformers. For a book considered to be (as I understood it) a modern science fiction classic, I had higher expectations. Heinlein or Asimov this guy isn’t. His characters are left extremely two-dimensional and undeveloped, although his rapid and abrupt changes in points of view do occasionally place the reader well into their psyches.
That said, there is something oddly arresting about Y.T., the skateboarding teenage professional messenger who throws out some of the most amazing lines in the story. I found her to be the only character I could completely visualize as I read the novel…the only one who truly had a face.
The best thing I took away from the book is the view of the future. As a speculative warning of what the future could hold, I think this book was excellent. And, as I said, that’s what good science fiction does. As an attempt at a metaphysical or theological statement, I think it failed miserably. Stephenson provides his backstory and ties together his loose ends well, yet still manages an ending that falls flat.
In the end, I found this book to be wanting.