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> By 1992, they could be hilariously parodied by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash (a novel often mistaken as an example of the subgenre it meant to mock). Citatio
by Cpoll 8y ago
> By 1992, they could be hilariously parodied by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash (a novel often mistaken as an example of the subgenre it meant to mock).
Citation needed. While this is under open debate amongst fans of the genre, I don't think Stephenson has stated it's a parody? And deliberate parody or not, I feel it brings a lot of ideas into the fold and observes the spirit of the genre. It's not a mistake to cite it as an example of the genre.
- crooked-v 8y agoThe main character's name is literally "Hiro Protagonist".
- hprotagonist 8y agonot that there's anything wrong with that.
- Cpoll 8y agoBeing tongue-in-cheek, self-aware, and even being a deliberate parody don't preclude a work from being an exemplar of the genre it's parodying.
- freshhawk 8y agoThat is perfectly reasonable, but I think it is also perfectly reasonable to say "parody of X" is the genre most related to but still distinct from genre "X". In a lot of contexts that is a useful taxonomy to use, because it ends up being more clear.
- pseudolus 8y agoBizarrely enough there was a parody of Snow Crash called "Headcrash" which was was written by... Bruce Bethke who coined the term Cyberpunk [0][1]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Headcrash-Bruce-Bethke/dp/0446673145 https://www.amazon.com/Headcrash-Bruce-Bethke/dp/0446673145 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Bethke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Bethke
- natechols 8y agoThis bugged me too. I think it's too simplistic to call it cyberpunk, but it definitely doesn't read as a parody either.
- ddingus 8y agoDidn't Stephenson say that work was a study in how our thoughts on interfaces might map to a story itself? I recall an interview where Stephenson went on at length about the very structured nature of "Snow Crash." Dammed if I can find it right now.
- egypturnash 8y agoIt sure felt like a parody when I read it in 1992. I know there was a foreword or afterword about how it originally began as a comic book script, which would certainly push it towards being over the top.
- wink 8y agoMaybe it's the time (and how they change). I'm a bit too young to have read it back then, but I did read Shadowrun stuff in the late 90s, and also Neuromancer. Maybe it's me - but I don't really see a lot of differences between all those, in a way that I could label it a parody. But did technology advance that quick in less than 10 years that what you described changed? From a certain standpoint they're all "equally ridiculous", not so different. (Not a judgement of quality, I love them all.)
- hannasanarion 8y agoI thought it was conventional to call most of Stephenson's work, including Snow Crash, "post-Cyberpunk", taking the ideas and aesthetic of cyberpunk, and dialing back the pessimism to bring it into something more closely resembling plausibility. IE, similar amounts of "cyber", significantly less "punk".
- Kadin 8y agoI'd go with "homage to", not "parody of". Think George Romero movies: they're "zombie movies" by genre, but they also are self-aware and frequently invert or riff on tropes of the genre itself.