5 ms·

I just finished snow crash a week ago, I found it pretty mediocre.

by jon6 14y ago

ynniv 14y ago
That's because you read it in the future.
jlgreco 14y ago
Are there other cyberpunk books that you have read?
- jon6 14y ago
  Ok, I'll bite. No I have not read any other cyberpunk books, but necromancer was recommended to me. Anyway (unlike the implication from ynniv) I had no problem with the metaverse. Here are the issues I can think of at the moment 1. no character development 2. "hiro protagonist" 10/10 on the lame scale 3. no explanation for why delivering pizzas is so important. there is one paragraph that attempts to explain it but fails miserably. 4. the girl only serves as a plot vehicle and does so incredibly poorly 5. hiro's dad and raven's dad were captured together? absurd 6. love of the rat thing for the girl is disney-level goofy 7. the "magic spell" juanita reads at the end is a little too convenient I did like the fighting scenes, though. There was one very good paragraph in the whole book -- the bit about how computers never seem to do the right thing and to get any modicum of productivity out of them the tools one uses must be transparent, meaning the user must have a deep understanding of their tools. That is a pretty deep insight that can be incorporated into daily life.
  - thwest 14y ago
    Yeah, a lot of people feel like its an action movie level parody of the genre.
  - fiddly_bits 14y ago
    My suspicion is that the rat-thing was inserted after-the-fact to facilitate the book's ending. It's been a while since I read it, and I remember enjoying it, but the rat-thing always seemed like a cheat to me. Also, snow crash? LCDs don't do that.
    - mnutt 14y ago
      I'm not sure the book ever mentioned LCDs specifically? It was written in 1992 before LCDs became prevalent; perhaps he imagined some other (analog) technology being used instead.
      - sp332 14y ago
        It was very sad when I realized Gibson's great line "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." had been completely lost on me because I assumed he meant bright blue instead of gray.
      - fiddly_bits 14y ago
        That's my point. The title dates the story. It's supposed to take place in the near future, but for the title to make sense it will have to take place in the recent past.
        jlgreco 14y ago
        If that is a hangup for you, then the entire genre of near future fiction is probably out for you.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Well, there is no accounting for taste I suppose. I rather suspect you would not like Neuromancer.
pemulis 14y ago
If you explained why you found Snow Crash mediocre, this could be an interesting post. As it is, though, it essentially has no content. If you had posted it on Twitter or Facebook, it would be a little bit better, since your friends could put it in the context of what they know about you and your taste in books. As strangers on the Internet, though, what are we to take away from the fact that you found Snow Crash mediocre? Sorry for the meta post critique, and I hope you don't take this the wrong way.
jfoutz 14y ago
Snow crash is a terrible book. It is, imho, a fantastic collection of vignettes with the same characters that are vaguely related. Some of them are simple decapitation scenes featuring beer and vr googles, while others are deeper questions about the value of pay toilets. snow crash was impressive, to me, because of the sheer quantity of new concepts, tightly integrated. Stephenson created a plausible future that dealt with what people would deal with in all conceptual scales, from highfalutin cultural organization of government and religion all the way down to teenagers interests in food and clothing. I feel, he did a pretty great job of avoiding the mundane that's pretty much the same as today, while highlighting stuff that's different, like skate wheels. Snowcrash is a cartoon, it is a caricature of a future with new stuff. It's not a good book, not like coherent like Vonnegut, or even Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, but it is indeed a window to the future. Neromancer was written on a typewriter, and snowcrash was written in flatland.
- jere 14y ago
  >Snowcrash is a cartoon, it is a caricature of a future with new stuff. Obviously. I'm struggling to understand why this is a problem.

I just finished snow crash a week ago, I found it pretty mediocre.

by jon6 14y ago

I just finished snow crash a week ago, I found it pretty mediocre.

ynniv 14y ago

That's because you read it in the future.

jlgreco 14y ago

Are there other cyberpunk books that you have read?

jon6 14y ago
Ok, I'll bite. No I have not read any other cyberpunk books, but necromancer was recommended to me. Anyway (unlike the implication from ynniv) I had no problem with the metaverse. Here are the issues I can think of at the moment 1. no character development 2. "hiro protagonist" 10/10 on the lame scale 3. no explanation for why delivering pizzas is so important. there is one paragraph that attempts to explain it but fails miserably. 4. the girl only serves as a plot vehicle and does so incredibly poorly 5. hiro's dad and raven's dad were captured together? absurd 6. love of the rat thing for the girl is disney-level goofy 7. the "magic spell" juanita reads at the end is a little too convenient I did like the fighting scenes, though. There was one very good paragraph in the whole book -- the bit about how computers never seem to do the right thing and to get any modicum of productivity out of them the tools one uses must be transparent, meaning the user must have a deep understanding of their tools. That is a pretty deep insight that can be incorporated into daily life.
- thwest 14y ago
  Yeah, a lot of people feel like its an action movie level parody of the genre.
- fiddly_bits 14y ago
  My suspicion is that the rat-thing was inserted after-the-fact to facilitate the book's ending. It's been a while since I read it, and I remember enjoying it, but the rat-thing always seemed like a cheat to me. Also, snow crash? LCDs don't do that.
  - mnutt 14y ago
    I'm not sure the book ever mentioned LCDs specifically? It was written in 1992 before LCDs became prevalent; perhaps he imagined some other (analog) technology being used instead.
    - sp332 14y ago
      It was very sad when I realized Gibson's great line "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." had been completely lost on me because I assumed he meant bright blue instead of gray.
    - fiddly_bits 14y ago
      That's my point. The title dates the story. It's supposed to take place in the near future, but for the title to make sense it will have to take place in the recent past.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        If that is a hangup for you, then the entire genre of near future fiction is probably out for you.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Well, there is no accounting for taste I suppose. I rather suspect you would not like Neuromancer.

pemulis 14y ago

If you explained why you found Snow Crash mediocre, this could be an interesting post. As it is, though, it essentially has no content. If you had posted it on Twitter or Facebook, it would be a little bit better, since your friends could put it in the context of what they know about you and your taste in books. As strangers on the Internet, though, what are we to take away from the fact that you found Snow Crash mediocre? Sorry for the meta post critique, and I hope you don't take this the wrong way.

jfoutz 14y ago

Snow crash is a terrible book. It is, imho, a fantastic collection of vignettes with the same characters that are vaguely related. Some of them are simple decapitation scenes featuring beer and vr googles, while others are deeper questions about the value of pay toilets. snow crash was impressive, to me, because of the sheer quantity of new concepts, tightly integrated. Stephenson created a plausible future that dealt with what people would deal with in all conceptual scales, from highfalutin cultural organization of government and religion all the way down to teenagers interests in food and clothing. I feel, he did a pretty great job of avoiding the mundane that's pretty much the same as today, while highlighting stuff that's different, like skate wheels. Snowcrash is a cartoon, it is a caricature of a future with new stuff. It's not a good book, not like coherent like Vonnegut, or even Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, but it is indeed a window to the future. Neromancer was written on a typewriter, and snowcrash was written in flatland.

jere 14y ago
>Snowcrash is a cartoon, it is a caricature of a future with new stuff. Obviously. I'm struggling to understand why this is a problem.