Cyberpunk

I was pretty excited when this book popped up on the reading list. It's one my father must have loved reading, as I've heard him mention the name Hiro Protagonist a number of times when I was younger (knowing I enjoyed puns and himself being a science fiction nerd). Reading through this, more than anything, I think I enjoyed the vulgar edge to the otherwise very intelligent writing. The way this story was told was really unlike any other writing I've ever gone through. Everything was so unbelievably chaotic. There was a surprising depth of detail and history relating to this bizarre drug, as well as in the very bizarre realities Hiro exists in. While it's not a particularly believable future (not the physical world, anyway) much of this text is rooted in early pretenses about where the digital age would take us, when it was written ~18 years ago. Years later, we do have things either coincidentally like this world, or perhaps (more likely) inspired by this tale. I was immediately reminded of that odd game Second Life that emerged a few years ago, and I have a feeling that if anyone could develop a drug that affected people both in the internet (or metaverse) and in the physical world, that people would probably take it. We are brinking on this concept, though I'm sure there won't be as much interesting history once we're finally there.

In many ways, through the depth of the text, this is spiritually related to Babel-17, in that the Snow Crash virus is related to Sumerian speech, the binary language of the world, wherein both it and this virus are able to spread and infect in a very primitive, all-purpose sort of way. As with Babel-17, this language is itself a virus. It all goes back to code, to binary. In his writing this concept, Stephenson pays very close attention to this place he's created, developing an important hierarchy within the game itself, as well as a functioning tangential narrative for each and every character. Hiro follows a very strange, compelling life in the metaverse as the world's greatest sword fighter, something that greatly assisted his character in overcoming the Snow Crash virus. His concepts of being who you want to be, look as you want to look, and otherwise do what you want to do on the internet have likely given light to the way the internet itself has developed (I read that this book was in fact very influential) and is a likely indicator at what is sure to come. He questions the importance of the real world through out most of this novel, ignoring it almost completely and blurring the lines between the real, the perceived, the necessary, and most importantly, the future. Will we be communicating in this digital place while the world around us falls apart as it's hinted to have done in this book? Will we even care? In all curiousness, do we even care now? As people fall victim to the online games in so many ways including major addictions, many lives have already been changed dramatically. I can bet Stephenson is not surprised one bit.