Snow Crash

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Don't worry, punk is only the most important literary movement of all time, there's nothing to be ashamed of.

Must... resist... temptation... to... argue....

[Fellfrosch]

Though hardly an expert on punk, I'm going to side with EUOL here in saying that Snow Crash is more post-punk than anything else--it's a little too optimistic to be true punk, I think, a little too peppy and goofy. It's excellent, and I recommend it. I've never been able to get into any of his others, though.

[Skar]

Neal is one of my favorite authors.  I've enjoyed everything else he did too, including The Big U and Zodiac (though I had to give both those the benefit of the doubt in the beginning)

In my humble opinion his best work is Cryptonomicon.  And to be fair I must mention that "The Diamond Age" is amazing.  The Baroque cycle stuff is very dense but if you like his style for itself they are really good reads. (Well, the first one anyway, the 2nd and 3rd are sitting on my shelf patiently waiting the 28th of this month.)

I must say that the question of whether he is punk or not seems immaterial.  He defines his own genre.

[n8sumsion]

I love this book. It's one of my favorite sci-fi/cyberpunk novels. I agree with some of the earlier comments though. It starts out quick, with funny zippy scenes and a wry humor (the main character is named Hiro Protagonist, and he delivers pizza for the Mob). But then the whole Sumerian mythology thing got a little heavy and slowed the book down, but it picked back up towards the end. A great read, and one I enthusiastically recommend to people.

I loved Diamond Age as well, but I haven't been able to make it throgh any of his others. I've tried reading Zodiac once and petered out. I've tried reading Cryptonomicon a couple of times now, and I vowed to try it again. I've been lugging it around in my bag the past week, intending to start it again, and I just can't gather up the enthusiasm to open the cover. It's an intimidating book. But I'll give it a go soon.

[Skar]

Stephenson is definitely going down the "tougher reading with each successive book" path currently.  I gobbled up Cryptonomicon like it was candy but it was definitely less fluffy than his earlier works and the Baroque cycle is even less so.

[Firemeboy]

Well thank you all, very much.  I will obtain a copy and try to read it before Father's Day (I've got Brandon's book coming then).  I'll try to see how it fits into Instrucitional Technology.

[JP Dogberry]

He's my facourite author, actually, and Cyrptonomicon is my favurite of his books. Only read Zodiac and Snow Crash, but I have the second of the Baroque ones, plan to get and read the first soon, and want to get a hold of the older stuff.

Got a whole lot of stuff to finish first, though.

[EUOL]

Yeah, JP, SNOW is a hard one to place.

It's self-referential, but it was before CyberPunk really went 'mainstream' and got pretty. (Ala MATRIX).  Which, of course, killed it.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

It seems someone rather enjoyed the book: "(As a brief aside, have you ever read Snow Crash? You really should. It posits a kind of proto-"Matrix" called the Metaverse, what we'd think of as a fairly advanced sort of Avatar Chat, but the etiquette there is such that you don't physically touch other people because it breaks the immersion of it. Or, at any rate, that's what I remember it saying. It seemed apropos.)"

As posted by a one TB (Tycho). Is it really that good?

[Fellfrosch]

No, we're all saying that we like it because we're in on the joke--it's like telling the water's fine when it's actually frigid.

[origamikaren]

I thought that it was a good book, as was Diamond Age, but am I the only one here who was bothered by the amount of swearing and sex in those two books?  That's why I haven't read more CyberPunk.  Is it a common thing in the genre, or just in the two I happened to read?

(PS Can I just say that I always refer to KFC as the House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel?)

[JP Dogberry]

There was swearing and sex in Snow Crash?

[Entsuropi]

One sex scene. That lasted all of half a page.

And uh, snow crash had less swearing than a lot of stuff I've read. You just come from a sub-culture that doesn't swear.

[Firemeboy]

I must be at the slow part.  It's dragging a bit, but generally I've like it.

I must admit, this is a new genre to me.  What might be some of the seminal books?  I'd like to read more.

[JP Dogberry]

Neuromancer. Get that FIRST.

Schismatrix. Definately.

Software, Rudy Rucker