And no, I don’t mean this guy.
Every so often I find the time to read one of those “classic” science fiction novels that I somehow seemed to have missed (I blame it on college years dedicated to literary and post-colonial fiction). Recently, I was lucky enough to sit down to a big heaping pile of Neal Stephenson in the form of Snow Crash.
Now, Neal’s been getting a lot of buzz about his latest book, Anathem—which I’m hoping to read in the near future—but until I do, I’m going to have to content myself with the fact that he’s one of those modern masters.
Oh well.
For those of you who haven’t had a chance to read Snow Crash, it is, very briefly, one of the first novels (obviously William Gibson’s Neuromancer is right at the top of that list, as well) to truly explore the Internet and hacker culture in a significant way. The hero and protagonist of the book is a young pizza delivery man named Hiro Protagonist. While that may sound cheesy, it actually works well on both the metaphorical field Stephenson develops in his virtual world, and the jumbled, violent vision of the future he envisions for the “real world.” Along with the skateboarding messenger girl Y.T. (and yes, it’s originally from 1992, so of course there’s skateboarding), Hiro finds himself enmeshed in a mystery that bounces back and forth between the real world and the Metaverse, wielding real and electronic katana blades to get the job done.
If it sounds a little like The Matrix (sans katana blades), then you'll see what I'm getting at.
What really drew me into the story--besides the clever world Stephenson developed--is the dark humor that pervades the writing. It's hard to explain, but Stephenson is able to create characters that are completely absurd--and get into completely absurd situations--and yet are sincere in their absurdity. So, for example, the pizza company Hiro works for at the beginning of the novel is part of a franchise that is also a franchise for the mob--as if Pizza Hut had gotten into the protection business. Uncle Enzo is therefore not just the Don, but also the CEO and public face of his pizza empire.
And that's also what makes the book still feel relevant today (not that Dominoes is run by the mob): the idea of corporate control of territory is not so unimaginable. Corporate naming rights of public places, the Disneyfication of communities, the vastness of the Mall of America and its ilk--these are our present, sold to a public that is willing to buy these pieces of security.
But beyond that vision--which is, I'll be honest, not a new one (Brave New World?)--it was Stephenson's depiction of the Internet--his Metaverse--that has really sparked our imagination. Just as the pulp writers of the 50s and 60s envision our colonization of Outer Space, Stephenson was on the forefront of building up Inner Space. While we're not in a totally virtual reality interface, much of what we take for granted about the Internet (MMORPGs, virtual communities, business transactions, computer viruses) is brought up in books that predate AOL and Netscape--such as Snow Crash.
My favorite tidbit about this novel, though, is a little piece of trivia: the term "avatar," as used by computer-folk to describe their depictive counterpart in the virtual world, was brought into popular usage by Snow Crash. That's right: Stephenson helped coined the term "avatar":
I don't know why, but that kind of makes me happy.
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