The science fiction novel ''Snow Crash'' (1992), written by Neal Stephenson, follows in the footsteps of the cyberpunk novels by such authors as William Gibson (novelist) and Rudy Rucker, though Stephenson breaks away from the typical "techno punk" stories by embellishing this story with a heavy dose of satire and black comedy. ''Snow Crash'' (Stephenson's third novel) rocketed to the top of the fiction best-seller charts upon its release and established Stephenson as a major science fiction writer for the 1990s. Like many postmodern novels, ''Snow Crash'' has a unique style and a chaotic structure which many readers find difficult to follow. It contains many arcane references to geography, politics, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, history, and computer science, which may inspire readers to explore these topics further, or at least consult relevant reference works. The novel explores themes of reality, imagination, thought, perception, and the violent and physical nature of humanity, in the context of a socially-constructed (virtual) reality imposed on a political-economic system in the throes of radical transition. == Significance of the name == The meaning of the name "snow crash" is explained in Stephenson's essay In the Beginning...was the Command Line, as the term for a particular software failure mode on the early Apple Macintosh computer: :When everything went to hell and the Central processing unit began spewing out random bits, the result, on a Command line interface machine, was lines and lines of perfectly formed but random characters on the screen—known to cognoscenti as "going Cyrillic." But to the MacOS, the screen was not a teletype, but a place to put graphics; the image on the screen was a bitmap, a literal rendering of the contents of a particular portion of the computer's memory. When the computer crashed and wrote gibberish into the bitmap, the result was something that looked vaguely like static on a broken television set—a "snow crash." == Background == The story takes place in a semi-United States of the future, where corporatization, franchise, and the Economics in general have spun wildly out of control. ''Snow Crash'' depicts the absence of a central powerful state; in its place, corporations have taken over the traditional roles of government, including dispute resolution and national defense. The United States has lost most of its territory in the wake of an stock market crash; the residual remains of the federal government are weak and inefficient and are used by Stephenson for comic relief. Much of the territory lost by the government has been carved up into a huge number of sovereign enclaves, each run by its own big business franchise (such as "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong" or the various residential ''burbclaves''). This arrangement bears a similarity to anarcho-capitalism, a theme Stephenson carries over to his next novel ''The Diamond Age''. Hyperinflation has devalued the dollar to the extent that trillion dollar bills, ''Ed Meese'', are little regarded and the quadrillion dollar note, a ''Ronald Reagan'', is the standard 'small' bill. For large transactions, people resort to alternative currencies like yen or "Kongbucks" (the official currency of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong). The ''Metaverse'', Stephenson's successor to the Internet, permeates ruling-class activities, and constitutes Stephenson's vision of how a virtual reality-based Internet might evolve in the near future. Although there are public-access Metaverse Computer terminal in ''Reality'', using them carries a social stigma among Metaverse denizens, in part because of the low visual quality of the Avatar (virtual reality) (the Metaverse representation of a user). In the Metaverse, status is a function of two things: access to restricted environments (such as the Black Sun, an exclusive Metaverse club) and technical acumen (often demonstrated by the sophistication of one's avatar). See Second Life, The Palace, Uru, and Active Worlds. The latter is based entirely on Snow Crash. == Plot == The story centers around Hiro Protagonist, an out-of-work hacker and Swordsmanship, and a Youth culture young girl nicknamed Y.T. (short for Yours Truly), who works as a skateboard courier for a company called RadiKS. The pair meet when Hiro loses his job as a pizza delivery driver for the Mafia, and decide to become partners in the Intelligence (information gathering) business. The setting is a near-future Dystopia version of Los Angeles, where franchising, individual sovereignty and automobiles reign supreme (along with drug trafficking, violent crime, and traffic congestion). The pair soon learn of a dangerous new drug, called "Snow Crash" - both a computer virus, capable of infecting the brains of unwary hackers in the Metaverse, and a drug in Reality being marketed through a nearly-untraceable chain of sources. As Hiro and Y.T. dig deeper (or are drawn in), they discover more about Snow Crash and its connection to ancient Sumerian culture, the Optical fiber Monopoly L. Bob Rife and his enormous ''Raft'' of refugee boat people, and an Aleut Harpoon named Raven, whose ambition is to Nuclear weapon America. The Snow Crash metavirus may be characterized as an extremely aggressive meme. Stephenson spends much of the novel taking the reader on an extensive, impeccably-researched tour of the Sumerian mythology, while theorizing upon the origin of languages and their relationship to the Bible story of the Tower of Babel. Asherah is portrayed as a deadly biological and verbal virus which was stopped in Ancient Sumer by the God Enki. In order to do that, Enki deployed a countermeasure which was later described as the Tower of Babel. The deeper meaning of the novel can be summed up with a quote from William S. Burroughs: "Language is a virus from outer space". The book also reflects ideas from Julian Jaynes's ''The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'' (1976). Unanswered questions at the end: What happens to Y.T.? What is the relationship with her mother like now? What is the nature of Uncle Enzo's relationship with Y.T.? Does her mother still work for the feds? What happened to her mother from the unmentioned parts of her interrogation to when she came to pick Y.T. up? Except for a brief cameo appearance of a much older, wiser Y.T. about two-thirds of the way into The Diamond Age, in which she indicates that she eventually gave up thrashing, had children, and appears happy, we know nothing. == Important characters == * Hiro Protagonist — As the name suggests, the hero of the novel, a hacker, swordsman, and sometime pizza delivery man. * Juanita Marquez — Hiro's old girlfriend from the days when they both worked for Da5id and were developing the software that supports the Metaverse. Both men were in love with Juanita; she married and later divorced Da5id. * Y.T. — A teenage skateboard-riding courier who helps Hiro investigate the mysterious metavirus. * Da5id — Friend of Hiro, co-creator of the elite Metaverse club ''The Black Sun.'' First to fall victim to the ''Snow Crash'' virus. * L. Bob Rife — All-around magnate, plies the seas in an aircraft carrier with a city's worth of boat people lashed to it (and possibly may have been based on L. Ron Hubbard). * Raven — Rife's evil spear-throwing, motorcycle-riding henchman who carries a nuclear warhead with him that is wired to a dead-man's switch. His goal in life is to "nuke America." * Dr. Emanuel Lagos — Researcher who discovered the metavirus and foolishly told Rife about it. * Uncle Enzo — Head of the American Mafia, which is now also known as Nova Sicilia. * Mr. Ng — Head of Ng Security Industries, maker of the security pitbull cyborgs commonly called Rat Things. * The Librarian — An artificial intelligence who helps Hiro understand what is going on. == Editions == * ISBN 0553380958: Paperback (Bantam Spectra Book) * ISBN 055308853X: Hardcover (Bantam Spectra Book) * ISBN 1586211110: Audio cassette (abridged) * ISBN 1586211137: Audio cassette (unabridged) * ISBN B0000D1BR2: e-Book (Adobe Reader) * ISBN B0000D1BR3: e-Book (Microsoft Reader) * Audio download from [http://www.audible.com/ audible.com] == See also == * ''Active Worlds'' * ''Motif of harmful sensation'' * bokken * cyberpunk * ''The Diamond Age'' * geek canon * William Gibson (novelist) * ''The Riddle of the Universe and Its Solution'' * ''Second Life'' * Neal Stephenson * Solipsis * Uru * World Wind == External links == *[http://www.nealstephenson.com/ Neal Stephenson's web site] *[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/AuthorSpecAlphaList.asp?BkNum=21 Science Fiction Inventions From ''Snow Crash''] 1992 books Motif of harmful sensation Science fiction novels Fictional drugs Postcyberpunk
==first reference to avatars?== Albeit the term "avatar" was used by the first to mean a graphical representation of user at Habitat_(video_game), I believe Snow Crash is the first novel where the concept of avatar is fully developed, with detailed descriptions of avatars in cyberspace (metaverse). Is this true? If so I can add to the main entry. Cheers, User:MarioGuima 12:17, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC) ==discrepancies== Can we get some verification for this=> "L. Bob Rife (based on L. Ron Hubbard)" ??? User:Dustinasby 09:14, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC) :L. Bob Rife is founding a religion, he has a boat. It's been a while since I read it, but I think there are other "similarities". I remember thinking it was a reference to Hubbard when I read it. User:Mikkel 09:22, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC) ::Considering the brainwashing tactics of Rife, their attempted corruption of the internet through the virus, the boat, the similarity in name structure, and the propagandist actions of the "raft"... if you compare all that to Hubbard and some of the actions of the Scientologist movement (eg. Scientology vs. the Internet ), I'd say it's fairly safe that Stephenson at least had Hubbard in mind when he was creating Rife. User:Arcuras 19:52, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC) :::Rife always struck me as a kind of mix of L. Ron Hubbard, Ted Turner, and possibly Pat Robertson. I think the best way to incorporate this topic into the article would be a quote or comment from Stephenson on his inspiration for Rife, if there is one out there. Otherwise it's probably better just to describe Rife as he is presented in the text of the novel, without speculating on the real-life model for the character. User:MFNickster 05:54, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==L. Bob Rife== I snipped this from the L. Bob Rife article, which is now redir'd here: L. Bob Rife was born in 1948, probably in Odessa, Texas. There he played fullback in high school for Permian High (the school featured in Friday Night Lights). He was on the second-string Texas all-state team in his senior year before going on to Rice University on an academic scholarship and majoring in communications. He then became a television sports reporter in the Houston area and after two years of this went into the communications business with his great uncle, a financier with ties in the oil business. For five years Rife's activities were consisted of expanding his business throughout the United States until he began giving vast amounts of money to religious organizations and the archeology, astronomy, and computer science departments of his own university in Bayview, Texas, Rife Bible College. Shortly after, Rife was also expanding his fiber-optics market into East Asia after forcing the Japanese to let him in and expand his ever growing monopoly. == Gushing removed == ''Like many postmodern novels, ''Snow Crash'' has a unique style and a chaotic structure which many readers find difficult to follow. It is crammed full of subtle references to geography, politics, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, history, and computer science, and its rich texture is best appreciated upon a third or even fourth reading.'' This paragraph is a little too POV for a WP article. I would have edited it a bit for POV-ness, except that it's just plain wrong: how many people had to read the book four times to get it? You don't need a companion volume to understand this --- it's not exactly the computer age's Finnegan's Wake or Gravity's Rainbow. User:JosephBarillari (User_talk:JosephBarillari) 00:10, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) Just to point out, I wrote that sentence. I was introduced to Snow Crash through a large college seminar that covered a wide range of American literature (long story). I have always been a science-fiction fan from a young age (although at the time I had only read a little cyberpunk) and I fell in love with the book right away, but even then it wasn't until my second reading that I noticed ''all'' the funny little details that Stephenson packs in. Most of the people in the seminar were not science-fiction fans and kept whining at every class at how the book was boring, unreadable, chaotic, impossible to understand, incoherent, etc. The instructor ended up having do a lot more lecturing as opposed to discussion for Snow Crash because few people in the class understood the book well-enough (even after multiple attempts at reading it) to hold a coherent discussion about its themes and underlying implications. And in case you're about to retort that most people in most colleges are idiots, I should point out that this was at the most prestigious public university in the United States (guess which one). So the average IQ of these people was a bit higher than your average community college student. Of course, my alma mater ranks at only between 20 and 25 on the U.S. News & World Report ratings, but I doubt the population of the universities that ranked even higher (the Ivy League) could be considered representative of the world English-speaking population. The point I'm trying to get across is that WP is for a general intellectual audience, not just hard sci-fi fans who take computer jargon and cyberpunk style for granted. Keep in mind that most people's idea of science fiction is simple, linear, childish fantasy stuff like what Anne McCaffrey writes (I am specifically thinking of The Ship That Sang series). Most people, once they finish their mandatory English requirements in high school, never get around to reading contemporary writers like Philip Roth or Milan Kundera who love to screw around with the reader's sense of time and location. So, I think it's fair to imply in the article that Snow Crash is a bit harder than the garbage that passes for bestsellers on Amazon nowadays. --User:Coolcaesar 03:34, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) Hmmm. It's been a week with no reply from Jdb. I'm putting my passage back in for now. --User:Coolcaesar 00:17, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC) Sorry, I missed your reply. If you want to put it back, OK -- it sounds like you've spent more time considering this issue than I have. But please rephrase it to use more NPOV language --- "crammed full of subtle references" and "rich texture is best appreciated upon a third or even fourth reading" are phrases appropriate for a dust jacket or PublishersWeekly blurb, but not an encyclopedia article. thanks, User:JosephBarillari (User_talk:JosephBarillari) 01:38, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC) == Pit bull reference removed == I've removed the reference to the novel "also centering on pit bull terriers being good pets", which is quite inexact. There are pit bulls in the book, but they hardly would be defined as important, even if one of them plays a relevant part before the end. And certainly the novel does not make emphasis in pit bulls being good pets; just a comment that the one YT and her boyfriend found was nice and friendly. BTW, I'm not sure the bit about unanswered questions does belong on the article, either (surely there are dozens of unanswered questions of that caliber). But I'll leave it to others to remove, if necessary. --User:Lektu 21:58, 16 May 2005 (UTC) I concur with your view that the novel did not center on pit bull terriers. The issue of Y.T.'s relationship with a pit bull terrier (who later became a Rat Thing) was only a minor part of the larger theme of whether machines or flesh are superior. The more important representative aspects of that theme include Y.T.'s initial in-the-flesh meeting with Ng, and the final confrontation with Raven, where Uncle Enzo thought to himself that he would rather have a good soldier with polished shoes and a 9mm pistol, as opposed to all of Ng's fancy machines. --User:Coolcaesar 23:24, 17 May 2005 (UTC) The pitbull did save her life at the end of the movie as well as killing several villains. The story included point of view and *internal monologue* of Y.T.'s old pitbull as well. -Thodin Put it on the "Important characters" section, then. There's no doubt that Fido is a character of certain relevance, as the ending shows. But that does not make true the comment I removed. The book does not try to defend the position that pit bull terriers are good pets, and the fact that Fido is a pit bull (as opposed to, let's say, a ''fila brasileiro'' or a ''gos d'atura'') is totally irrelevant. --User:Lektu 22:33, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
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Words begining with Snow_Crash:
Snow_Crash
Snow_Crash
Snow Crash
The science fiction novel ''Snow Crash'' (1992), written by Neal Stephenson, follows in the footsteps of the cyberpunk novels by such authors as William Gibson (novelist) and Rudy Rucker, though Stephenson breaks away from the typical "techno punk" stories by embellishing this story with a heavy dose of satire and black comedy. ''Snow Crash'' (Stephenson's third novel) rocketed to the top of the fiction best-seller charts upon its release and established Stephenson as a major science fiction writer for the 1990s. Like many postmodern novels, ''Snow Crash'' has a unique style and a chaotic structure which many readers find difficult to follow. It contains many arcane references to geography, politics, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, history, and computer science, which may inspire readers to explore these topics further, or at least consult relevant reference works. The novel explores themes of reality, imagination, thought, perception, and the violent and physical nature of humanity, in the context of a socially-constructed (virtual) reality imposed on a political-economic system in the throes of radical transition. == Significance of the name == The meaning of the name "snow crash" is explained in Stephenson's essay In the Beginning...was the Command Line, as the term for a particular software failure mode on the early Apple Macintosh computer: :When everything went to hell and the Central processing unit began spewing out random bits, the result, on a Command line interface machine, was lines and lines of perfectly formed but random characters on the screen—known to cognoscenti as "going Cyrillic." But to the MacOS, the screen was not a teletype, but a place to put graphics; the image on the screen was a bitmap, a literal rendering of the contents of a particular portion of the computer's memory. When the computer crashed and wrote gibberish into the bitmap, the result was something that looked vaguely like static on a broken television set—a "snow crash." == Background == The story takes place in a semi-United States of the future, where corporatization, franchise, and the Economics in general have spun wildly out of control. ''Snow Crash'' depicts the absence of a central powerful state; in its place, corporations have taken over the traditional roles of government, including dispute resolution and national defense. The United States has lost most of its territory in the wake of an stock market crash; the residual remains of the federal government are weak and inefficient and are used by Stephenson for comic relief. Much of the territory lost by the government has been carved up into a huge number of sovereign enclaves, each run by its own big business franchise (such as "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong" or the various residential ''burbclaves''). This arrangement bears a similarity to anarcho-capitalism, a theme Stephenson carries over to his next novel ''The Diamond Age''. Hyperinflation has devalued the dollar to the extent that trillion dollar bills, ''Ed Meese'', are little regarded and the quadrillion dollar note, a ''Ronald Reagan'', is the standard 'small' bill. For large transactions, people resort to alternative currencies like yen or "Kongbucks" (the official currency of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong). The ''Metaverse'', Stephenson's successor to the Internet, permeates ruling-class activities, and constitutes Stephenson's vision of how a virtual reality-based Internet might evolve in the near future. Although there are public-access Metaverse Computer terminal in ''Reality'', using them carries a social stigma among Metaverse denizens, in part because of the low visual quality of the Avatar (virtual reality) (the Metaverse representation of a user). In the Metaverse, status is a function of two things: access to restricted environments (such as the Black Sun, an exclusive Metaverse club) and technical acumen (often demonstrated by the sophistication of one's avatar). See Second Life, The Palace, Uru, and Active Worlds. The latter is based entirely on Snow Crash. == Plot == The story centers around Hiro Protagonist, an out-of-work hacker and Swordsmanship, and a Youth culture young girl nicknamed Y.T. (short for Yours Truly), who works as a skateboard courier for a company called RadiKS. The pair meet when Hiro loses his job as a pizza delivery driver for the Mafia, and decide to become partners in the Intelligence (information gathering) business. The setting is a near-future Dystopia version of Los Angeles, where franchising, individual sovereignty and automobiles reign supreme (along with drug trafficking, violent crime, and traffic congestion). The pair soon learn of a dangerous new drug, called "Snow Crash" - both a computer virus, capable of infecting the brains of unwary hackers in the Metaverse, and a drug in Reality being marketed through a nearly-untraceable chain of sources. As Hiro and Y.T. dig deeper (or are drawn in), they discover more about Snow Crash and its connection to ancient Sumerian culture, the Optical fiber Monopoly L. Bob Rife and his enormous ''Raft'' of refugee boat people, and an Aleut Harpoon named Raven, whose ambition is to Nuclear weapon America. The Snow Crash metavirus may be characterized as an extremely aggressive meme. Stephenson spends much of the novel taking the reader on an extensive, impeccably-researched tour of the Sumerian mythology, while theorizing upon the origin of languages and their relationship to the Bible story of the Tower of Babel. Asherah is portrayed as a deadly biological and verbal virus which was stopped in Ancient Sumer by the God Enki. In order to do that, Enki deployed a countermeasure which was later described as the Tower of Babel. The deeper meaning of the novel can be summed up with a quote from William S. Burroughs: "Language is a virus from outer space". The book also reflects ideas from Julian Jaynes's ''The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'' (1976). Unanswered questions at the end: What happens to Y.T.? What is the relationship with her mother like now? What is the nature of Uncle Enzo's relationship with Y.T.? Does her mother still work for the feds? What happened to her mother from the unmentioned parts of her interrogation to when she came to pick Y.T. up? Except for a brief cameo appearance of a much older, wiser Y.T. about two-thirds of the way into The Diamond Age, in which she indicates that she eventually gave up thrashing, had children, and appears happy, we know nothing. == Important characters == * Hiro Protagonist — As the name suggests, the hero of the novel, a hacker, swordsman, and sometime pizza delivery man. * Juanita Marquez — Hiro's old girlfriend from the days when they both worked for Da5id and were developing the software that supports the Metaverse. Both men were in love with Juanita; she married and later divorced Da5id. * Y.T. — A teenage skateboard-riding courier who helps Hiro investigate the mysterious metavirus. * Da5id — Friend of Hiro, co-creator of the elite Metaverse club ''The Black Sun.'' First to fall victim to the ''Snow Crash'' virus. * L. Bob Rife — All-around magnate, plies the seas in an aircraft carrier with a city's worth of boat people lashed to it (and possibly may have been based on L. Ron Hubbard). * Raven — Rife's evil spear-throwing, motorcycle-riding henchman who carries a nuclear warhead with him that is wired to a dead-man's switch. His goal in life is to "nuke America." * Dr. Emanuel Lagos — Researcher who discovered the metavirus and foolishly told Rife about it. * Uncle Enzo — Head of the American Mafia, which is now also known as Nova Sicilia. * Mr. Ng — Head of Ng Security Industries, maker of the security pitbull cyborgs commonly called Rat Things. * The Librarian — An artificial intelligence who helps Hiro understand what is going on. == Editions == * ISBN 0553380958: Paperback (Bantam Spectra Book) * ISBN 055308853X: Hardcover (Bantam Spectra Book) * ISBN 1586211110: Audio cassette (abridged) * ISBN 1586211137: Audio cassette (unabridged) * ISBN B0000D1BR2: e-Book (Adobe Reader) * ISBN B0000D1BR3: e-Book (Microsoft Reader) * Audio download from [http://www.audible.com/ audible.com] == See also == * ''Active Worlds'' * ''Motif of harmful sensation'' * bokken * cyberpunk * ''The Diamond Age'' * geek canon * William Gibson (novelist) * ''The Riddle of the Universe and Its Solution'' * ''Second Life'' * Neal Stephenson * Solipsis * Uru * World Wind == External links == *[http://www.nealstephenson.com/ Neal Stephenson's web site] *[http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/AuthorSpecAlphaList.asp?BkNum=21 Science Fiction Inventions From ''Snow Crash''] 1992 books Motif of harmful sensation Science fiction novels Fictional drugs Postcyberpunk
Snow Crash
==first reference to avatars?== Albeit the term "avatar" was used by the first to mean a graphical representation of user at Habitat_(video_game), I believe Snow Crash is the first novel where the concept of avatar is fully developed, with detailed descriptions of avatars in cyberspace (metaverse). Is this true? If so I can add to the main entry. Cheers, User:MarioGuima 12:17, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC) ==discrepancies== Can we get some verification for this=> "L. Bob Rife (based on L. Ron Hubbard)" ??? User:Dustinasby 09:14, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC) :L. Bob Rife is founding a religion, he has a boat. It's been a while since I read it, but I think there are other "similarities". I remember thinking it was a reference to Hubbard when I read it. User:Mikkel 09:22, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC) ::Considering the brainwashing tactics of Rife, their attempted corruption of the internet through the virus, the boat, the similarity in name structure, and the propagandist actions of the "raft"... if you compare all that to Hubbard and some of the actions of the Scientologist movement (eg. Scientology vs. the Internet ), I'd say it's fairly safe that Stephenson at least had Hubbard in mind when he was creating Rife. User:Arcuras 19:52, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC) :::Rife always struck me as a kind of mix of L. Ron Hubbard, Ted Turner, and possibly Pat Robertson. I think the best way to incorporate this topic into the article would be a quote or comment from Stephenson on his inspiration for Rife, if there is one out there. Otherwise it's probably better just to describe Rife as he is presented in the text of the novel, without speculating on the real-life model for the character. User:MFNickster 05:54, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==L. Bob Rife== I snipped this from the L. Bob Rife article, which is now redir'd here: L. Bob Rife was born in 1948, probably in Odessa, Texas. There he played fullback in high school for Permian High (the school featured in Friday Night Lights). He was on the second-string Texas all-state team in his senior year before going on to Rice University on an academic scholarship and majoring in communications. He then became a television sports reporter in the Houston area and after two years of this went into the communications business with his great uncle, a financier with ties in the oil business. For five years Rife's activities were consisted of expanding his business throughout the United States until he began giving vast amounts of money to religious organizations and the archeology, astronomy, and computer science departments of his own university in Bayview, Texas, Rife Bible College. Shortly after, Rife was also expanding his fiber-optics market into East Asia after forcing the Japanese to let him in and expand his ever growing monopoly. == Gushing removed == ''Like many postmodern novels, ''Snow Crash'' has a unique style and a chaotic structure which many readers find difficult to follow. It is crammed full of subtle references to geography, politics, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, history, and computer science, and its rich texture is best appreciated upon a third or even fourth reading.'' This paragraph is a little too POV for a WP article. I would have edited it a bit for POV-ness, except that it's just plain wrong: how many people had to read the book four times to get it? You don't need a companion volume to understand this --- it's not exactly the computer age's Finnegan's Wake or Gravity's Rainbow. User:JosephBarillari (User_talk:JosephBarillari) 00:10, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) Just to point out, I wrote that sentence. I was introduced to Snow Crash through a large college seminar that covered a wide range of American literature (long story). I have always been a science-fiction fan from a young age (although at the time I had only read a little cyberpunk) and I fell in love with the book right away, but even then it wasn't until my second reading that I noticed ''all'' the funny little details that Stephenson packs in. Most of the people in the seminar were not science-fiction fans and kept whining at every class at how the book was boring, unreadable, chaotic, impossible to understand, incoherent, etc. The instructor ended up having do a lot more lecturing as opposed to discussion for Snow Crash because few people in the class understood the book well-enough (even after multiple attempts at reading it) to hold a coherent discussion about its themes and underlying implications. And in case you're about to retort that most people in most colleges are idiots, I should point out that this was at the most prestigious public university in the United States (guess which one). So the average IQ of these people was a bit higher than your average community college student. Of course, my alma mater ranks at only between 20 and 25 on the U.S. News & World Report ratings, but I doubt the population of the universities that ranked even higher (the Ivy League) could be considered representative of the world English-speaking population. The point I'm trying to get across is that WP is for a general intellectual audience, not just hard sci-fi fans who take computer jargon and cyberpunk style for granted. Keep in mind that most people's idea of science fiction is simple, linear, childish fantasy stuff like what Anne McCaffrey writes (I am specifically thinking of The Ship That Sang series). Most people, once they finish their mandatory English requirements in high school, never get around to reading contemporary writers like Philip Roth or Milan Kundera who love to screw around with the reader's sense of time and location. So, I think it's fair to imply in the article that Snow Crash is a bit harder than the garbage that passes for bestsellers on Amazon nowadays. --User:Coolcaesar 03:34, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) Hmmm. It's been a week with no reply from Jdb. I'm putting my passage back in for now. --User:Coolcaesar 00:17, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC) Sorry, I missed your reply. If you want to put it back, OK -- it sounds like you've spent more time considering this issue than I have. But please rephrase it to use more NPOV language --- "crammed full of subtle references" and "rich texture is best appreciated upon a third or even fourth reading" are phrases appropriate for a dust jacket or PublishersWeekly blurb, but not an encyclopedia article. thanks, User:JosephBarillari (User_talk:JosephBarillari) 01:38, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC) == Pit bull reference removed == I've removed the reference to the novel "also centering on pit bull terriers being good pets", which is quite inexact. There are pit bulls in the book, but they hardly would be defined as important, even if one of them plays a relevant part before the end. And certainly the novel does not make emphasis in pit bulls being good pets; just a comment that the one YT and her boyfriend found was nice and friendly. BTW, I'm not sure the bit about unanswered questions does belong on the article, either (surely there are dozens of unanswered questions of that caliber). But I'll leave it to others to remove, if necessary. --User:Lektu 21:58, 16 May 2005 (UTC) I concur with your view that the novel did not center on pit bull terriers. The issue of Y.T.'s relationship with a pit bull terrier (who later became a Rat Thing) was only a minor part of the larger theme of whether machines or flesh are superior. The more important representative aspects of that theme include Y.T.'s initial in-the-flesh meeting with Ng, and the final confrontation with Raven, where Uncle Enzo thought to himself that he would rather have a good soldier with polished shoes and a 9mm pistol, as opposed to all of Ng's fancy machines. --User:Coolcaesar 23:24, 17 May 2005 (UTC) The pitbull did save her life at the end of the movie as well as killing several villains. The story included point of view and *internal monologue* of Y.T.'s old pitbull as well. -Thodin Put it on the "Important characters" section, then. There's no doubt that Fido is a character of certain relevance, as the ending shows. But that does not make true the comment I removed. The book does not try to defend the position that pit bull terriers are good pets, and the fact that Fido is a pit bull (as opposed to, let's say, a ''fila brasileiro'' or a ''gos d'atura'') is totally irrelevant. --User:Lektu 22:33, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
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