Pick of the week: Snow Crash
Posted on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 in Pick of the week
This
weeks pick is a book - you know those analog ((If you prefer
digital you can get it from
Audible.com
or from
iTunes))
thingies that doesn't require batteries. My pick is
Snow Crash by
Neal Stephenson
and this is quite possibly the best science fiction novel I have
ever read. Snow Crash is
set in the early 21st century where we follow Hiro Protagonist and
a young girl nicknamed Y.T. ((Short for Yours Truly)) through an
epic tale that mixes together
Sumerian culture,
virtual reality,
religion, love,
computer viruses and
sword fighting. The main theme of the book is a computer virus
called Snow Crash that
begins to infect humans. To explain how this transition from
machine to flesh is possible
Neal Stephenson
uses the somewhat controversial ((I find the theories described in
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
very believable - i.e. it just makes sense)) concept of
Julian Jaynes
Bicameral Mind Theory. The attention to detail in this book is
phenomenal as is the writing - I guarantee that if you first pick
up Snow Crash, you won't
be able to put it down again before you have read the last page -
and then you'll wish there were more chapters to be read.