Snow crash

Snow Crash (1992) is a science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson , who originally wanted to bring the story out as a computer-generated comic together with the graphic artist Tony Sheeder . It is set in Los Angeles in the not too distant future.

action

Hiro protagonist, hero and main character of the book, is a pizza deliverer (deliverer), programmer (what is generally referred to as a hacker in the novel ) and information collector for the "Central Intelligence Corporation" CIC, the commercial successor organization of the CIA . The pizza company Cosa Nostra belongs to the Mafia boss Uncle Enzo, who guarantees his customers a delivery time of 30 minutes, otherwise Uncle Enzo calls the customer, apologizes personally the following day and gives him a free vacation in Italy. The failing pizza delivery man is killed as a punishment in accordance with the legally permissible provisions of his employment contract. The state has almost completely withdrawn from public life and has left all social regulatory functions to private companies. The mafia is just one of the franchise chains like all other institutions: the police and the judiciary, governments and states are all privatized . There is hyperinflation and extreme social inequality.

From this anarcho-capitalist dystopia , the characters flee again and again into the metaverse , a mixture between the Internet and MMORPG , through which they move with avatars . Hiro and his partner, 15-year-old courier driver YT, witness and play along in the search for a mysterious drug called Snow Crash, which has devastating effects. In this search, the communication options of virtual reality , colleagues from the mafia and, last but not least, Hiro's samurai swords are at your side. This support is also necessary as a huge conspiracy is in progress, which was initiated by L. Bob Rife, the owner of the global fiber-optic network and promoter of Pentecostals - sect .

Guiding principles

The plot is spun around the thesis that a drug , a virus and a religion are structurally identical, namely forms of self-reproducing parasitic information . The myth of the Babylonian confusion of languages is reinterpreted as a historical event in which Enki , who is euhemeristically described as the lord of the Sumerian city of Eridu , intentionally interrupted communication and thus the indoctrinability of people by the goddess Aschera, which is described as a virus infection . This event is the origin of consciousness through the collapse of the bicameral psyche - this is the title of a controversially discussed major work by the American psychologist Julian Jaynes , on which Stephenson relies here.

As in his later Cryptonomicon , the author has done extensive research and presents this knowledge to the reader in long dialogues between Hiro and the librarian, an intelligent research software.

style

The novel is told in a comparatively conventional way. In 71 chapters, which are not arranged in chronological order, the reader is made familiar with the protagonists and the rules and settings of the stateless world in which the novel takes place. Some of these descriptions are very clear, for example in the description of Compton :

“Lepers grill dogs on sticks over burning gasoline. Homeless people push shopping trolleys in front of them, piled high in millions and billions of dollar bills that they have scraped together from sewers. Carcasses on the side of the road - enormous carcasses, carcasses so large that they can only be humans, stick to the curb for a whole block, squashed. "

They alternate with rapid chases ( William Gibson recommended the novel with the words: "Faster than anything you've read so far"), longer dialogue passages in which the necessary background information about glossolalia , Sumerian mythology and the differences and similarities between religious conversion and viral contagion are discussed, and sword fighting , gunfire or sex scenes are sometimes very drastically portrayed . Particularly entertaining are the satirical passages in which Stephenson makes fun of the time pressure on pizza delivery people or the absurd bureaucracy of the American federal authorities: the FBI appears as the last remaining state in the United States , but only deals with it the production of software . In order to keep their content secret from the programmers, they have to undergo Kafkaesque rituals and work difficulties. The strict prohibition on taking notes while doing so makes fun of the ideal of the paper-free office that was propagated when the novel was written.

Important figures

Hiroaki (Hiro) Protagonist - Hiro is the protagonist of the book. The son of an African American and a Korean woman is a freelance programmer, swordsman and, at the beginning of the novel, still works as a "delivery agent" for Cosa Nostra Pizzas , a pizza service operated by the Mafia .
YT - daughter of an FBI officer who works for a courier service without the knowledge of her mother and who has nicknamed the abbreviation for the letter greeting "Yours Truly" (you never find out her real name). She surfs the streets with her skateboard by “puncturing” cars with a magnetic (har) pune. In addition to her pune and her “plank” (the skateboard), she wears a variety of other equipment and protective devices on and in her body, e.g. B. Neck airbags and a dentata .
Dmitri "Raven" Ravinoff - Raven is an Alëut . He is a very good harpooner and represents the antagonist . He carries a hydrogen bomb with him in the sidecar of his motorcycle , which threatens to detonate when his signs of life are extinguished.
Juanita Marquez - Juanita is Hiro's ex-girlfriend. They were together when they were still working together for Da5id and co-programming the metaverse. She later married Da5id, but divorced him again.
Uncle Enzo - Uncle Enzo is the boss of the “New Sicily Franchise” (Mafia) and thus also of Cosa Nostra Pizzas.
Da5id Meier - Da5id is a programmer like Hiro and Juanita. They used to work together in a company. He owns a place in the metaverse called The Black Sun , which is a popular spot for hackers.
Mr. Ng - After a helicopter accident, Ng is the head of a security company that turns pit bull terriers into guard cyborgs who can run at supersonic speed and are called "rats" in the novel. Mr. Ng uses a well-equipped and armored vehicle that he had built from an airport fire department car as his wheelchair , which he controls with his voice.
Vitaly Chernobyl - As the surname suggests, Vitaly is a Soviet emigrant. He's the leader of a rock group that Hiro hosts concerts for and with whom he shares a 20x30-foot room at U-Stor It.
The Librarian - A complex piece of software that provides Hiro protagonist with information about Sumerian mythology , the Snow Crash virus and various characters in the novel.
L. Bob Rife - A media mogul who owns the world's fiber optic network . The name is a reference to L. Ron Hubbard .

Remarks

After the success of Cryptonomicon in 2001, Neal Stephenson's early work came back into focus and was reissued in 2002 by Goldmann Verlag.

expenditure

1992, American first edition: "Snow Crash", Bantam Books, 1992, New York, ISBN 0-553-08853-X
1994, German paperback : "Snow Crash", Goldmann Verlag , from the American by Joachim Körber , Goldmann 42450 (German first publication), ISBN 3-442-42450-X
1995, German paperback: "Snow Crash", Blanvalet , from the American by Joachim Körber, ISBN 978-3-442-23686-2
2002 German paperback: "Snow Crash", Goldmann Verlag, from the American by Joachim Körber, Goldmann 45302, ISBN 978-3-442-45302-3
2009, German e-book : "Snow Crash", Goldmann Verlag, from the American by Joachim Körber, ISBN 978-3-641-03378-1

Web links

Snow Crash in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)

Individual evidence

↑ James Mustich: Interviews - Neal Stephenson: Anathem - A Conversation with James Mustich, Editor-in-Chief of the Barnes & Noble Review ( English ) barnesandnoble.com . October 13, 2008. Retrieved on August 6, 2014: “I'd had a similar reaction to yours when I'd first read The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and that, combined with the desire to use IT , were two elements from which Snow Crash grew. "
^ Neal Stephenson : Snow Crash . Novel. 6th edition. Blanvalet, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3-442-23686-2 , chap. 37 , p. 321–331 (American English: Snow Crash . New York 1992. Translated by Joachim Körber ).
↑ DNB 942359607 in the German National Library
↑ Proof on the publisher's side , recorded in the German National Library DNB 946224005 with publisher "Goldmann".

[1] James Mustich: Interviews - Neal Stephenson: Anathem - A Conversation with James Mustich, Editor-in-Chief of the Barnes & Noble Review ( English ) barnesandnoble.com . October 13, 2008. Retrieved on August 6, 2014: “I'd had a similar reaction to yours when I'd first read The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, and that, combined with the desire to use IT , were two elements from which Snow Crash grew. "

[2] Neal Stephenson : Snow Crash . Novel. 6th edition. Blanvalet, Munich 1995, ISBN 978-3-442-23686-2 , chap. 37 , p. 321–331 (American English: Snow Crash . New York 1992. Translated by Joachim Körber ).

[3] DNB 942359607 in the German National Library

[4] Proof on the publisher's side , recorded in the German National Library DNB 946224005 with publisher "Goldmann".