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 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 humor.

Plot

The story centers around Hiro Protagonist, an out-of-work hacker and swordsman, and a streetwise young girl nicknamed Y.T. (short for Yours Truly), who works as a plank Kourier 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 business. The setting is a near-future dystopian version of Los Angeles, where franchising, individual sovereignty and automobiles reign supreme (along with drug trafficking, violent crime, and traffic congestion).

Related Topics:
Protagonist - Hacker - Swordsman - Streetwise - Plank - Kourier - Pizza delivery - Mafia - Intelligence - Dystopian - Los Angeles - Individual sovereignty - Automobiles - Drug trafficking - Violent crime - Traffic congestion

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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 fiber-optics monopolist L. Bob Rife and his enormous Raft of refugee boat people, and an Aleut harpooner named Raven, whose ambition is to nuke America. The Snow Crash metavirus may be characterized as an extremely aggressive meme.

Related Topics:
Computer virus - Sumerian - Fiber-optics - Monopolist - Boat people - Aleut - Harpooner - Nuke - Meme

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Stephenson spends much of the novel taking the reader on an extensive, impeccably-researched tour of the mythology of ancient Sumeria, while theorizing upon the origin of languages and their relationship to the Biblical 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).

Related Topics:
Mythology of ancient Sumeria - Origin of language - Biblical - Tower of Babel - Asherah - Virus - Enki - William S. Burroughs - Julian Jaynes - The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - 1976

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Enki is portrayed as a proto-hacker or as Stephenson puts it "a neurolinguistic hacker." To elaborate on this, Stephenson suggests that the early Sumerian culture circumvented the language barrier by using a language that affects us on the core level of our brain. Our own modern languages are what he calls acquired language, and then the other variety is based in the deep structures of our brain so it is common to every human being. He compares it with "Speaking in Tongues" or Glossolalia and other apparently babble related language, suggesting that there is in fact meaning in the babbling. Stephenson compares using this core language to programming in binary, so in a sense it allows you to circumvent the consciousness of the person and send triggers directly to their brain stem. In Sumer the societies were controlled by verbal rules called me. Stephenson compares them to little programs but for humans. There were me for everything from building a house to baking bread, even religious rituals and war had me controlling them. All the me was stored in the temple and dispensed by a high priest/king called an en. He goes on to explain this core language and its me were actually wiped out by a meta-virus that is explained in the myths like the Tower of Babel. Enki was an en and used this core language to construct new me. He wrote a me called the nam-shub of Enki that acted like a counter-virus which spread and blocked the metavirus and the other me which is why suddenly all these languages, many of which are unrelated and have no common origins, appeared on the scene. The people were freed from the control of this core language and were in effect immunized from the metavirus. The metavirus didn't disappear though, the cult of Asherah still spread the virus by cult prostitutes and by nursing infants on infected mothers. He also brings in the herpes simplex as an example of how a virus can target the central nervous system. The story gets very in depth about this metavirus and other times in history it has surfaced, for example when Sennacherib tried to conquer Jerusalem, speculating that the deuteronomists had an en of their own. Also he points to kabbalistic sorcerers, known as ba'al shems which translates to "masters of the divine name" as another example of a group who could wield the ancient tongue.

Related Topics:
Sumerian - Brain - Acquired language - Glossolalia - Babble - Language - Binary - Consciousness - Me - En - Meta- - Virus - Myth - Tower of Babel - Asherah - Herpes simplex - Sennacherib - Deuteronomists - Kabbalistic - Sorcerers - Ba'al shems

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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.

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