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Neal
Stephenson’s career to this point can be split into roughly
two halves: In the first half, he possessed a vibrant style of
satirical SF which – while still rough around the edges –
developed quickly with laser-like prose, memorable casts of
characters, high octane plots, technical savvy, and vividly
imagined settings. In the second half of his career, all of
these things have been perfected – but Stephenson also
developed a tendency towards bloat (although the quality of his
prose tends to keep you engaged) and an unfortunate habit of
writing books without ends (although the
plots-without-resolution remain high octane right up until the
very last page).
And poised right
at the pinnacle between these two halves – possessing all of
their strengths and none of their shortcomings – is SNOW
CRASH, which is almost certainly Stephenson’s finest work to
date.
Saying that SNOW
CRASH is a fantastic novel – a jewel whose facets have been
cut with breathtaking precision – is easy enough. Trying to
explain what SNOW CRASH is, on the other hand, is a bit
more difficult.
On this reading
of SNOW CRASH (this is the second time I’ve read it), I found
myself being strongly reminded of Philip K. Dick. It took me
awhile to figure out why, but once I did it was like a lightbulb
going off above my head: SNOW CRASH is satire.
But, more than
that, SNOW CRASH is a satire on three completely different
levels: First, and most obviously, it’s a satire of the
cyberpunk genre as popularized by William Gibson during the
1980’s. Second, it’s a satire of the modern world. Third,
it’s a satire of a future world.
It is this last,
and most remarkable, accomplishment that reminds me so strongly
of Dickian classics like DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?
Like Dick, Stephenson not only creates a fully-realized future,
he presents that future in a stylized fashion. At first glance,
the result seems surreal. But a closer look reveals a reality
made all the more tangible and believable as a result of the
uniquely skewed point of view.
People talk
about the fact that Heinlein wrote science fiction stories as if
they were just fiction stories written by authors in the future.
I would argue that Dick took this to the next level by writing
his stories as if they were written by future authors with
stylistic flair, and that Stephenson has taken this to yet
another level by layering the technique.
And looking at
SNOW CRASH through this new lens, the opening sequence of the
novel – which had previously seemed to me, despite its
hilarious effectiveness, to be oddly out of synch with the rest
of the novel – suddenly came into sharp focus. This opening
sequence is nothing more than a pizza delivery, but Stephenson
presents it as a matter of life-and-death – neatly satirizing
the self-important style of classical cyberpunk tales: “When
they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator
never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway –
might want his car, or his cargo.”
But if you take
a closer look, the sequence is satirizing life in the modern
world as much as it is the stylings of Gibsonesque cyberpunk:
“Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall, your
pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free, shoot the driver,
take his car, file a class-action suit. The Deliverator has
never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes. Oh,
they used to argue over times, many corporate driver-years lost
to it: homeowners, red-faced and sweaty with their own lies,
stinking of Old Spice and job-related stress, standing in their
glowing yellow doorways brandishing their Seikos and waving at
the clock over the kitchen sink, I swear, can’t you guys tell
time?
“Didn’t
happen anymore. Pizza delivery is a major industry. A managed
industry. People went to
CosaNostra
Pizza
University
for four years just to learn it. And they had studied this
problem. Graphed the frequency of door delivery-time disputes.
Wired the early Deliverators to record, then analyze, the
debating tactics, the voice-stress histograms, the distinctive
grammatical structures employed by white middle-class Type A
Burbclave occupants who against all logic had decided that this
was the place to take their personal Custerian stand against all
that was stale and deadening in their lives: they were going to
lie, or delude themselves, about pizza; no, they deserved a free
pizza along with their life, liberty, and pursuit of whatever,
it was fucking inalienable.”
And, of course,
beneath it all, Stephenson is laying down the first building
blocks in the foundation of his setting.
The whole,
ten-page sequence is a tour de force of talent. It is the work
of a writer who has mastered his craft, and with supreme
confidence proceeds to suck you into his story and his world.
And it’s just
the beginning, because this superb layering of satire and
world-building is just one of the most basic delights the novel
has to offer.
SNOW CRASH also
reminds me of Kenneth Hite. Hite writes a column called
“Suppressed Transmissions” for Pyramid, an on-line magazine
published by Steve Jackson Games. Every two weeks Hite mixes up
a potent brew of Kabbalism, tarot symbolism, grail mythology,
Nazi mysticism, Illuminati conspiracy, Tesla science, and a
dozen other types of secret history – serving up the result as
an idea mine for roleplayers everywhere.
In similar
fashion, the central plot of SNOW CRASH hangs upon Sumerian myth
cycles, comparative linguistics, memetic theory, and cyberpunk
tropism. I draw a direct line from H.P. Lovecraft and Charles
Forte, through Robert Anton Wilson, and end up with Stephenson
and Hite.
SNOW CRASH is
also, arguably, the moment of crystallization for the
post-cyberpunk genre. It was the first massively popular work to
break away from the narrow bandwidth the cyberpunk genre had
possessed since Gibson first crystallized it in 1984 with
NEUROMANCER, and demonstrated that the genre was a form which
was not necessarily tied to a specific content of plot or theme.
On top of that, Stephenson shed many of the technological
trappings of cyberpunk that had more to do with science fantasy
than science fiction, and rooted those that remained in much
firmer soil. (Stephenson’s Metaverse, for example, is a
believable extrapolation, whereas Gibson’s cyberspace
doesn’t rise above the level of metaphorical handwaving.)
(Antecedents, of
course, exist for SNOW CRASH’s moment of crystallization. For
one example, check out my reaction to Lawrence Watt-Evans’
excellent
NIGHTSIDE
CITY
. Similarly, Gibson’s crystallization of the cyberpunk genre
as a whole had a number of antecedents.)
And, last but
not least, despite a complex setting resting upon the
monomolecular cutting edge of science fiction, SNOW CRASH is
also written as a mainstream technothriller. Stephenson never
expects his readers to be familiar with the tropes of science
fiction, but instead explains every extrapolation from the
modern world. It is a further testament of Stephenson’s
mastery that these descriptions never become tedious to the
hardcore fan, instead existing as an entertaining and stylistic
patter that never slow the book down. For example: “The
computer is a featureless black wedge. It does not have a power
cord, but there is a narrow translucent plastic tube emerging
from a hatch on the rear, spiraling across the cargo pallet and
the floor, and plugged into a crudely installed fiber-optics
cable. The cable is carrying a lot of information back and forth
between Hiro’s computer and the rest of the world. In order to
transmit the same amount of information on paper, they would
have to arrange for a 747 cargo freighter packed with telephone
books and encyclopedias to power-dive into their unit every
couple of minutes, forever.”
So what is SNOW
CRASH? I dunno. It’s identity lies somewhere within a gestalt;
it’s a masterpiece that can be discussed in facets, but never
as a whole.
And it’s all
bundled up in a tight little package with all of Stephenson’s
remarkable gifts as a writer: Masterful and compelling plotting,
a remarkably detailed world, and a cast of characters drawn with
enough breadth and depth to make most authors drop their jaws
with jealousy. And then there’s Stephenson’s prose, which
can be relished as a main course all by itself. You can see some
examples of it above, but the entire book is peppered with
memorable passages and quotable lines. Every page seems to hum
with a distinctive beat and rhythm, propelling you from one
chapter to the next in a compulsive, addictive reading
experience.
This isn’t the
best SF novel of the past fifteen years. But it’s definitely
in the top ten.
GRADE: A+
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