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Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

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Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#51

Post by wtracy »

gbhn wrote: post #15
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, yeah. Tron 2 was disapointing to day the least. Stephenson's novels in general are like this, although Cryptonomicon for one certainly has better character development than Snow Crash: they're a disorderly jumble of whatever ideas Stephenson thought were interesting at the time, wrapped in a skin of plot, and enfleshed in the characters that surround, encounter, and explore them. Stephenson sometimes jumps the r…

I think you are right, and I've at times struggled to explain why I enjoy his books as much as I do. I think ultimately he leans regularly on a facet of SF that in that genre, ideas and abstractions can be the equal subjects of character development. Cleverly developing an idea (e.g. mind virii) and circling back on those ideas, exploring how different facets connect in different ways, is the kind of thing one does w…

>explositions

I'm not sure if that was intended or not, but it seems appropriate.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#53

Post by sosuke »

vertis wrote: post #45

The reason I love books from Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Charles Stross, is that, for me at least, they're massive catalysts to my own thoughts and imaginations of what might be possible. If I had to pick one book above others from Neil Stephenson it would be Diamond Age. I just keep going back to it. It's got a lot to say, and I wouldn't mind seeing a similar analysis by the Author of this post.

I was all in to Diamond Age until the ending. It felt like he ran out of steam, gave up, or had someone else write the ending it was such a departure from the rest of the book in pace and perspective.

I'll have to revisit it to see what I missed.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#54

Post by Gargoyle »

n00b101 wrote: post #3

I read Snow Crash when I was 13. Then I lost countless hours trying to "live the dream" with Active Worlds [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds

One of the key things that made Snow Crash so appealing was that participants in the world also contributed the code that made it work. It was sort of semi-open source, I guess. I wonder if there's a way to make that practically work in a real-life metaverse. The book sort of skips over the obvious governance issues.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#55

Post by huhtenberg »

vertis wrote: post #45

The reason I love books from Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Charles Stross, is that, for me at least, they're massive catalysts to my own thoughts and imaginations of what might be possible. If I had to pick one book above others from Neil Stephenson it would be Diamond Age. I just keep going back to it. It's got a lot to say, and I wouldn't mind seeing a similar analysis by the Author of this post.

Stross next to Gibson and Stephenson... hmm.

I tried The Atrocity Archives but I couldn't get past the first half. It felt like a pile of nerd paraphernalia force-stuffed into a story line.

I mean... Neuromancer is a true masterpiece from the story to the concepts to the succinct writing, just perfect. Snow Crash is less perfect, but exceptionally enthralling nonetheless. What would be a comparable read from Stross?

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#56

Post by melloclello »

huhtenberg wrote: post #55
vertis wrote: post #45

The reason I love books from Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Charles Stross, is that, for me at least, they're massive catalysts to my own thoughts and imaginations of what might be possible. If I had to pick one book above others from Neil Stephenson it would be Diamond Age. I just keep going back to it. It's got a lot to say, and I wouldn't mind seeing a similar analysis by the Author of this post.

Stross next to Gibson and Stephenson... hmm. I tried The Atrocity Archives but I couldn't get past the first half. It felt like a pile of nerd paraphernalia force-stuffed into a story line. I mean... Neuromancer is a true masterpiece from the story to the concepts to the succinct writing, just perfect. Snow Crash is less perfect, but exceptionally enthralling nonetheless. What would be a comparable read from Stross?

Man, Stross has written a whole lot of shitty pulp over his career but some of his short stories are kinda kooky [1] and Accelerando [2] was a ripping yarn

[1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/toast/to...

[2] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#57

Post by [deleted] »

huhtenberg wrote: post #55
vertis wrote: post #45

The reason I love books from Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Charles Stross, is that, for me at least, they're massive catalysts to my own thoughts and imaginations of what might be possible. If I had to pick one book above others from Neil Stephenson it would be Diamond Age. I just keep going back to it. It's got a lot to say, and I wouldn't mind seeing a similar analysis by the Author of this post.

Stross next to Gibson and Stephenson... hmm. I tried The Atrocity Archives but I couldn't get past the first half. It felt like a pile of nerd paraphernalia force-stuffed into a story line. I mean... Neuromancer is a true masterpiece from the story to the concepts to the succinct writing, just perfect. Snow Crash is less perfect, but exceptionally enthralling nonetheless. What would be a comparable read from Stross?

[deleted]

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#58

Post by carlesfe »

I just finished Snow Crash and found it too pretentious and convoluted, like the turn that Diamond Age does towards the ending. Besides that, it introduces a few interesting concepts, but I feel that similar ideas are developed much better in DA.

For me, Stephenson's masterpiece is Diamond Age, hands down -- minus the ending, if that could be a thing. The last chapters are too obscure just for the sake of obscurity, I've read it three times and I can't get any "deep" meaning to it, just a bunch of wow-cool-but-irrelevant text.

Regarding Cryptonomicon, the first three books, they're straigtforward, interesting, and with a lot of references and trivia but it doesn't try too hard like the "Gods" part of Snow Crash. I really, really enjoyed them.

Unfortunately, I found the Cryptonomicon prequels a nice adventure book in the traditional sense, but the characters were too flat and un-relatable, and it bored me.

Anyway, that's my opinion. Diamond Age introduced me to cyberpunk and, to date, it's my favorite novel of the genre. I've recommended it to many people and they've always liked it. I still dream of the day when we have matter compilators, and victorians look like a bunch of hipsters to me, which is both funny and very realistic. In a world full of technology, rich people will want to go back to a more... simple and comfortable age. It blew my mind.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#59

Post by _98fj »

carlesfe wrote: post #58

I just finished Snow Crash and found it too pretentious and convoluted, like the turn that Diamond Age does towards the ending. Besides that, it introduces a few interesting concepts, but I feel that similar ideas are developed much better in DA. For me, Stephenson's masterpiece is Diamond Age, hands down -- minus the ending, if that could be a thing. The last chapters are too obscure just for the sake of obscurity,…

It's 12 years since I've read Diamond Age, but the way I remember the ending is that it gave me a feeling like a camera zooming out of the world. Everything drifts into distance, goes diffuse and becomes, with all it's importance, unimportant.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#60

Post by yoodenvranx »

sosuke wrote: post #53
vertis wrote: post #45

The reason I love books from Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Charles Stross, is that, for me at least, they're massive catalysts to my own thoughts and imaginations of what might be possible. If I had to pick one book above others from Neil Stephenson it would be Diamond Age. I just keep going back to it. It's got a lot to say, and I wouldn't mind seeing a similar analysis by the Author of this post.

I was all in to Diamond Age until the ending. It felt like he ran out of steam, gave up, or had someone else write the ending it was such a departure from the rest of the book in pace and perspective. I'll have to revisit it to see what I missed.

> It felt like he ran out of steam, gave up, or had someone else write the ending it was such a departure from the rest of the book in pace and perspective.

The same happens in "Seveneves". I love the first part of the book but when he switches to the new story line it feels like he ran out of time. That book should have been at least 2 or 3 books but for some reason he crams everything into 1 book.

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