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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

#81

Post by quantumhobbit »

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.

This is a pretty common complaint with Stephenson. Probably even more obvious in Diamond Age because the first half is so amazing.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#82

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

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?

Admittedly, as a fan of The Laundry Files, that's a major problem with the Atrocity Archives, for the first half, anyways. The second half, after Bob and Mo visit the Atrocity Archives themselves, is much better. We meet a variety of Checkov's Guns, several important people, and get a glimpse of the kind of horror that the Laundry Files is all about. The Concrete Jungle, a short story included in the book, is equally absorbing, and sets the scene for all short stories to come, as well as showing us a bit more of Angleton, and giving us introduction to MAGINOT BLUE STARS.

The second novel, The Jennifer Morgue, is very good, and largely free of the problems you mentioned, but is very different from much of the rest of the series, for reasons which will become obvious when you read it. It's in the third book, The Fuller Memorandum, where the series really hits its stride, and gets going.

However, the series doesn't mind an offside wink or two every once in a while, like Persephone's parenthesized Enochian, and the way The Scrum talks about its problems.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#83

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

jeeva wrote: post #66
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,…

Have you tried Daemon and Freedom, a small series by Daniel Suarez?

Yeah, those are excellent, and portray their tech fairly accurately, which is uncommon in those novels.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#84

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

Gargoyle wrote: post #54
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.

Actually, it was distributed. Your code ran on your system. So long as it spoke the Steet protocol, and you had the real estate, you could run whatever you wanted.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#85

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

jhbadger wrote: post #67

What I find either funny or depressing (can't decide), are the number of younger people (as in too young to be using computers in 1992) who read "Snow Crash" before reading any other cyberpunk and 1) fail to get that it is actually is a satire of Neuromancer, etc. and 2) think that Stephenson was amazingly prophetic, not realizing that a lot of what he was writing about already existed, albeit in simpler forms. 3D av…

He was pretty prophetic, just not with that. However the reason he was prophetic is that he inspired reality. See Google Earth.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#86

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

pjc50 wrote: post #77
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the first Tron was a better music video. Maybe not for Daft Punk. Maybe TMBG? Or Radiohead? REM, perhaps?

It's definitely a synthwave video avant la lettre .

That sounds about right.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#87

Post by throwanem »

1propionyl wrote: post #46
throwanem wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly not! And I hope I haven't given insult. If so, it was entirely unintentional on my part, and I apologize for my carelessness in so doing. I'll put more thought into my words next time. Don't get me wrong - I don't mean to say that all of Stephenson can be encompassed in those two words. Were that the case, he wouldn't have had to spend time writing books. I mean only that, if you're looking for a handy way…

Ah but you see my adjectives are better...

More convenient, perhaps. It's like programming in a way - why reinvent a wheel you don't have to?

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#88

Post by Scarblac »

Gargoyle wrote: post #54
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.

I read the book when I was a MUD addict in the 90s, and MUDs had a similar mechanism.

If you became high enough level in many MUDs, you became a "wizard". Wizards weren't players anymore, but they could edit code, creating new areas in the game for players to explore. Changing the code of a running game from within it was pretty cool, and so was the programming language (LPC, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LPC_(programming_language)).

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#89

Post by sevensor »

jhbadger wrote: post #67

What I find either funny or depressing (can't decide), are the number of younger people (as in too young to be using computers in 1992) who read "Snow Crash" before reading any other cyberpunk and 1) fail to get that it is actually is a satire of Neuromancer, etc. and 2) think that Stephenson was amazingly prophetic, not realizing that a lot of what he was writing about already existed, albeit in simpler forms. 3D av…

I don't read Snow Crash as a Neuromancer parody. Stephenson has too many of his own ideas for that. When it comes to ideas, Stephenson is unusually playful. (See also the Enlightenment philosophers in the Baroque cycle.) He's not great on plot or characterization, or structuring a novel in general, but Stephenson can write one hell of a sentence, and he often keeps it up for a paragraph at a time.

Gibson, whose books I also adore, has basically nothing at all to do with Stephenson. The only thing connecting them is that some of their books are set in dystopian near-futures. Gibson at his best is bracingly bleak. Cyberpunk was a marketing term for publishers and critics who couldn't get their heads around him. Early Gibson is pure punk. Even more than Neuromancer, read the stories in Burning Chrome for their hard, angry edge.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#90

Post by Pamar »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #78
pjc50 wrote: post #69

"Taken literally, this backstory might remind one of an arcane thriller written by an over-enthusiastic autodidact." That's the rest of Stephenson's work. I'm not sure Snow Crash is really a satire on cyberpunk per se. It's classic SF over-extrapolation of current trends in a funhouse mirror to shed light on things. The first of which is over-privatisation: everything in Snow Crash is a "franchise", including core pa…

Although Stross's default stance in the Laundry Files seems to be that everything is a weapon, or could be one. Camera? Weapon. Smartphone? Weapon. Pidgeon's foot? Weapon. Your own brain? Weapon. Violin? At least one of them is a weapon.

Unlike I am mistaken the pidgeon foot is defensive/camouflage but cannot be used to cause damage to a target.
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