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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

#91

Post by InclinedPlane »

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.

I didn't mind it at all, and I actually kinda liked the ending of Diamond Age in the way it subverted expectations of typical story telling. By the end of Diamond Age a lot of the questions you have in the earlier parts have been answered (what has happened to people, how they've developed, etc.) And a lot of story arcs have also blossomed and/or run their courses. The story itself is about Nell's coming of age and fulfillment of her potential. By the end it's obvious she's achieved both, and I liked that the novel didn't coddle the reader with a typical over the top happy ending where everyone achieves closure, most of the good people live, and every story line is tucked into bed carefully with a glass of warm milk by the bedside. I'm an adult, I don't need that all the time. The real world doesn't work that way, and real stories don't work that way.

One of the dividing lines I have personally for "good" versus "bad" art is whether or not it blooms or withers upon further thought. Diamond Age, I would say, definitely rewards the reader for further thought, because it's a deep and fascinating world with interesting characters and stories. True, the ending of the book doesn't provide complete closure, but to be honest if you want that you can have it just by making up your own ending. That's part of the fun of that book, is that it leaves it open for you to fill in the blanks afterward, and seemingly things looked like they might have worked out alright for Nell.

One of the best books at getting across the concept of not needing complete closure at the end of a book is The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, though that book primes the reader for it whereas Diamond Age doesn't.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#92

Post by InclinedPlane »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #60
sosuke wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

See my other answer for some additional commentary on this style in general.

For Seveneves I think there's a combination of factors at play. Maybe he didn't know exactly how to finish it, and maybe (probably) he wanted to leave things open enough for a sequel. Mostly though, I think he was just trying to be subtle. There are a few moments through the climactic scenes that are very easy to miss but have a big impact on the plot line. Overall, I like that some authors have the guts to finish a book without wrapping up everything in a tidy bow (which can often be cliched and overwrought).

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#93

Post by chiph »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #71
huhtenberg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What would be a comparable read from Stross? Accelerando [1] isn't in the same league as Neuromancer in terms of style and succinctness, but the idea-density is pretty high and it moves along at a nice pace. [1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...

I can skim through most sci-fi stories. But not this one. I had to slow down and focus on what Charles was saying. It's seriously dense reading, and worth the effort.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#94

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

Pamar wrote: post #90
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You missed some dialogue. You can relatively simply extend the HOG from an defensive weapon to an offensive weapon (all it takes is a mirror, IIRC). The pigeon foot is a HOG, and can be used in the same way. It's just that Bob rarely does so.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#95

Post by carlesfe »

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?

Thanks for the recommendation, added to my list!

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#96

Post by PhasmaFelis »

vertis wrote: post #39
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're getting close from the technology perspective, but the storytelling and the "massive" portion of an MMORPG is still not there. Visually impressive, but the social interactions are dull and unsophisticated, without emotional depth. However ambitious MMOs and virtual worlds get, I worry that they'll always run into the same barrier restricting their potential past a certain scale: the MMO experience is made out…

Snow Crash actually deals with this if I remember correctly. When you go out onto the street you're likely to encounter people in the shape of Penises (etc). Most chat and social apps deal with this already by limiting your interactions to selected people that you whitelist. That shouldn't be hard to replicate into VR.

Yeah, that's kind of the problem I mean. MMOVR promises vast and intricate human worlds, but past a certain critical point you wind up self-filtering down to a few dozen people so you're not overwhelmed by assholes.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#97

Post by mapt »

guiambros wrote: post #34
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

Likewise. I missed Lucasfilm's Habitat, but tried most of the virtual worlds after that, from MUDs via telnet in the early 90's, Worlds Chat in 95-96, Active Worlds right after (my company spent $1,500 buying a server copy), The Palace, Second Life, WoW, and more recently DK2/CC, etc. We're getting close from the technology perspective, but the storytelling and the " massive " portion of an MMORPG is still not there.…

"Massive" does exist in some worlds. Eve Online has been pretty remarkable in shying away from programmatic content in favor of building an architecture for people to compete on their own terms; And it has 50k simultaneous users on one shard.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#98

Post by throwanem »

Animats wrote: post #44
throwanem wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a heads up - if you're looking for a concise way to convey this idea in future, the phrase 'high concept' captures it neatly.

Don't say that. It's the kiss of death in Hollywood.

Happily, this is not a problem I have.

Re: Snow Crash Revisited: Grokking a Satire of Mimesis

#99

Post by usrusr »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #84
Gargoyle wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I read it at the time when domain name ownership conflicts were the hottest topic and we all thought that any business based on a dictionary-word dot com domain would have an unbeatable competitive advantage (oh, how wrong we were!).

The idea of early adopters sitting on coveted real estate close to the origin of The Street struck me as a perfect prediction of the domain name rush. In hindsight, we matched the "prediction" to the wrong part of the internet: coveted early adopter real estate is not found in the domain name system, it's in the allocation of IPv4 subnet blocks.

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