The Grok

Author: Neal Stephenson

Hiro Protagonist, self-employed stringer for the Central Intelligence Corporation, whose practice used to be limited to so-called "dry" operations, meaning that he sat around and soaked up information and then later spat it back into the Library, the CIC database, without ever actually doing anything. Now his practice has become formidably wet. Hiro is armed with two swords and a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, known colloquially as a nine, with two ammunition clips, each carrying eleven rounds.

I enjoyed reading Snowcrash and I recommend it to anyone who wants their first stint at reading a cyberpunk novel. Snowcrash is funny, fast paced and captivating enough to keep the reader hooked for the whole ride.

The story begins with an introduction to the main character of the story, Hiro Protagonist, top notch hacker and sword weilding maestro. Stephenson has an excellent command over his prose and words are aptly used for describing a setting, person or event. As the story starts, Hiro is late for his delivery of a pizza to a customer. The catch is that not only do customers receive free pizzas when the delivery is late, the person delivering the pizza also loses his head! What follows is a vivid transcription of the events as Hiro tries to deliver the pizza while trying to negotiate traffic and warding off a pesky Kourier. And thats just the first few pages of the book.

Stephenson injects humor and sarcasm wherever possible in his narrative, making the book lighter than most heavy cyberpunk novels like Neuromancer. He also employs just the right amount of words to describe his settings, without boring the reader. Using amazing skill, he compresses enough details using appropriate words throughout the book, which I felt was simply amazing.

It's not just the writing that sparkles, Stephenson has also got an interesting plot to go with his writing style. And, unlike Neuromancer, the plot is the central point, thankfully. The plot revolves around a Snowcrash virus which not only destroys digital avatars but affects people in reality also. So you are thinking what's new about it, perhaps there is a feedback from the VR world back to reality? Fortunately, Stephenson avoids this cliche and clearly points out that no such link exists (i.e. no Matrix like hyper virtual reality). The plot is masterfully tied to ancient history and civilization arising due to a virus (this has got to be the most original explanation of all times!).

After reading Snowcrash I analyzed why I didn't like Neuromancer, the grand dad of all cyberpunk. Firstly, Neuromancer has no plot whatsoever. Neuromancer's central theme is the people living in a noir environment. The tech and VR worlds just serve to add on to the environment of the character. Snowcrash's central theme is tech and VR, and his plot stays along those tracks. The other important factor which contributed to my enjoyment in reading Snowcrash was the writing style. Snowcrash is a light hearted take on the cyberpunk genre, which I feel, brings it closer to mainstream fiction, compared to Neuromancer. Neuromancer had paragraphs after paragraphs of endless words which were making no sense to me after I had lost complete interest in the book, when I noticed there was no plot to follow. Obviously, Neuromancer is not meant for everyone. Neuromancer is faithful to the real cyberpunk genre with its dark settings and serious tones, but not necessarily making it an enjoyable reading.

On the other hand, Snowcrash is a blast. Its funny, action packed and does not require a detailed analysis of the characters once you have finished the book. I'm okay with that, as the last thing I want to be analyzing when I'm getting home is definitely not why an AI would want to assasinate another AI by hiring a human!

Rating: 4.5 / 5.0