Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson (1959 - ) is a singular writer. His fiction is shelved, for categorical convenience, in science fiction/fantasy here at Whistlestop Bookshop. He has written novels which have transformed the field of science fiction, historical novels which upend conventions of historical parameters, and contemporary novels which embarrass many of the current tropes and concerns of MFA literature. He is also an essayist with a wide range of interests. His breakthrough book was Snow Crash (1992), which coined and conceived the workings of “metaverse.” It also signaled his passion for ancient history, for outsiders, and for how systems work and decay and repair themselves and what they are (or are becoming) after being repaired. Ambitious stuff. And Stephenson is unafraid of Big Ideas.
Snow Crash
Snow Crash
The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) modern classic that coined the term “metaverse”—one of Time’s 100 best English-language novels and “a foundational text of the cyberpunk movement” (Wired)
In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous . . . you’ll recognize it immediately.