a book

Snow Crash: A Novel

Name: Snow Crash: A Novel
Rating: 5 (29 reviews)
Author: Neal Stephenson
ISBN: 9780553380958

Neal Stephenson · 2018 · 480 pages

The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators

Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions.

Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary.

But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a vegetative state).

Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian priesthood. He’ll be joined by Y.T., a fearless teenaged skateboard courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Bookshop

recommended by 29 people

sourced from public statements

Andrej Karpathy
“to-read”
Naval Ravikant
“Lord of Light, Snow Crash, Borges and Ted Chiang short stories.”↗
Seth Godin
“Such a good book but you can’t give it to someone now. I've tried; it doesn’t work. You have to read it before you’ve been on the internet.”↗
Sriram Krishnan
“Childhood sci fi books that most influenced me - 2001 - Jurassic Park - Sphere - Rendezvous with Rama ( and several Clarke short stories) - Snowcrash - I, Robot”↗
Linda Xie
“@hudsonjameson @monicapuchner Ooh please read Snow Crash, it's a bit of a cliche book to talk about in tech but it's soo good and really changed my thinking when I read it!”↗
Adam Savage
“It's a tough call because I prefer other books of Neal Stephenson. But Snow Crash is so important within the history of science fiction.”↗
Brandon Stanton
“I love Snow Crash.”↗
Michael Eisen
“@Spacekatgal 1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 2. War with the Newts by Karel Čapek 3. Snow Crash”↗
Sergey Brin
“Within the computer field, there are classical books I still find impressive, like Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. That was really ten years ahead of its time. It kind of anticipated what’s going to happen, and I find that really interesting”↗
Dylan Field
“@EstherCrawford Such a good book!!”↗
Tim Ferriss
Nat Eliason
Ev Williams
Alexis Ohanian
Mark Zuckerberg
Austen Allred
Ryan Shea
Reid Hoffman
Tobi Lütke
Bret Victor
Patrick Rothfuss
Fred Wilson
Larry King
Nolan Bushnell
Larry Page
Cameron Winklevoss
Jensen Huang
Bradley Voytek
Aleks Krotoski