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Snow Crash

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Snow Crash

By: Neal Stephenson
Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
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About this listen

 Penguin/Second Life customers get a further 15% off Snow Crash. Please note that the discounted price will appear only after you add the item to your cart.

Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison - a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.


In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra 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.

©1992 Neal Stephenson (P)2001 Audible, Inc. Adventure Fantasy Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Fiction Cyberpunk Linguistics Espionage

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Critic reviews

Brilliantly realized...Stephenson turns out to be an engaging guide to an onrushing tomorrow. ( The New York Times Book Review)
"Fast-forward free-style mall mythology for the 21st century." (William Gibson)
All stars
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I enjoyed listening to snowcrash its` pace variation fitted in well with my other activities. The two 'universes' worked well although I became confused with the different city-states in the real one (but my american geography never was that good!) As usual with this narrator the pictures are so vivid it beats HD TV.

Vivid pictures

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I've just discovered an author I think will quickly become a favourite. Can't believe he could see so much of today so long ago.

Mind-blowingly prescient

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the setting of a future Los Angelese is superbly described and is my favourite thing about this book. it kind of lost it's way two thirds in, but then ended well. I'm not a fan of books that try to describe the internet in a physical way with people walking or driving in cyberspace. but to the authors credit, it was written in 1990, and lots of other things about the internet were well predicted!

brilliant fast paced cyber punk sci-fi.

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Good examole of cyber Punk. A bit slow to start but better once it gets going. Guess it's a bit dated now and perhaps not standing the test of time.

Narrator was enthusiastic, style and bit dated.

Cyber Punk....

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I really enjoyed the story but the protagonist is called protagonist, only kidding, great book.

Good scifi, solid.

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It would be 'Snow Crash'

This is my first ever cyber punk novel, which means that my experience of that particular genre is limited.
Set in a futuristic almost dystopian America, Hiro Protagonist, (yes, that’s his name) lives two lives. Pizza delivery guy by night and hacker extraordinaire by day. We are also introduced to a courier named YT and as their paths cross, they are both plunged into a web of conspiracies, viruses and the destruction of both the online and offline world of information.

If you think that’s complicated, the author adds an extra element, Sumerian, Biblical and a touch of Babylonian myth and philosophical and theological sociological concepts which he manages to fuse with computer programming and cinematic action.
Seriously, why hasn’t this been made into a film already?

The world was gritty, and the way technology was depicted, eerily reminded me of today, perhaps slightly off kilter, which was interesting as it was published just at the beginning of the 90’s.

Critical, satirical and on occasion sarcastic in tone it described a society in near collapse, addressing issues such as racism, immigration, war and strangely, linguistics and more. All this rapped up in a neat packaging full of neon floodlight streets and digital desert landscapes; blistering action pact swordfights, mysteries and conspiracy theories.
If ‘The Matrix’ had an ancestor, it would be ‘Snow Crash’.

As the novel was written in the present tense, it took me a little while to get into, but once the story took off, it was like the smooth glide of a skateboard down a precipitous glass ramp.

Now for the audio, Jonathan Davis’s fantastic narration fitted the tone of the story like the perfect earbuds, smooth and with more than a hint of irony, it made me feel that the narrator was a separate character, similar and yet distinct from the others.
Normally, I don’t talk about the quality of the audio recording itself, as perhaps mistakenly I have come to expect the high quality of the production.
It’s clear that this was recorded and produced a little while ago, but that didn’t detract from the quality of the narration and the interesting use of minimal sound effects.
Highly recommended if cyberpunk is your kind of thing.

If ‘The Matrix’ had an ancestor...

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Characters - cool. Storyline - interwoven, but direct. Philosophy and overall idea - wow., how do you link the ancient and the modern like that?

Wow! Amazing. Loved it.

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Listened to this after seeing it on a list of books to read having never heard of Stephenson. Absolutely loved it, set in a dystopian future which brilliantly predicts the web it mercilessly lampoons the franchising of the modern world. A fast moving plot with larger than life characters combine with whimsical discussions on religion and the nature of language.
I was sad when it ended.

Heir to Gibson

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I enjoyed this story and the narration but felt that it dragged on in some places and I’d lose concentration. It came together well.

Well narrated

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The setting and action was good and I liked the characters and dialog which I thought really tied in with the setting. Main problem was the exposition and lore building which felt like being hit over the head with a text book.

Really liked the action and setting

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