Snow Crash

[WKLJAZZ at aol.com]

Grip and gang --

 I just finished SNOW CRASH today (while waiting for my car to be fixed --
technology!).  I thought the first half of the book was zippily written
c-punk, and the first funny SF I'd ever read.  I was entertained, and I had
the sense that this particular book was sending up "the present" by looking
at the near future in a particularly canny way, not predicting doom by
nuclear terror but seeming our downfall in the endless multiplication of
burger and bookstore and hardware store and video store franchises.  I was
particularly impressed with the book's light send-up of the coming Republican
Revolution -- showing that the increased privatization of everything in
America would not lead to  diversity and vigor but just to more
profit-mongering and ugliness.

  Then came the book's second half.  The author, apparently losing faith in
his characters and in his own style, starts to layer into story this
elaborate pursuit of Sumerian history (myth?).  The main character spends
endless pages in his computer talking to a "librarian" and ancient religions,
with the librarian actually citing ancient historians by name.  The narrative
goes -- EEEEEECTCHHCHHHSSSST PISHSSSHT SPLAT! into a wall of psuedo-research
paper blah-blah, with the characters discussing this stuff actually saying
things like:  "Now let me get this straight, you mean that . . . ."  I
stopped caring.

  By the end, the only thing that kept me going was a kind-of weird sex scene
between this Prairie (daughter of Zoyd)-esque, 15 year-old skateboard
messenger and the evil Aleutian, harpoon-chucking nemesis of the book's
"Protagonist."  How's that for a grim review:  the by book's end, your
continued interest depends on how much of a pervert you are . . . .

-- Will L.