andthennothing.net

I very rarely read books, which is a shame since I like doing it, but during the summer I always try to read at least one novel. This time I ended up reading the science fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Maria recommended it one and a half years ago, I ordered it a few weeks ago and it took almost a week to read (with a few abruptions and days off).

Reviews of books and movies are not part of my skill set (and you can currently find 444 reviews over at Amazon), but at least I can recommend it :-). It’s cyberpunk with a dystopian future where franchises rule the world. There are some nice action scenes with pizza delivery, skateboarding++, motorcycles, and sword fighting. Parts of the book happens inside what the internets have morphed into, the Metaverse, a virutal reality world quite similar to Second Life (which was brought to my attention by some podcasts on IT Conversations and I have yet to try it out, but basically the users can program/create things, retain the ownership and can sell them). There is also quite a lot of history and religion thrown into the mix.

I found some passages quite hard to read due to what Wikipedia describes as “many arcane references to geography, politics, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, history, and computer science”, and when I started reading after taking longer pauses it took a while to get going again — but I account that to my lack of experience reading English novels. Except for those problems, it was a really captivating, interesting, exciting and entertaining book.

So go read it if you like books like it! :-)