Paperback Jukebox: Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash 

Caitlin Crawford

How interesting and sad that more often than not when our society peers into the future, we find it so bleak.  Are we as a nation, as a species, doomed, or is it that we harbor no hope?   And when we predict the future, whether realistically or fictitiously, we focus on the strangest aspects of our culture.  Perhaps people find comfort in the fact that no matter how tumultuous our present is, it has the potential to be that much worse.  

Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash offers us the solace of our own world in lieu of its hopeless future.  Written in 1992, the story takes place in a time that is presumably meant to be our present in a setting that is both disheartening and fantastical.  But at the center of it all, there is a hero, the rather ostentatiously named Hiroaki Protagonist, Hiro for short.  In the manor of a sci-fi, the novel takes many aspects of our current affairs and inflates them so that we may see how ridiculous they really are.  The story focuses on technology—almost to the point of reverence—but also offers a healthy perspective on religion, drugs, viral thought, politics, racial divides, pit bulls, and pizza, among other things.  

To summarize the book would do it a disservice.  Indeed its greatest charm is the new surprise at every turn, even the first page.  When picking up this book, I had no idea what to expect.   The cover depicting a man wielding samurai swords on his back entering what looks like a scene from Tron that he finds in the midst of some ancient ruins was enough to peak my interest, but also set me in doubt.  I fully admit that when I started reading Snow Crash, I did not exactly find it a page-turner, but I kept at it as it had been recommended to me by a trustworthy friend.  My problem, I realized a little late in the game, was that I did not fully appreciate the great sense of humor it has.  I thought it was just like any other novel about the future, ugly and sad, and indeed the world that Stephenson creates is nothing short of disgusting, but also hilarious.   I realized, I was being snobby and judgmental.  What I mistook for campiness and poor writing was really just the comic relief from a world that could one day be real.  

As I read, I felt the pressure of reality setting in.  I finally understood that I had been searching for it the whole time.  When I found it, just beneath all the goofy banter, I felt ashamed for craving it.  The book offered so much more than that, a chance to laugh at ourselves, and I took it for granted.  Underneath it all, that was the point.  If we make the hardships of our present a cosmic joke, maybe we can see the error of our ways.  

Caitlin Crawford graduated in May 2009 from Carlow University with a degree in Biology.  She currently works full time at the Animal Rescue League helping pets find new homes and works part time at Allegro Hearth Bakery helping cookies and bread find new homes, too.  In her scant spare time, she mostly hangs out with her cats or dances, sometimes both.