SNOW CRASH by Neal Stephenson

I didn’t even know we had a copy of Snow Crash until I put Cryptonomicon away and saw it lying there – I imagine Philip must have bought it at university and neglected to tell me.  But Neal Stephenson is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors, so I snatched it up.  
   Snow Crash is extraordinarily funny in some places, and just plain extraordinary in others.  It was first published in 1992, when the internet was still in its infancy, so it suffers a little bit from technological creep.  But not much.  The plot centres round the similarities between an ancient Sumerian language and modern computer languages, and about how a hacker and a young skate-board courier find themselves up against all sorts of weird opposition in both this world and the “metaverse” as they try to save the world from baddies who want to infect everyone with a language virus that effectively enslaves them.  That’s a long sentence, but on the other hand it’s quite a long book, so I’m quite proud of summarising it in one sentence.
   I really enjoyed it.  There were a handful of events which didn’t quite work for me, and I was a little frustrated at the end (I won’t say why or I’ll spoil it for future readers).  But if you get the chance I urge you to read Snow Crash, if only for the brilliant Fed TP Pool Regulation on the pooling of toilet rolls.
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