Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

I can't believe I read the whole thing. Often I became so annoyed at this "science fiction classic" that I felt like abandoning it unfinished, but I kept reading, despite the fact that I did not understand half of what was going on.

I would not even attempt to summarize the plot, even if I completely understood it. Snow Crash contains these elements: a virtual-reality universe called Metaverse, a computer virus that can also attack the mind of an operator who can read code, Sumarian mythology, a Mafia don, a 15-year-old skate-boarding female Kourier named Y.T., and a sword-wielding computer hacker named Hiro Protagonist (really!). All these and many other colorful elements combine in a futuristic, satiric techno thriller about an attempt by a fiber-optics millionaire to control the world.

And it is all so self-consciously cool and hip and arrogant that it's obnoxious. If I met Mr. Stephenson, I would want to pull his pants down in public or to catch him on camera picking his nose just to take him down a notch. He obviously considers himself a member of the "power elite," people who "control society because they have this semimystical ability to speak magic computer languages," who are a "technological priesthood." (Notice--quotes from the book.)

This book was written in 1992, and it was apparently much ahead of its time in predicting development in the computer world. (I wouldn't know, really.) It is occasionally satirically humorous in its depictions of the future, particularly in its portrayal of the United States as being covered by one franchised business after another. It was morally offensive to me in its portrayal of a sexual coupling between a 15-year-old girl and a 30-something man. Sex, even graphic sex within reason, is OK with me, but child-adult sex is not.

I was tricked into reading the novel by the Times Top 100 list, which included this, along with such books as The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, The Sound and the Fury, Lolita, Lord of the Flies, and so on. I have always considered that for a book to be considered "great" or "a classic," it should be somewhat timeless and universal. While Snow Crash may have been cutting-edge and influential in its time, it has (probably) already become somewhat dated in its technology, and only a relatively small techno-savvy population can really completely understand its message.