Snow Crash

Only once in a great while does  a writer come along who defies comparison -- a  writer so original he redefines the way we look at  the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and  Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving  virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about  everything in between with a cool, hip  cyber-sensibility to bring us the gigantic thriller of the  information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers  pizza for Uncle Enzo's Cosa Nostra Inc., but it  the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging  headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's  striking down hackers everywhere, he races along  the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy  mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to  bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash  is a mind-altering romp through a future America  so bizarre, so outrageous... you'll recognize it  immediately.

From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible.