“She has to find someplace to pull into. If she could find a Nova Sicilia franchulate, that would do it – the Mafia owes her one. Or a New South Africa, which she hates. But the New South Africans hate jeeks even more.
Scratch that; Hiro is black, or at least part black. Can’t take him into New South Africa. And because Y.T. is a Cauc, they can’t go to Metazania.
“Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong,” Hiro says. “Half mile ahead on the right.”
“Nice thinking – but they won’t let you in with your swords, will they?”
“Yes,” he says, “because I’m a citizen.”
Stephenson has a satirical, wry, cynical, but still plausible vision of the future. If anything, seems MORE plausible now than it did 17 years ago when the book was first published. With over half our state governments struggling to even pay their workers and our national debt in the trillions, a future where the federal government has shrunk down to “Fedland” and everything from housing to transportation to law enforcement is handled by capitalism run amok seems closer every day.
His vision of technological progress is also approaching reality. Snow Crash was written in 1992, when most of us were getting our first email accounts and most people hadn't even heard of the Internet. While his technological "predictions" are a bit less astonishing since the precursors of most of his inventions were already in place, his descriptions of them have shaped their development. Apparently Stephenson is revered like a prophet in Second Life, and Snow Crash is the bible.
What was your take on Stephenson's vision of the near future?
Posts
I found the vision of the future to be a bit terrifying, but that's because my nightmare future would be one where concrete has completely taken over the world and very few people have access to nature because it's so rare it must be preserved. So my interpretation of the world of Snow Crash was "ugh, let's hope we never get here; this novel is a cautionary tale about something we don't want to happen." I noticed, though, that Stephenson's characters don't pass judgement on their world the way I did. They take it in stride because they don't know any different. It makes me wonder what a twenty-something from 1809 might think of the world we live in today.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the accuracy of some of Stephenson's predictions--personal, portable telephones; hard drives in your pocket; wireless access to a worldwide network of computers, to name a few--but I also had fun picking out the places where he couldn't quite predict what would really happen. Y.T.'s mom's picture-tube computer monitor, L. Bob Rife wanting to use the nearest pay phone, and printers that use feeder paper were a few that I caught. Anybody see anything else?
CP: Before my copy was taken back from me by the library, one of the things I'd caught was when the Cosa Nostra helicopters were filming YT after delivering Hiro's pizza, (I think?) there was a line about the mafia taping it because videotape was ridiculously cheap. We're only about 15 years removed from the publish date, and as one of the few people with a working VCR these days, it's just crazy how quickly that technology got abandoned.
ReplyDeleteThought I'd add that for a real-life representation of the L.A. of Snow Crash, you can drive down Hall Road between Van Dyke and Heydenreich at rush hour on a Friday. I think it's pretty darn close!
ReplyDelete