The "brilliantly realized" (The New York Times Book Review)
breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern
classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon
Valley innovators
Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as
the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the
autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don't dare leave
their mansions.
Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies
from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords.
His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time
goggled in to the Metaverse, where his avatar is legendary.
But in the club known as The Black Sun, his fellow hackers are being
felled by a weird new drug called Snow Crash that reduces them to
nothing more than a jittering cloud of bad digital karma (and IRL, a
vegetative state).
Investigating the Infocalypse leads Hiro all the way back to the
beginning of language itself, with roots in an ancient Sumerian
priesthood. He'll be joined by Y.T., a fearless teenaged skateboard
courier. Together, they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain
hell-bent on world domination.
