Snow Crash

Description

The 30th anniversary edition of the modern classic that popularised the term 'metaverse', exploring (in an eerily prescient way) computer science, the advance of technology, wealth inequality, politics and philosophy In the Metaverse - cyberspace home to avatars and software daemons - there is a new drug available- Snow Crash. A cyberdrug that reduces avatars in the digital world to dust, it also infects users in real life, leaving them in a vegetative state. This is bad news for Hiro, a freelance hacker and the Metaverse's best swordfighter, and mouthy skateboard courier Y. T. Together, investigating the Infocalypse, they trace back the roots of language itself to an ancient Sumerian priesthood and find they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent on world domination.

Neal Stephenson is the author of New York Times bestsellers including The Diamond Age, Zodiac, Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World, REAMDE, Anathem, Seveneves, Fall- or Dodge in Hell, and Termination Shock, as well as nonfiction works such as In The Beginning . . . Was the Command Line. He has worked for Blue Origin and Magic Leap, and more recently co-founded Lamina1, a startup creating an open Metaverse platform.