#150 in Science fiction
Snow Crash
- 468
- Pages
- about 9 h
- Reading time
- Ignotus Award for Best Foreign Novel
- NPR Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
- Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire for Best Foreign Novel
Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.
Our view
“Snow Crash” pairs a satirical, corporate-run America with an ambitious idea about language, myth and the programming of minds. The world is a pleasure and the humour lands, but some readers find the book slow to gather speed and held back by long stretches of religious and historical exposition; the second half is tighter. It suits readers who like their cyberpunk with a large appetite for ideas.
Worth knowing Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel gave the word metaverse to the language and helped popularise avatar for a user’s online figure. Its hero, a hacker who delivers pizza for the Mafia, is called Hiro Protagonist, which sets the tone: it is a satire as much as a thriller. Long digressions on Sumerian myth and linguistics carry the plot’s central idea, so they are worth reading rather than skimming.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Snow Crash is a 1992 science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson. Like many of Stephenson's novels, its themes include history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.1 across 2,272 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 94% of the weight and the score stays at 8.1 — the Science fiction average of 7.8 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.2 | 198 | 9% |
| Google Books | 8.0 | 112 | 5% |
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 2K | 86% |
Frequently asked
How long is Snow Crash?
It has 468 pages — longer than 59% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Science fiction — and a score of 8.1, the closest to this book.
