Couverture de Snow Crash

Snow Crash

 Aperçu
Essayer pour 0,00 €
Écoutez en illimité un large choix de livres audio, créations & podcasts Audible Original et histoires pour enfants.
Recevez 1 crédit audio par mois à échanger contre le titre de votre choix - ce titre vous appartient.
Gratuit avec l'offre d'essai, ensuite 9,95 €/mois. Possibilité de résilier l'abonnement chaque mois.

Snow Crash

De : Neal Stephenson
Lu par : Jonathan Davis
Essayer pour 0,00 €

9,95 € par mois après 30 jours. Résiliez à tout moment.

Acheter pour 31,42 €

Acheter pour 31,42 €

À propos de cette écoute

 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 cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.


In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza Inc., but in 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.

©1992 Neal Stephenson (P)2001 Audible, Inc. Aventure Fantasy Science-fiction
Les membres Amazon Prime bénéficient automatiquement de 2 livres audio offerts chez Audible.

Vous êtes membre Amazon Prime ?

Bénéficiez automatiquement de 2 livres audio offerts.
Bonne écoute !

    Ces titres pourraient vous intéresser

     Couverture de Project Hail Mary
    Couverture de Zero to One
    Couverture de Frankenstein (The Original 1818 Unabridged and Complete Edition)
    Couverture de The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
    Couverture de Cryptonomicon
    Couverture de Masters of Doom
    Couverture de How to Change Your Mind
    Couverture de Fahrenheit 451
    Couverture de The Three-Body Problem
    Couverture de Guns, Germs and Steel

    Avis de l'équipe

    I am not a big Sci-Fi fan, but this book was just great. It was funny, witty, very imaginative, and the story just kept my interest the whole time. I especially love the part where Hiro's characteristics switched when he joined the Metaverse. It reminded me of people I know that are very different online behind their computer screens than in person. Overall, it was an enjoyable listen one of the best I've had here at Audible. (Will, Vice President of Customer Experience)

    Commentaires

    Brilliantly realized...Stephenson turns out to be an engaging guide to an onrushing tomorrow. ( The New York Times Book Review)
    "Fast-forward free-style mall mythology for the 21st century." (William Gibson)
    Tout
    Le plus pertinent  
    It is important to note that Snow Crash is a pastiche of the cyberpunk genre, playing with the tropes of both the genre and the writing style associates with it, pushing both into extremes that lead to genuenly funny moments.

    However it runs for way too long, like a good third of the book could be shortened IMO. I get that this is probably part of the parody, or that it might work better on paper than in audio, but as is there definitely had some points I had to push through.

    lastly a note on the audio: for whatever reason the files are all very muffled,which you can get used to, but weirdly there's retakes here and there that don't suffer from this issue, and it's the first time where a better quality pulled me out of a book for a brief instant.

    A fine parody that's stretched too much

    Une erreur s'est produite. Réessayez dans quelques minutes.
    The plot is thrilling, mixing computer science / cyber punk / history with subtlety. Snowcrash’s characters are well depicted and profound. The narrator’s voice is deep, engaging and powerful. 5 stars audiobook!

    Brillant SF novel

    Une erreur s'est produite. Réessayez dans quelques minutes.
    This very long novel published in 1992 certainly proves to be original and imaginative, yet all may not appreciate it. In fact, many may feel that the author strives too much to be creative and that the storyline is just an excuse to line up elements that he personally considers “cool”: car and skateboard chases worthy of video games, equally outré gunfights and swordfights, lengthy references to the Bible and to Antiquity, a dog’s stream of consciousness, etc. In fact, by the end of the book, some sub-plots are still unresolved.

    There is no attempt to be remotely plausible. For instance, the main character, called “Hiro Protagonist”, is a computer hacker and a Samurai sword virtuoso who now delivers pizzas for a living and has a keen interest in the ancient Sumerian language. His female counterpart, called ‘YT” (for “Yours truly”), is a 15-year-old courier gratified with super high-tech clothing and equipment. She lives with her mother but there is no mention of her ever going to school.

    The novel is set in an unspecified future which is not so distant from the book’s release since many characters are Vietnam War veterans and Hiro’s father was a soldier in Nagasaki in 1945. The times are dystopian, and the United States government has given up power over most of its former territory, which is now broken up into multiple autonomous units, many controlled by the American Mafia or by “Buy and Fly”.

    The novel is credited for anticipating many innovations: the notion of “metaverse”, and the word itself, first appeared here. The book also matter-of-factly includes cell phones (called “personal phones”) as well as the equivalents of Google Earth (though it provides live images), email, Roomba and Waze. Strangely, however, videotapes are still around as well as 3-ring binders and xeroxing. Also, some technology featured has not become generalized 30 years later, notably all-terrain skateboards, wearable airbags and… portable hydrogen bombs.

    Many may consider that the novel would have immensely benefited being edited to perhaps half its current length.

    Disappointing!

    Une erreur s'est produite. Réessayez dans quelques minutes.
    [Spoiler alert!] Almost every article mentioning the Metaverse since Facebook became Meta keeps pointing at Snow Crash as the book that introduced the term "Metaverse". This is maybe one the rare innovations you'll find in here, as most of the names chosen by the author are very unimaginative: the "hero" is named "Hiro Protagonist", he is a skilled biker and katana sword fighter both in the real and the virtual world. He is delivering pizza, for the mafia. Other characters include an underage roller skating girl named YT, a "Rat Thing", a pirate named "Bruce Lee" and so on.

    There are references to the Vietnam war, and to nuclear bombs. It all feels very shallow, almost as tasteless as a mashup of every bad action movie of the 80s and the 90s.

    The description of the virtual world has too many pointless and overly detailed descriptions to try and sound cool, or technologically advanced, like explaining that 2^16 = 65536 or referring to port 127, which are obvious numbers to computer scientists and maybe pointless references to other readers. Nothing is ever subtle or suggested, as if the reader did not have enough neurons or imagination.

    Maybe all these clichés are here for a reason. They are not necessary funny, and many times they are close to racist stereotypes, so they could be used on purpose to describe a mindless and brainwashed society, having a hard time to think. Or maybe the real world is already a Meta Metaverse on its own, with new rules and abnormal situations, as well as silly names sounding like social media handles?

    In contrast, there are a few interesting, metaphysical and philosophical theories introduced in this book. Sumerian legends and early languages and abstract phones which can be seen as the "machine code" of the brain. Also there is the idea that brains could be controlled by cleverly crafted sounds and images, just like machines can be attacked by computer viruses.

    So is the author trying to show how the world has been collapsing and declining since the ancient days, mostly because of mass media and weak governments, and that ancient knowledge was ultimately more advanced than any modern technology?

    Despite anticipating AI assistants, Google Earth / Maps, and avatars, there is nothing really interesting in this book that could not have been written in a few lines.

    William Gibson's Neuromancer, which was written before Snow Crash, is much better at making you feel the alterations of the human brain when on drugs or when controlled by technology, and it does so in a very clever and subtle way, waiting for the reader to "hack" the text to understand it completely.

    The performance doesn't help: the audio version uses a monotonous and annoying voice, with some terrible accents at times.


    Read Neuromancer instead.

    Read William Gibson's Neuromancer instead

    Une erreur s'est produite. Réessayez dans quelques minutes.