Posted by phil15 on February 5, 2001, at 12:26:15
This book called snow crash is an excellent choice to read to temporarily take your mind away from depressing thoughts. I pasted my book report on it bellow:
Report on the book: Snow Crash
By Neal Stephenson
The book Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, has been one of the most thought-provoking books that I have ever read, and can be placed among other such great thought-provoking books like Michael Critchton’s The Sphere, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Larry Niven’s Ringword. This book has been a great inspiration in my own writing of 4012, which takes the same type of futuristic setting. Snow Crash is much different than any other book though and can be classified as a virus, as the character Lagos first conceived, followed By Hiro Protagonist, the main character. The word “virus”, is this case is being implied as a mental virus as Hiro figures out throughout the book. This book is not only a book of the future though; it has many historical, theological, and other bases. Also, having loved this book so much, I visited websites about it, and in one discovered that Neal Stephenson’s historical theories do have true basisIn trying to describe the absolute excellence of this book, I will start by describing the main character, Hiro Protagonist. In Hiro’s early years, he worked with Da5id (and no this is not a typo, that is his real name), Juanita (once his girlfriend), other programmers, and hackers in the development of The Black Sun. The Black Sun was one of the key software companies to design the metaverse, a virtual internet in which people are represented by avatars. Avatars are pieces of software one buys for their physical appearance (note that the more digital detail the higher the price) in the metaverse, the most common representations being called Clint and Brandy. The Black Sun is also a physical building within the metaverse in which only high profile people such as hackers, programmers, and celebrities may enter. Once the metaverse was designed, Hiro dropped out of the Black Sun Company because Da5id and him had some disagreements, but they still managed to keep a friendship. Thus begins the start of Hiro’s stressful job delivering pizza for CosaNostra Pizza, a company owned by Uncle Enzo’s Mafia. In this job, and although it may sound silly, it is of all importance for the pizza be delivered within the 30 minute deadline. Otherwise Uncle Enzo has to pay for a trip to Italy and free pizza for the rest of the “emotionally distraught” customers life. Therefore Hiro’s job is very stressful because if he ever delivers a late pizza, he will be in trouble with the mob. Hiro also has a side job being a freelance hacker in order to make money by selling his information to the C.I.A.
Another important character is Y.T. Y.T. is a courier for a company known as RadiKS, which assigns their couriers deliveries to make. Her job is basically a modern version of the ancient Roman message runners. A courier rides on advanced skateboards and uses magnetic harpoons, to “poon” onto faster moving vehicles on the road to get to their destination. Y.T. is seventeen and happens to be a very punky girl, although quite clever and intelligent. The book also describes her as being very attractive and this quality becomes quite helpful to her in many situations to gain information or when she is in trouble.
In order to get a proper understanding of a complex book like Snow Crash, the setting is of great importance, especially the intricate setting of Snow Crash. It takes place in the 21st century and government, as we know it does not exist. Instead of governments, city states rule under such following factions; Uncle Enzo’s New Sicily, Mr. Lees Greater Hong Kong, Metazania, New South Africa, Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates, Fedland, and others. These factions have “zones” that they control, and they control many zones throughout North America alone. In addition to faction controlled zones there are Falabala Zones, maid up of druggies and religious fanatics, and Sacrifice Zones, which are dangerous uncontrolled zones of Anarchy where drug deals and other crimes take place. A common person becomes a citizen of a faction if they like the morals that it represents and life within the zone. The people pay a tax to the faction in return for its protection and other benefits. Hiro, although he worked for the mafia, has membership to Mr. Lees Greater Hong Kong and New South Africa. Y.T. another important character belonged to Fedland, because her mother worked meticulously for the feds. Despite the names of these factions, which for example Mr. Lees Greater Hong Kong, might suggest that it is based in Asia, that is not the case. Mr. Lees Greater Hong Kong has outposts in L.A., Toronto, New Zealand, and other locations; furthermore racial background is not required for citizenship. Each faction has its own specialties, like Mr. Lees Greater Hong Kong has Ng Securities (one device they make are the “rat things”, vicious cyber animals); Fedland (being the remnant of the US government) has the Feds and Enforcers. The Feds and Enforces tend to patrol everywhere they possibly can without violating other factions. An example of this is a concert that is held in a no faction zone, they break up disputes and try to stop violence as they still feel some nationality towards North America as a whole. In all, a person will fall into the faction that best represents their interests.
With the main characters and setting having been described, the necessary info to begin a summarization of the story is complete. The story starts with Hiro making a delivery for Uncle Enzo’s Pizza Service, and he is dreadfully late on the delivery time due to a kitchen fire. With about five minutes left and still a large distance to cover, Hiro decides to take a shortcut. Before taking the shortcut, Y.T. “poons” on to his car. His shortcut however ends up with his car submerged in a pool in someone’s backyard. Y.T. then helps Hiro out of the car, and she offers to complete the job for Hiro, knowing the mafia would punish Hiro if it was not delivered on time. Hiro graciously accepts and gives her his business card (Freelance Hacker one, not a pizza man card). As the pizza container is counting down the amount of time, Y.T. rushes to the destination. She makes it just in time, as helicopters circle above the house ready to have to give the customers their ticket to Rome. The curious mafia helicopters then scan Y.T.’s identification tag that every courier has and they leave. This is the start of Y.T. and Hiro’s relationship.
After this accident, Hiro loses his job and Y.T. is now listed with gratitude on the mafia’s computer. Hiro decides that he is going back to full time freelance hacking in order earn some money by getting information for the C.I.A. (which in this book is a network of information that people pay to access). He goes into the metaverse and a fuzzy avatar (meaning the person is using public access) approaches him with an infocard. It is labeled “Snow Crash, tear this card in half to release your free sample.”. Hiro knows better than to do that because it could be a virus of some sort. He stores it in his computer for later analyzation and then meets up with Juanita, his exgirlfriend and ex-corporate worker. She tells him of a similar card that she had received called “Babel (Infocalypse)” and described the same distributor as Hiro had. Later on in the virtual “Black Sun”, Da5id the owner of The Black Sun, gets kicks out of his own creation. Hiro and Juanita are quite perplexed by this.
The next thing that happens is, Hiro gets a call from Juanita telling him to go to Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates Hospital immediately. Once there, he finds Da5id in an operation room. The nurse tells him that she doesn’t know what is wrong with him or how it was caused, but he speaks in a weird Babel, which no one understands, and he has some severe brain damage. The nurse also tells him that he had been in the metaverse previously and doesn’t see how he could have been hurt in any way. Juanita tells Hiro her theory about the cause being snow crash card, and that Da5id must have used the card and somehow it did this to him. Hiro is very skeptical about this though since he does not see any connection between a piece of software and his friend going crazy.
About the same time this is going on, Y.T. is given the task of delivering a package to Uncle Enzo. When she arrives, she finds out that it was an empty package and that Uncle Enzo just wanted to talk to her. Uncle Enzo then tells her that he wants her to buy a drug in the sacrifice zone called snow crash, and throw it up in the air after the machine countdown (the drug is carried in a electronic box that will make the test tube explode after five seconds). She finds this to be a strange task, but when she gets there she understands. She buys the drug, which is blue powder in a test tube, and the dealers tell her to snort it on the machine count of five and if she doesn’t that the drug will explode because of its link with the machine, but instead she throws it in the air while a small helicopter retrieves it and instantly preserves it in liquid nitrogen, then machine gun fire breaks out. Ng security “rat things” and Mafia snipers then kill all the dealers. Y.T. finds out later that the Mafia and Mr. Lees Greater Hong Kong are working together in order to secure a specimen of snow crash, so that they could analyze it. When they did analyze it, they figured out that Snow Crash, similar to the steroids, penetrates the cell wall and goes into the nucleus where the DNA is stored, much like a virus.
Meanwhile Juanita tells Hiro that she is going to do something but cannot tell him because she knows that he would not let her, however she gave him a hint in that she was going to follow the mythical Inanna, at this point a character unknown to Hiro. Hiro then logs onto the metaverse and asks his librarian daemon (avatars that are controlled by software, not people. The librarian is an expensive daemon that has a link to the C.I.A. files) to do a search on Inanna. Thus comes the whole story of Sumerian legend and Lagos’ (a gargoyle, one who is always carrying a computer and recording gear in order to get info for the C.I.A. to make money) theory, who got assassinated by Raven because he knew too much.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this explanation I made use of many other references and paraphrased or directly quoted from the book. Furthermore I researched on my own from Internet sources on Sumerian Myths and Legends. I also used the books Sepher Razial Hemelach The book of the Angel Rezial, The Bible and 777 and other Kabalistic Writings by Aliester Crowley to get more information on the subject. I want to make it clear that I have no right to assume full credit for what is written below because much is just paraphrased from other sources. The reason I added this info in this manner is because it would be a very complicated and arduous task for me to explain accurately (considering I had no knowledge of Sumerian Legend before reading this book and other sources). This part is also in simple terms a very “cool” and interesting part of the book, and is basis of the physical and informational drug, Snow Crash and I don’t want to make any errors making a personal translation of it. By the way, the bit of Sumerian history and legend applied by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash might perhaps be of interest to Mr. Kalnor. I would also be curious to see what a person that has more background in history thinks of this theory. *The author Neal Stephenson actually believes in his theory he communicated by the book (that is excluding the fictional parts like the virus/drug snow crash and other futuristic ideas).
--------------------------------------------------------------
Ashera, the main goddess of the Sumerian culture passed down into Babylonian, Assyrian, Caanite, Hebrew, and Ugaritic myths. This is strange because Sumerian died out without a trace, like the dinosaurs, but somehow myths and traditions managed to be passed on in new languages. Sumerian was used as the language of religion and scholarship by later civilization, much as Latin was used in Europe during the middle ages. No one spoke it as their native language but educated people could read it. In this way Sumerian religion passed on.Today the surviving Sumerian myths exist in fragments of tablets and have a very bizarre quality. In one text I got sources from; they can be compared to “the imaginings of a febrile two year old”. Entire sections of them cannot be translated for this reason. The characters are well known but when put together they do not say anything that leaves an imprint on the modern mind. And there are some tablets that are only made up using eyes and slashes (just like 1’s and 0’s in binary). In the Sumerian societies there were “ens” (kings) who were the custodians of the local temple where the “me” (rules of society) were stored on clay tablets. The me were similar to the torah except they had a mystical or magical force too, and often deal with banal subjects, not just religion.
(Direct quote from pg235 of Snow Crash) “In the tablets there is a great deal of monotonous repetition. There is also a fair amount of what Lagos described as “Rotary Club Boosterism’—scribes extolling the superior virtue of their city over some other city.” Hiro then asks semi-sarcastically “What makes one Sumerian city better than another one? A bigger ziggurat? A better football team?” The librarian then replies, “Better me”
Enki is a Sumerian god that assists humanity and is very sympathetic. He is referred to in various myths as ‘expert who instituted incantations,’ ‘word rich’, ‘Enki, master of all the right commands’. He devotes a great deal of effort into imparting knowledge into his son, the god Marduk, and chief deity of the Babylonians. Enki’s most important role was the creator of the me (cosmic rules and regulations). Enki the guardian of the “me” was one of the most beloved gods, but he was much like a hacker/programmer if you think about it. The biggest mysteries of him was why the tower of Babel. Not the event Babel, which is unlikely, but the symbolisms it suggests. *Babel explained later.About Asherah: She was the consort of El, who is known as Yahweh. She was also known as Elat her most common epithet. The Greeks knew her as Dione or Rhea. The Canaanites knew her as Tannit or Hawwa, which is the same thing as Eve. Her symbol is that of a serpent around a tree. Everyone who lived between India and Spain, from the second millennium B.C. up to the Christian era worshipped her. With exception of the Hebrews, who only worshipped her until the religious reforms of Hezekiah and, later, Josiah. Although the Hebrews monolatrists before the reforms, they did not deny the existence of other gods. But they were only supposed to worship Yahweh, and Ashera was venerated as the consort of Yahweh. The bible had not existed yet and Judaism was a loose collection of Yahwistic cults, each with different shrines and practices. The stories of Exodus hadn’t been formalized into scripture yet. Finally the deuteronomic school—defined, by convention as the people who wrote the book of Deuteronomy as well as Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings purged Asherah from Judaism. At this time Sargon II had recently conquered Samaria--northern Israel—forcing a migration of Hebrews southward into Jerusalem. During which the Hebrews conquered territories east, west, and south. Centralization of the Hebrew religion was established in the Temple of Jerusalem, destroying outlying cult centers. The strict, book-based religion of the deuteronomists inoculated the Hebrews against the Asherah virus. Previous religions from Sumer up to Deuteronomy are known as pre-rational. Judaism therefore was the first rational religion and much less susceptible to viral infection because it was based on fixed written records. Asherah was a carrier of viral infection and the deuteronomists realized this and exterminated her by blocking all vectors in which she infected new victims. In Snow Crash, Lagos thought that herpes simplex might be a modern, benign descendent of Asherah. *His explanation for this is that herpes takes up residence in the nervous system and never leaves. It is capable of carrying new genes into existing neurons and genetically reengineering them. Lagos thought that the Asherah virus actually altered the DNA of brain cells. There is great evidence of cult prostitutes in Ashera worship, which would explain how it was transmitted. Eve (Asherah) is responsible for getting Adam to eat the forbidden fruit—which is not just fruit, its data. Quote: “It is as though ‘good’ and ‘evil’ were invented by the writer of the Adam and Eve legend to explain why people get sick—why they have physical and mental viruses. So when Eve or Asherah got Adam to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, she was introducing the concept of good and evil into the world—introducing the metavirus, which creates viruses.” Which explains all myths fall from paradise. The Hebrew king was enticed away from the path of righteousness by the cult of El, associated with Ashera worship. For this reason he was conquered by Sargon II and the Hebrews that went to Jerusalem made sure to rid themselves of Asherah. When Sargon II’s successor Sennacherib surrounded Jerusalem, “That night the angle of the LORD went forth and slew a 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. Then Sennacherib the king of Assyria departed…” 2 Kings 19:35-36 “They stopped all the springs and the brook that flowed through the land saying, ‘why should the kings of Assyria come and find much water?’”2 Chronicles 32.4.
Hiro’s quote: “And then as soon as Sennacherib’s soldiers came onto the scene, they all dropped dead of what can only be understood as a very virulent disease, to which the people of Jerusalem were apparently immune. Hmm, interesting—I wonder what got into their water?” At that time they had no conception of viruses and thought that the physical effects of a virus was “evil” or a demon inside of them.In one myth, the goddess Inanna goes to Eridu and tricks Enki into giving her 49 me and brings them back to her home town of Uruk, where they are greeted with much commotion and rejoicing. Inanna is hailed as a savior because she brought the perfect execution of the me. Apparently the me are like algorithms for carrying out certain activities essential to society. Some of the have to do with the workings of priesthood and kingship. Some explains how to carry out religious ceremonies. Some relate to the arts of war and diplomacy. Many of them are about the arts and crafts: music, carpentry, smithing, tanning, building, farming, and even simple tasks like lighting fires.
*Note: the me are almost like their operating system of society.
These gods might have been magicians, that is normal human beings with special powers. Or they might have been aliens. Thus Enki had some sort of linguistic power beyond our concept of normal.
Closely paraphrased from the book: ‘When you first turn on a computer, it is an inert collection of circuits that can’t really do anything. To start up the machine you have to infuse those circuits with a collection of rules that tell it how to function. How to be a computer. I think the “me” served as the operating system of the society, organizing an inert collection of people into a functioning system.”
Nam-shubs had the power to alter the functioning of the brain and body. Quote: “Why isn’t anyone doing this nowadays? Why aren’t there nam-shubs in English?” Hiro asks. Answer: Sumerian was a very an extraordinary powerful language—or at least it was 5000yrs ago. Quote from Hiro: “A language that lent itself to Enki’s neurolinguistic hacking.” *If it is also true that ones native tongue influences the physical structure of the developing brain. Then since the Sumerians language was so radically different than ours, they must have fundamentally different brains from ours.
From Snow Crash pg 260: “Early linguists, as well as the Kabbalists, believed in a fictional language called the tongue of Eden, the language of Adam. It enabled all men to understand each other, to communicate without misunderstanding. It was the language of Logos, the moment when God created the world by speaking a word. (*This is described in great detail in the Book of The Angel Rezial) In the tongue of Eden, naming a thing was the same as creating it.” *A somewhat more plausible explanation I find, is that naming something within link with the divine, leads to a creation of that thing in the Astral Plane, and it is a universal law that anything within the astral plane must end up on the physical plane, and it was that they were referring to, I think (I know this from reading 777 and Other Kabalistic Writings by Aliester Crowley, another good book, it is about myth and the possible truth to the Kabbala and other sacred writings) “To quote Steiner again, ‘Our speech interposes itself between apprehension and truth like a dusty pane or warped mirror. The tongue of Eden was like flawless glass; a light of total understanding streamed through it. *I find that sentence to be a great simile, and it gives me a beautiful mental image. Thus Babel was a second fall.’ And Isaac the Blind, an early Kabbalist, said that, to quote Gershom Scholem’s translation, ‘the speech of men is connected with divine speech and all language whether heavenly or human derives from one source: the Divine Name.’*I, and I think Hiro hypothesis maybe they are referring to the brain language. Or the Tetragrammaton, in which case I fail to see relevance. The practical kabbalist, the sorcerers, bore the title Ba’al Shem, meaning master of the divine name.’”
To this Hiro replies: “The machine language of the world. Computers speak machine language. It’s written in ones and zeros—binary code. At the lowest level, all computers are programmed with strings of ones and zeros. When you are programming in machine language you are controlling the computer by its brainstem, the root of its existence. It’s the tongue of Eden. But is difficult to work with machine language for a while because you go crazy, working at such a minute level. So a whole Babel of computer languages have been created for programmers: Fortran, BASIC, Cobol, LISP, Pascal, C, Prolog, FORTH. You talk to the computer in one of these languages, and a piece of software called a compiler converts it into machine language. But you can never tell exactly what the compiler is doing and may not come out as you want. Like a dusty pane or warped mirror. A really advanced hacker comes to understand the true inner workings of the machine—he sees through the language he’s working in and glimpses the secret functioning of the binary code—becomes a Ba’al Shem of sorts.”The tongue of Eden can be related to what is known as ‘glossolalia’. Plato called it theomania. It is considered the true language of the human mind. Specific examples I found on this are: “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the spirit gave them utterance…because each one heard them speaking in his own language…And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘what does this mean’” Acts 2:4-12. Another example is: “In the sixteenth century, Saint Louis Bertrand used the gift of tongues to convert between 30K to 300K South American Indians to Christianity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Basically the concept that needs to be understood to really get Snow Crash, is that Hiro believes that the Sumerian language was able to be “hacked” and certain ideas spread like a virus. The me, were simple instructions for everyone to follow and were like viruses, but not bad ones. Furthermore the mind is comparable to the computer and is open to languages and viruses in the form of complex word control. Like magicians of the time claimed to perform, and the Tetragrammaton. At one point Enki realized that the Sumerian language was much to open to viruses such as the Ashera virus and he created more complex languages (Babel) that could not be “hacked”.
From all this Hiro concluded that the virus Snow Crash, when opened, flashes digital “snow” or the racing of binary code down the screen, and that hackers like Da5id are susceptible to have their minds infected and brainwashed since their minds have been formed to understand binary code and the digital representation of snow crash is a complex system of 1’s and 0’s that have been copied from Sumerian tablets that had to do with the cult of Ashera and the language of glossolalia. Another form of spreading this virus is the chemical drug Snow Crash that enters your DNA and rearranges it while at the same time it is mixed with cocaine so “druggies” will desire it. Furthermore, the infected will try to inject infected blood into people that have not yet been infected because they believe that it is for greater glory.He also knows that L. Bob Rife has been digging in Iraq, a key archeological site of Sumerian tablets and suspects him of manufacturing snow crash and that he hired Raven to distribute it in the metaverse. L. Bob Rife planned this in order to make people mindless religious fanatics of Ashera, so that he can control them by revising the me. In addition, as Inanna was considered a savior bringing the people me from Enki, Hiro now knows that Juana is going to plan to steal the tablet of Enki’s vaccination from L. Bob Rife, which happens to be a very dangerous quest. For L. Bob Rife’s headquarters is a raft of thousands of boats in the Atlantic, the core boats consisting of ex-military destroyers.
Hiro goes after her on a boat along with mafia men, and Ng security “rat things”. When they arrive Hiro finds that Y.T. has also been taken aboard and she tells him all about the layout of the raft. Hiro, mafia men, and “rat things”, then invade and eventually procure both the tablets, although L. Bob Rife gets away. The mafia then tracks L. Bob Rife down and Uncle Enzo is seriously injured in a skirmish between Rife’s men and the mafia. The outcome isn’t looking good for the mafia and just as Rife’s helicopter is about to take off, a “rat thing” jumps into the propeller and Rife and his men are killed in the explosion. Afterward Y.T., Hiro, and Juana celebrate, Y.T. goes back to her mom, and Hiro and Juana’s decide to get back together again.
It was not until after I read the book that I got a curiosity as to whether Snow Crash was based on real myths and historical background or whether they were fictional. In the process of finding out that it was truly based on historical legends and not made up ones, I found out that the author, Neal Stephenson, used Lagos and Hiro to portray some of his own beliefs. He happens to be very knowledgeable about computers and admits to having once been a hacker, and he has a theory that people’s minds are very similar to computers. In some aspects I agree with his theory, I think everyone would be different if they had been placed in a different environment at birth. We also end up being what are society wants us to be, for example the Mayans believed human sacrifice was good and had no sad feelings towards the sacrificed, even if they were loved ones (because they thought they were going to a better place). If any of us had been born in that culture we would believe that too. Very few people are able see past their preprogrammed mind and see that sometimes our society is messed up. Such types of people are Galileo, Copernicus, Martin Luther King, Socrates, and other such peoples. If we lost the gathered data that we have accumulated over the years (physical and oral), we would probably go back to being mindless animals, like computers that haven’t been programmed.
In all, to get a better understanding for this brilliant book and its fascinating ideas I recommend that you get a copy of the book for yourself. For I can only explain so much of the Sumerian myths and legends that are a large backbone of Snow Crash. Furthermore by reading this report on Snow Crash it is probably very evident that this indeed was an extremely though-provoking book and even inspired me to learn further about the background. So if you like a book that has a complex, involved plot and ideas that take you to another world, then this is a magnificent choice.
poster:phil15
thread:4435
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010105/msgs/4435.html