[Jtsummers]

Snow Crash is either an accidental or deliberate parody of cyberpunk. The main character is Hiro Protagonist. When he goes into a VR world and is "fighting" with a sword he's swinging a sword around wildly in the real world too, while around other people. And then in Diamond Age Stephenson [rot13]xvyyf gur zbfg plorechax punenpgre va gur svefg be frpbaq puncgre[/rot13].

When I read Snow Crash the first time it was back when cyberpunk was still a pretty hot style, and I was also reading a lot of Gibson and others. It fit well within that context. Then later I reread it and realized what I wrote above, it was parodying elements of the genre while creating almost a quintessentially action-adventure cyberpunk story with a programmer/pizza delivery driver hero. And then it had the typical Stephenson ending, which is to say

[flybrand]

Thank you for commenting on Stephenson’s plot resolutions. I love his writing and his stories, but the end of his books are just so unfulfilling. Especially Anathem!

[FPGAhacker]

> And then it had the typical Stephenson ending, which is to say

that made me laugh out loud

[pmoriarty]

Yeah, I got that it was a parody. It just wasn't funny.