History Literature / SnowCrash

* AngryGuardDog: If you're coming into a Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, you had better belong there. And you had better not have any ill intentions towards nice girls!

* NoSocialSkills: Gargoyles

* TheMafia: Now trading freely and making the best pizzas in America.

* CapitalismIsBad: Downplayed as its more so a criticism of Anarcho-capitalism specifically. The entire world is a MegaCorp-owned WretchedHive, the US is fractured into various independent, privately-owned states, down to the neighborhoods. Even the federal government has become a private company... yet they still "do the work that no-one else believes is worth doing". Violence is common and life is extremely dangerous. It's also very colorful and exciting, especially as seen through the eyes of the badass protagonists. To give you an example, pizza delivery men work for the Italian Mafia, have gone to specialized universities to acquire their qualifications, and ''will'' deliver the pizzas in time, no matter what insane stunt driving they have to do, '''on pain of death'''. Teenage couriers carry messages, armed to the teeth, on hyper-advanced skateboards, via magnetic harpoons attached to cars on the highway, at speeds exceeding 60 mph. Walled neighborhoods have domestic robot guard dogs that run faster than cars and pack mini-guns. '''And so on.'''

** It should be mentioned that some of his asskicking is facilitated by his coding; one of the reasons Hiro is the best swordsman in cyberspace is that he wrote the code that makes swordfighting possible.

* BarbarianHero: More like Barbarian Villain, but Raven can easily fit the bill. Comes from a hunter-gatherer tribe. Check. Is a master at killing up close with primitive weapons. Check. Is contemptuous of civilization. Check (well he's contemptuous of Western civilization to be exact). Has BarbarianLongHair. Check. Has a HeroicBuild. Check. Loves fighting, drinking and banging women (except he's been sober for eight years). Check. Is Chaotic in alignment. Check (he even got tattooed with the words ''Poor Impulse Control'' on his forehead). If he was decked out in a loincloth and carried a sword, he could be the long-lost brother of Conan.

* MindVirus: The virus that makes people unable to speak. Also implied to be [[spoiler:the original reason different languages evolved in the first place; a mind virus in historical times made everyone unintelligible to each other, inspiring the Tower Of Babel myth.]]

--> '''Hiro''': I just threw away a brand-new top-of-the-line motorcycle in the middle of the street because I didn't feel like pushing it half a block to the garage. I am on an expense account that would blow your mind.

-->“It’s, like, one of them drug dealer boats,” Vic says, looking through his magic sight. “Five guys on it. Headed our way.” He fires another round. “Correction. Four guys on it.” Boom. “Correction, they’re not headed our way anymore.” Boom. A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away. “Correction. No boat.”

* CoolBoat: A raft shanty town the size of a large city, built around the aircraft carrier that used to be the USS ''Enterprise''.

* TheDragon: Raven.[[spoiler: Specifically he's the enforcer to Bob Rife. As one of the deadliest men on the planet, Raven is far beyond Rife and his typical cronies and henchmen. Raven is fairly satisfied with his role, however, as his goals and those of Bob Rife coincide, and Raven isn't the type of person who's interested in a leadership role.]]

--> It is my pleasure to welcome all quality folks to visiting of Hong Kong. Whether seriously in business or on a fun-loving hijink, make yourself totally homely in this meager environment. If any aspect is not utterly harmonious, gratefully bring it to my notice and I shall strive to earn your satisfaction.

* {{Gorn}}: Oh yeah, there's some graphic violence in here, such as a scene where [[spoiler: Raven guts Lagos like a fish, then cuts a gangster's femoral arteries causing ''all his blood to fall out of him''.]]

* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler: Alas, poor Fido.]] Made a double gut punch by the fact all Y.T. has to say on the matter is "''Sweet!''"
* HighPressureBlood: Make no mistake, this is a pretty bloody book in places. This trope comes into effect during an altercation in which [[spoiler: Hiro beheads a racist that threatens him, creating a ''cloud of blood from each carotid artery'' that rains down over the people sitting nearby.]]

* KatanasAreJustBetter: Hiro fights with katanas, and even went so far as to hard-code a katana simulator into the virtual universe he helped write. However, Hiro takes a moment to acknowledge that katanas are not supernaturally sharp, as movies would have you believe. He even remonstrates with himself when he [[spoiler: decapitates a racist thug in one stroke]] that he forgot his training and acted as if the blade would pass cleanly through his target; sure, in this instance it ''did'', but that was just luck.

--->'''Y.T.:''' Stupid name.\\

--> I like to rap about sweetened romance/[[IntercourseWithYou My fond ambition is of your pants]]/So here is of special remarkable way/Of this fellow raps named Sushi K

--> As part of Mr. Lee's good neighbor policy, all Rat Things are programmed never to break the sound barrier in a populated area. But Fido's in too much of a hurry to worry about the good neighbor policy. ''Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.''
-->[and later]
-->A powerful disturbance is moving through the flame, leaving a linear trail in the light, like a cosmic ray fired through a cloud chamber. By the force of its passage, it leaves behind a shock wave that is clearly visible in the flame, a bright spreading cone that is a hundred times larger than the dark source at its apex: a black bulletlike thing supported on four legs that are churning too fast to be visible. It is so small and so fast that [[spoiler: Rife]] would not be able to see it, if it were not headed directly for him.

* UnfinishedUntestedUsedAnyway: Reason, for all its power, was technically still in beta. [[spoiler: Unsurprisingly, its original operator is killed when the gun has a kernel panic.]]

* WalkingArmory: Raven is completely loaded up on razor-sharp glass knives that are invisible to metal detectors. Y.T. has a nonlethal variant; she's got her suit set up with multiple tasers, she's got a can of "Liquid Knuckles" which is apparently worse than mace, and even her skateboard has a huge glass-shattering explosive charge in it for emergency defenestration.

** Arguably, [[spoiler: Hiro himself. The last we see of him is his avatar entering the Snow Crash program that was going to destroy all the hackers' minds.]]

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: What happened to Raven's [[spoiler:nuclear bomb dead man switch?]]

--> As part of Mr. Lee's good neighbor policy, all Rat Things are programmed never to break the sound barrier in a populated area. But Fido's in too much of a hurry to worry about the good neighbor policy.

The book is also notable for its uncanny prediction of future trends. Memes play an important role in the plot, which was written years before the public became aware of the concept through [[MemeticMutation Internet memes]]. While holographic web terminals have not yet come to pass, and the jury's still out on whether Google Glass will allow the "gargoyle" to finally be realized, we do have heavily populated 3D virtual worlds, satellite photograph software, and [[Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} a massive user-created online library]]. Certain real world equivalents (''Second Life'', Google Earth) having been inspired by the book itself.

Possibly the best-known book by Creator/NealStephenson, ''Snow Crash'' is the tale of a sword-slinging hacker who teams up with an [[CoolBoard extreme skateboarder]] in a PostCyberPunk [[DividedStatesOfAmerica disincorporated USA]] to fight "[[TheVirus Snow Crash]]" - a computer virus for the brain. Oh, and there's a badass biker with glass knives and a nuclear bomb strapped to his motorbike, too.

* CapitalismIsBad: Downplayed as its more so a criticism of Anarcho-capitalism specifically. The entire world is a MegaCorp-owned WretchedHive, the US is fractured into various independent, privately-owned states, down to the neighborhoods. Even the federal government has become a private company... yet they still "do the work that no-one else believes is worth doing". Violence is common and life is extremely dangerous. It's also very colorful and exciting, especially as seen through the eyes of the badass protagonists. To give you an example, pizza delivery men work for the Italian Mafia, have gone to specialized universities to acquire their qualifications, and ''will'' deliver the pizzas in time, no matter what insane stunt driving they have to do, '''on pain of death'''. Teenage couriers carry messages, armed to the teeth, on motorized roller-blades, via highway, at speeds exceeding 60 mph. Walled neighborhoods have domestic robot guard dogs that run faster than cars and pack mini-guns. '''And so on.'''

** ''SecondLife'' is quite similar to the concept of the Metaverse, unsurprising when you know that it was inspired by the book. A group of fans puts on a performance of the book in ''SecondLife'' once a year.

* BadAss: Between Hiro, Raven, Y.T., Fisheye, Uncle Enzo, and the cybernetic rat/dog thing, the book has more badassness than most books should be allowed to have.

** ''GoogleEarth'' was inspired by the mapping/satellite imagery app described in this book.

* BarbarianHero: More like Barbarian Villain, but Raven can easily fit the bill. Comes from a hunter-gatherer tribe. Check. Is a master at killing up close with primitive weapons. Check. Is contemptuous of civilization. Check (well he's contemptuous of Western civilization to be exact). Has BarbarianLongHair. Check. Has a HeroicBuild. Check. Loves fighting, drinking and banging women. Check. Is Chaotic in alignment. Check (he even got tattooed with the words ''Poor Impulse Control'' on his forehead). If he was decked out in a loincloth and carried a sword, he could be the long-lost brother of Conan.

* {{Deconstruction}}: ''Snow Crash'' does this in regards to the {{Cyberpunk}} genre.

* AnachronicOrder: The early chapters alternate between Hiro's disastrous pizza-delivery errand and his visit to Da5id's club some time later.

* AwesomeMcCoolname: Yours Truly (Y.T.), Da5id, Raven, and ''Hiro Protagonist''.

* SeriousBusiness: Pizza delivery, to the extent of there being a university devoted to the study of the pizza business. If a pizza from [[TheFamilyForTheWholeFamily Costa Nostra]] isn't delivered within half an hour, the head of the mafia himself will come to your house to apologize. And the delivery boy will probably be wearing CementShoes.