University of LjubljanaFaculty of Arts

Department of English

NEAL STEPHENSON: SNOW CRASH

Auhtor: Urška PodmenikMentor: doc. dr. Mojca Krevel

Ljubljana, March 2010

Contents

1. Introduction.....................................................................2

2. Society.............................................................................3

3. Cyberpunk Characters, Metaphors and Neologisms.......5

4. Metaverse........................................................................6

5. Post-Cyberpunk Features................................................7

6. Linguistic Elements in the Novel....................................8

7. Conclusion.......................................................................9

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1. Introduction

In my seminar paper, I will present and analyze Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash in

connection to movements such as Cyberpunk, Post-Cyberpunk and Avant-pop. I shall also

try to determine whether the novel belongs to the Modern or Post-modern era. I will do so

by using ideas and terminology presented by Jean Baudrillard in his book Simulacra and

Simulation such as the notion of hyperreal and the 3rd order simulacra. Hyperreality is a

paradigm in postmodern philosophy and Semiotics, it describes a hypothetical inability

of consciousness to distinguish between the “real” and “fantasy” world. This occurs in

technologically advanced postmodern cultures, where a multitude of media shape or filter

or the perception of reality. (Baudrillard 2) The 3rd order of simulacra (the result of a

simulation) is connected to hyperreally. In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard

describes three stages of simulacrum. The first is the so-called Natural Simulacrum, where

“real” and “imaginary” are clearly separated; an example of this would be for instance a

painting. The 2nd order is based on a productive power of machines; an example of this

would be a photograph. Although a photograph is a faithful image of the original, we can

still distinguish between the two. The 3rd order of simulacra, also referred to as the copy

without the original, is not based on reality, but only appears to be. (Baudrillard 121)

2. Society

The society in Snow Crash is futuristic but we can still trace similarities to our own. We

already live in a consumer driven society. The number of hypermarkets and other major

corporations is increasing rapidly, money is closely connected to almost every aspect of

our lives .The goods we buy are no longer the goods we actually need. We are bombarded

by countless advertisements on television, internet, etc. and from these we construct our

own hyperreality (Baudrillard 2). This basically means that we define ourselves, by what

sort of clothes we wear, what kind of a car we drive, etc. The novel is not a prediction of

the future, but rather a new world, constructed by focusing on certain aspects of our own

world and taking them to an extreme. This is the way a dystopia is created. It is a society

developed in a negative way, and is very closely connected to the type of societies we

usually find in Cyberpunk novels.

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In Snow Crash, culture as we know it does not really exist anymore. People now live in

FOQNEs, which stands for Franchise-organized quasi-national entities. These are

basically city-states, a type of ghettos from our point of view. You cannot enter them

unless you live there and the proof of that is a passport. Technology plays an important

role in everyday life; the most essential being the ‘Metaverse’, which is technically virtual

reality, the beginnings of which we can already observe today. At The Pizza University,

students learn how to make pizza and everything else there is to know about it. Once they

‘graduate’ they go on working for Uncle Enzo’s CosaNostra Pizza, Inc., which is a serious

company dedicated to bringing hot and fresh pizza to anyone who desires it. Uncle Enzo

is an influential mafia boss, who has a lot more than pizza under his control. There is also

no police as we know it. Several ‘police’ forces exist, but all are contractible, so they

work for whoever pays the most. The army is called Uncle Bob’s defence system. The

mail system does not work anymore either. Everything is delivered via Kouriers, one of

them being Y. T the main protagonist, through who is one of the two narrators in the

novel. The media is under the influence of a single person, L. Bob Rife, who controls

what is going to come out as news and also stages information. The media is producing

less and less meaning. ‘Rather than creating communication, it exhausts itself in the act of

staging information. Rather than producing meaning it exhausts itself in staging meaning.’

(Baudrillard 80) In his interview with a reporter, Rife admits to staging information, for

the purpose of making money.

As we can see, the author is showing us a society which is fragmenting into smaller parts.

In addition, it is a society which is corrupt, and where all aspects of human life are

controlled by individuals with power. There is no actual culture, but it is merging with

economy, which is one of the characteristics of the Avant-pop movement. Another such

feature is various references to the popular culture of today, something that makes it easier

for us readers to feel connected to the society which is otherwise quite different from our

own. (Krevel)

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3. Cyberpunk Characters, Metaphors and Neologisms

Cyberpunk characters are types, but not in the ‘traditional’ sense. They are metaphors of

the social characteristics, and are formed in the same way as our subjectivities, by

collecting information. Hiro, the main protagonists and also one of the narrators, is such

an example. Despite being incredibly smart, he lives on the edge of the society; he

delivers pizza even though he is one of the top hackers in the world. The other main

character is Y.T.; she is only 15 years old and works as a Kourier. She can take care of

herself in a world where there is, ultimately, no real order and no real protection. Another

important character is Uncle Enzo, the charismatic head of the mafia, who in my opinion

represents the typical politician/entrepreneur of today, very benevolent when everything is

going according to plan, but ready to do anything, even kill, to achieve his goals. There

is, also, L. Bob Rife, who singlehandedly controls all media. He is the typical

‘philanthropist’, who does everything for his own agenda.

The typical Cyberpunk metaphor explains the natural with the technological. There is a

great example in the novel, when Hiro compares the way a human brain develops

language skills to the way information is ‘blown into’ a PROM – Programmable Read-

Only Memory chips. In the section, where Hiro and The Librarian talk about the Sumerian

myth and how it is connected with languages, he often uses expressions such as hardware

and software, when describing the human brain.

Another typical feature of Cyberpunk is the neologisms it introduces. They have no

symbolic counterparts, so one has to give them one’s own image and meaning. They

function as the 3rd order simulacra (Baudrillard 121). Examples from the novel are the

‘Dentata’, ‘Rat Things’, ‘Earth’, and ‘Reason’. The author tells us what their purpose is,

but since we have no counterpart for it in our world, we have to create our own image for

it.

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4. Metaverse

The most significant piece of technology in the novel is, in my opinion, the Metaverse,

virtual reality – a computer generated universe - that can be accessed via computer or

public terminal. Computers have lasers which are pointed into the user’s eyeball; they

consist of three basic colours – red, green and blue, so that they can produce any colour of

the spectrum. One, also, has to be wearing goggles and earphones. The person is not

actually there, they just see the 3D picture through their goggles.

The main place in the Metaverse is the so-called Street, where all the main clubs and bars

are located. The most popular is The Black Sun, at which all the famous people spend

their time, Hiro being one of them since he also helped to construct it. People ‘build’ their

own houses in the Metaverse as well. Everyone has their own avatar, which is an

audiovisual body for communication in the Metaverse. The whole Metaverse functions as

a simulation - a copy without the original. It has no representation in the reality, so it is an

example of the 3rd order simulacra (Baudrillard 121). In addition, it can also function as a

‘physical’ representation of hyperreality (Baudrillard 2), because you have all these

models – houses, avatars, etc. – which have no basis in reality, people can reinvent

themselves there and become whoever they choose.

Already today, we are able already observe that some people would rather spend time on

the internet than go into ‘Reality’. With technologies such as chat rooms, facebook,

messenger, and many others, you can recreate yourself and become anyone – Metaverse is

just taking this one step further. I think that as technology develops such things will

become completely possible.

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5. Post-cyberpunk Features

One of the markers of Post-modernity is that the line between natural and technological is

becoming more and more blurred. There are several examples from the novel that

demonstrate this very well. I am going to begin with a quote: ‘Does it fuck up your brain?’

Hiro says. ‘Or your computer?’ – ‘Both. Neither. What’s the difference?’ (Stephenson 44)

As we can observe here, the person Hiro is talking to cannot grasp the distinction between

a human being and a computer. The two are so closely intertwined that the difference is

not even relevant anymore.

We can find many examples in the novel where the natural and the technological are

being combined for the purpose of enhancing a human or animal body. An example of this

is the Rat things, which are essentially dogs that have been modified with technological

parts, so that they posses almost supernatural abilities. Another example is a character

called Ng. His helicopter caught fire during an evacuation and his body was badly burned,

as a result he now moves by help of a vehicle, which is an extension of his body, and is

immersed in some kind of liquid. He has no arms or legs; there are just wires, optic cables,

tubes, etc. He is connected to Metaverse all the time, where he lives in a villa and leads a

‘normal’ life, which is a simulation, so he functions as the 3 rd order simulacra (Baudrillard

121).

A good example of technological parts used to enhance humans are gargoyles, which are

people who have computer parts, such as radars, ambient-sound processing, etc,

connected to them. Hiro tries this at some point as well, and there is a quote from the

novel which I find very interesting. ‘He turns off all of the techno-shit in his goggles. All

it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it’s

happening to him. Very post-modern.’ (Stephenson 304-305) The reason this is

considered postmodern is because the simulation is the copy without the original, it

functions as the 3rd order simulacra, since it has no representation in reality. The computer

calculates the most probable outcome from the circumstances Hiro is in and if he does not

wish for those circumstances to happen he has to alter his plan of action.

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6. Linguistic Elements in the Novel

The two main linguistic theories mentioned in the novel are the Relativist and the

Universalist school. The relativists believed that a language is not a vehicle of thought but

rather a determining medium, the framework of cognition. Our perceptions are organized

by the flux of sensations passing through the framework. So the study of the evolution is

the study of the human mind itself (Stephenson 275). The Universalists believed that if

you analyze and compare languages enough they all have common traits. They thought

that at some point the language has to be inside the human brain. The character of Lagos

believes that a new born human brain has no structure and as the child learns a language,

the developing brain is structured accordingly. The language becomes a permanent part of

the deep structure of the brain. He actually combines the Relativist and the Universalist

theory.

The existence of the metavirus – a linguistic and a biological virus – is also mentioned in

the novel. It causes the information systems to infect themselves, or it could be an actual

virus floating through space on comets and radio waves. ‘Any information system of

sufficient complexity will inevitably become infected with viruses – viruses generated

from within itself.’ (Stephenson 396) The human race was infected with it at some point

in history and it has been with present ever since. This metavirus could also be a metaphor

for how societies function; the more advanced it becomes, the more it is infected with

different kind of ‘viruses’, such as money, corruption, etc.

In connection with linguistics, we can also find elements of Sumerian mythology, adapted

a little for the purpose of the story. The primitive societies were supposedly controlled by

verbal rules called me. They were like programs for humans whose function was to keep

society organized. The Sumerian language was very susceptible to metaphor and that is

the reason it could be controlled by these rules. The en (spiritual leader) of the Sumerian

city Eridu was Enki. He was believed to be a neurolinguistic hacker. He understood the

connection between human brain and language and knew how to manipulate it. He created

the num-shub of Enki, a counter virus to the metavirus and caused Babel, which is the

development of new languages. Because of this people were no longer under the influence

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of the metavirus – also called the Asherah virus, but it became dormant in their brain. For

the same reason, they were not under the control of me anymore and from then on the

human consciousness started developing on its own.

In the novel, L. Bob Rife learns how to access the part of the brain which contains the

dormant Asherah virus and stimulate it, which means that with the clay tablets that have

me written on them, he is able to control people and their actions. The only way to prevent

it is by using the num-shub of Enki.

The author is drawing a parallel between how the human brains function and that it can be

hacked as a computer, so there is, ultimately, no difference between the way a human

brain and a computer functions. If the difference between the natural and the technological

was becoming blurred before, after this we can conclude that the author implies that there

is no distinction between language and computer code.

7. Conclusion

I believe that in my seminar paper, I have demonstrated that Snow Crash is a Cyberpunk

as well as a Post-Cyberpunk novel, featuring several of the characteristics that are typical

of the two genres. It has markings of the Post-modern movement, Avant-pop, such as its

allusions to our popular culture, which makes it easier for us to relate to it and the

merging of culture and economy. Jean Baudrillard’s theories about simulacra and

simulation are exemplified in the novel, especially in the form of Metaverse and certain

characters, as is the notion of hyperreality. The Post-modern notion of the merging of

the natural and the technological is also depicted very well. Reading Snow Crash has

been both interesting and fun. I enjoyed the author’s wittiness and I admire his broad

knowledge, seeing as the novel is a combination of science, technology, linguistics and

mythology.

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8. References

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1994. Print.

Krevel, Mojca. „Avant-pop and postmodernity : an investigation into the potential transformations of literarture after postmodernism.“ Briefe in die europäische Gegenwart (2004): 403-411.

Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Spectra, 1992. Print.

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