He told the story about how the world is connected through massive runs of transatlantic cables that traverse the ocean floors and electronically and physically connect three continents to each other. I first learned about Stephenson after reading his excellent article called “Mother Earth Mother Board” in Wired Magazine in 1996. Well, that, and as I’ve already mentioned, Stephenson is one of my favorite authors in this or any genre. I recently reviewed the classic cyber punk novel Neuromancer, so I figured I would continue the trend and review another classic in the genre to see if it too still holds up. Stephenson is an author who truly understands the hacker culture, so it’s not surprising Snow Crash wound up on Time magazine’s list of 100 novels everyone should read, among countless other accolades. His description of the “Metaverse” and the “avatars” that live in it, both terms he made famous in this book, are so prescient that anybody playing World of Warcraft or using Second Life today would feel right at home. Neal Stephenson is a cyber geek of the first order, and his personality is all over this story. It has everything that we like: Metaverse hacking, real-world swordplay, awesome weapons, and-to cap it all off-the hacker ends up with the girl. Every cybersecurity geek on the planet should embrace this book.
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