Author: Neal Stephenson
Blog Post: 2019-02-20 - Snow Crash
Notes
Chapter 1
- In a near distant future, the world is run by corporations.
- Deliverator delivers pizzas to home. He has a fancy car. When he is about to pickup the next pizza, the franchise is on fire due to being operated by a new immigrant. So when he gets the pizza to deliver, the timer says 20 minutes. Chapter 2
- While he is driving in a hurry to deliver, his car is harpooned by a courier. The courier is on a skateboard and uses an extensible string to attach to a car to carry them to places.
- In his rush to get rid of the courier, the deliverator crashes on to an empty swimming pool.
- The courier happens to be a girl. She introduces herself as YT and offer to deliver the pizza on time. The deliverator thanks her and gives his card which says ‘Hiro Protagonist’ Chapter 3
- Hiro and his friend Vitaly live in a rented storage container. Theirs is 20x30 and has a door and is more luxurious than others who live in bunk beds. Though their living condition is minimal, Hiro visits a virtual world named Metaverse where he has a big house in a prime place since he and his friend bought the space when it was being built. He was a coder in the past and had helped write some portions of the metaverse.
Quotes
- The Deliverator’s car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. (Location 166)
- This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. (Location 171)
- There’s only four things we do better than anyone else music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery (Location 177)
- Because there’s something about having your life on the line. It’s like being a kamikaze pilot. Your mind is clear. (Location 220)
- You don’t work harder because you’re competing against some identical operation down the street. You work harder because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life. (Location 225)
- Union. A new immigrant from Abkhazia trying to operate a microwave was like a deep-sea tube worm doing brain surgery. (Location 304)