It might be surprising to some of you, but I actually do a decent amount of reading in my free time. I know, it sounds crazy that someone who spends a lot of time playing video games would also enjoy reading, but I really do. Specifically, I tend to read a lot of science fiction novels. However, there are a number of books that I really enjoy that are not sci-fi such as Alas Babylon and Snow Falling on Cedars. Anyway, I have been posting about some of the recent books I have read on a friend’s website, but I have decided that I might as well start posting them here as well. Who knows, maybe some of you also enjoy this ancient and outdated form of entertainment.
The most recent book that I finished was Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I have to say that this is one of the most unique, crazy, interesting, and bizarre books that I have ever read. I cannot recommend this novel enough to anyone who enjoys cyberpunk (or science fiction in general).
Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison – a writer so original, he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Show Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip, cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.
SNOW CRASH In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosaNostra Pizza, Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about the infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp though a future America so bizarre, so outrageous… you’ll recognize it immediately.
I am now moving on to The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick.
What if you discovered that everything you knew about the world was a lie? That is the question at the heart of Philip K. Dick’s futuristic novel about political oppression, the show business of politics, and the sinister potential of the military-industrial complex. This wry, paranoid thriller imagines a future in which the earth has been ravaged, and cities are burnt-out wastelands too dangerous for human life. Americans have been shipped underground, where they toil in crowded industrial anthills and receive a steady diet of inspiring speeches from a president who never seems to age. Nick St. James, like the rest of the masses, believes in the words of his leaders. But that all changes when he travels to the surface – where what he finds is more shocking than anything he could possibly imagine
If this sounds familiar, it is because its storyline is strangely similar to a certain post-apocalyptic role playing game.