After the Internet, what came next? Enter the Metaverse - cyberspace home to avatars and software daemons, where anything and just about everything goes. Newly available on the Street - the Metaverse's main drag - is Snow Crash, a cyberdrug. Trouble is Snow Crash is also a computer virus - and something more. Because once taken it infects the person behind the avatar. Snow Crash bleeds into reality. Which is really bad news for Hiro - freelance hacker and the Metaverse's best swordfighter (he wrote the code) - and Y.T. - skateboard kourier, street imp and mouthy teenage girl - because reality was shitty enough before someone started messing with it ...Exploring linguistics, religion, computer science, politics, philosophy, cryptography and the future of pizza delivery, "Snow Crash" is a riveting, brake-neck adventure into the fast-approaching future. Stephenson excels in marrying geekspeak with riotous action Guardian A cross between Neuromancer and Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. This is no mere hyperbole San Francisco Bay Guardian Brilliantly realized. Stephenson [is] an engaging guide to an onrushing tomorrow The New York Times A fantastic, slam-bang-overdrive, supersurrealistic, comic-spooky whirl through a tomorrow that is already happening. Stephenson is intelligent, perceptive, hip Timothy Leary Like a Pynchon novel with the brakes removed Washington Post