Free read ☆ PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook ñ Neal Stephenson
Cyberpunk’s next generation pretty much began here. Written by someone who -unlike William Gibson- actually knows computers, this anime in novel form is one of those rare SF books that is read by many non-SF readers.
On a personal note, this is probably the only book I’ll ever read whose main character is half black and half Japanese, just like me! When I first read it, I was working at a pizza place, just like the protagonist, and I actually got fired around the same time I got to the point of him losing his job as well. Also, my first name is Hiroshi and he goes by Hiro. Cool, huh? OK, aside from those neat little coincidences, we are not at all alike. It just made reading it all the more fun for me. Plus I hated that job.
Admittedly, there are certain aspects of this book that are a tad dated now (it was written in 1991), and he can’t quite get past certain stereotypes of Japanese people that many Westerners harbor. Still, there is some fun bit of social commentary and parody on just about every other page, and Stephenson satirizes globalization years before most people even knew what globalization is.
There is also some really fascinating stuff involving the concept of memetic viruses, which he ties to Sumerian mythology and the Tower of Babel. I know that a lot of people find this part of the book to be boring, but I was fully engrossed. The kind of thing I live for when I read SF.
Neal Stephenson Don´t do drugs, cyborg metaverse cyberpunk ghetto kids
High VR AR and finally only reality.
What would VR and AR be without being hooked on a potentially fatal wonderdrug, as the only chance to escape bleak reality, in an anarcho neoliberal nightmare controlled by corporations, organized crime, and the rest of government mutated into a bizarre self satire of bureaucracy without any real power.
Not like his second milestone, Diamond Age.
In contrast to the somewhat Dickensian Diamond Age, this one is pure cyberpunk without biopunk elements, accelerating the badass dystopian transhumanist ideals to degenerated turbo capitalistic free market terror.
Humor as black as the world
I had some of the best laughs with the hidden easter egg black comedy. Be careful not to miss them! Kool Aid, lol. This is by far Stephensons`funniest novel, I don´t know why he didn´t continue to expand this element.
Remember the mutating memes
One of the most famous, best, important, and mind boggling ideas of this work is that any ideology, memes, manifestations of epigenetic and cultural evolution in progress, sadly often faith and sick ideologies, are parasitic, viral information, infecting the minds of humans as a first, single, abnormal mutation in the brain of just one, possibly a bit incestuous, ape with full borderline bipolar schizophrenic potential. I don´t want to discriminate against incest proponents, I´m already insulting enough other favorite target audiences, it´s just that one of the many, negative side effects is mental illness.
Action, philosophy, linguistic theories mixed with faith origin ideas, and quick cuts between pure fun and sophisticated mind penetration that will leave one blown away.
Mix this all with the cool, quick writing style, extreme high complexity and density of ideas, philosophy, switching between action scenes and deep, linguistic introspections, inner monologues, dialogues, and social criticism, and one has a milestone of sci-fi and literature in general.
Who combined humanities, tech, and economics first?
I wonder how many sci-fi movies have been influenced by literature, someone should consider making a list, because I watch close to no TV and will thereby never be able to compare it. In this case, I am not even sure if Gibson, Stephenson, or a forgotten, unknown author was the first one to mix economic criticism with VR and humanities.
Cherry pick wisely
I´ve said this before, don´t read all of Stephenson´s work if you aren´t really into sci-fi or like to skim and scan lengthy passages, because Diamond Age and Snow Crash aren´t like many of his other novels. These are often more something like hard-science fiction, space opera, philosophical theory hybrids that are really exhausting to read, don´t care about writing conventions, and could have been much better, if just reduced to an acceptable length and included in a normal, suspenseful plot. Instead of just egomaniacally letting the author drivel about whatever comes to his mind in the form he thinks is cool, that is what sadly made his brick books like Anathem and Cryptonomicon unreadable for many people.
In a parallel universe, Stephenson could have evolved into a readable sci fi superhero
Instead, Stephenson sabotages himself and his legacy, by being too much focused on the high brow, deep, art aspect and forgetting that he once was one of the prodigies of cyberpunk and sci-fi itself before becoming unreadable for a vast majority of the bibliophiles, even sci fi holics like myself. I´ve read many of his works and enjoyed them, but won´t reread them, because the best genre of them all is my lifeblood, but I couldn´t find another author who got so hypercomplex, interwoven, and difficult or impossible to understand as Stephenson with his close to 1k page behemoths of books. Yes, they offer unique and intelligent insights and revelations, but this would taste much less bitter without the knowledge that most readers, for completely understandable, logical, and appropriate reasons, won´t ever become comfortable with it.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph... Neal Stephenson Disliking this book seemed quite impossible. After all, it had all the necessary ingredients: the pervasive air of nerdy geekiness (or, perhaps, geeky nerdiness), an unexpected take on linguistics, a kick-ass female character, a parallel (virtual) reality, a hefty helping of (admittedly, overexaggerated) satire, and just enough wacky improbable worldbuilding to satisfy my book loving soul. Or so it seemed.
But awesome ingredients do not always add up to a satisfying dish¹ (as my horrible cook self knows much too well).
¹Remember 'Friends' episode where Rachel tries to make English trifle for Thanksgiving desert, but because of a couple pages unfortunately sticking together ends up making half English trifle and half the shepherd's pie? Joey was baffled that the rest of the gang found the dish unpalatable:
'I mean, what's not to like? Custard, good. Jam, good. Meat, good!'
I did NOT come to this book with an open mind. I came to it infinitely biased in its favor, ready to love it to pieces, prepared to find in it the same irresistible allure that so many of my Goodreads friends appreciated. Alas, after the first few pages my good-natured amusement gave way to irritated frustration, then to impatience, and eventually, as the book was nearing its final pages, my feelings changed to dreaded passionless indifference - akin to the emotions stirred by a disclaimer on the back of a pill packet.
It is very disappointing when a book leaves you indifferent after hundreds of pages spent with the characters and the plotlines - especially when it is a book with such immense potential as 'Snow Crash' had based on all the reviews and snippets I have seen, with all the ingredients for an amazing sci-fi adventure I listed above.
“We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.”Here's a glimpse of the plot, as much as I can listlessly muster. Hiro Protagonist, our hero and protagonist (cleverly annoying or annoyingly clever, I'm not quite sure) is a hacker in a future completely corporatized and fractured by consumerism America. He delivers pizza for the Mafia franchise by day and in his spare time hangs around Metaverse, a computer-based simulated reality where he is a sword-fighting badass with a juicy piece of expensive (virtual) real estate and important friends. To those having trouble picturing this, think of ‘The Matrix’ as compared to the gloomy existence outside of it. Y. T. is his sidekick, a Kourier with a healthy dose of vital spunk and kindness to animals that just may result in the most spectacular payback at the most crucial moment. Uncle Enzo is the head of the Mafia franchise, and does not like late pizza deliveries - he has his reasons.
As for the antagonists, we have
And then there's the titular Snow Crash:
“This Snow Crash thing--is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?”
Juanita shrugs. “What's the difference?”
Sounds awesome, doesn't it? To me, the concept of Snow Crash initially evoked the memories of Delany's Babel-17, a book that I loved for all it's strangeness and far-fetchedness and irresistible pull into the blend of linguistics and sci-fi.
But then 'Snow Crash', having barely taken off, disappointingly crashed. Pun very much intended.
Maybe this had something to do with the clumsily thrown in heaps of infodump, painfully interrupting already shaky and unsteady narrative, adding tons of poorly placed and far-fetched exposition which it mistakes for layers of complexity, basking in self-importance while being needlessly silly (and, frankly, needless).
Maybe it was the sheer number of complex plot threads that weaves complexity but ended up going nowhere, with few (admittedly, memorable) exceptions.
Maybe it was what I can only perceive as casual racism so pervasive in descriptions of most 'ethnic' characters and entire groups featured in this novel, so present in every casually thrown stereotype. Intentional or not, it was unpleasantly grating.
Maybe it was the lack of dimension in Stephenson's characters. Hiro appears to be created as an embodiment of a teenage computer whiz's dreams, not developing in the slightest throughout the novel, only acquiring more and more badassery in the throwaway 'why not?' sloppy manner. Y.T., despite her awesomeness², behaving in a strangely robotic fashion. Raven and Uncle Enzo, frustratingly underdeveloped. Juanita, whose character could have been interesting, appears to exist solely as potential mate for Hiro. The only times I felt any connection to the characters were the appearances of the robotic dog, and I am not even a dog person.
² Y.T., while being far from an excellent character, was at least a ray of (grumpy) sunshine in the otherwise grey landscape of this novel. She has spunk and heart and confidence that is engaging and does not strike fakes notes that often. She made me almost care, and for this I appreciate her character. If only the rest if the book had the same spirit...Maybe it was the inability to interweave the plot threads into a coherent storyline, to create a bigger whole out of separate parts. The ideas are there, the concepts are there; what's missing is cohesiveness able to pull them together, untangle them and weave a net captivating the readers' brains and imagination. Without this cohesiveness, even the wildest and most daring ideas - like Stephenson's unconventional approach to viruses, for instance - remain disjointed, underdeveloped, unfinished, unpolished, like the refugee Raft in his novel, made of heaps of refuse clumped together trying to make a whole but failing at it.
Honestly, I can't help but see how this book would have worked so much better in a graphic format, being it a comic book (like, apparently, it was initially envisioned) or a film; the action scenes would have looked splendid while the awkwardness of language with overused frequently clumsy metaphors and the jarring present tense (which really doesn't work for this story) would have been cast aside.
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Yes, I am very disappointed at my disappointment with this book. I wish I had the ability to overlook its flaws, but the indifference I felt when reading it precluded me from caring enough to let its good moments overshadow the bad. 2 stars, one for the robot-doggy and another for Y.T. who occasionally made me almost care.
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Also posted on my blog. Neal Stephenson me lu lu mu al nu um me en ki me en me lu lu mu me al nu um me al nu um me me mu lu e al nu um me dug ga mu me mu lu e al nu um me... Neal Stephenson Wow.
Wow, wow, wow.
I had thought that William Gibson’s Neuromancer was the alpha male of the cyberpunk genre; the template upon which all others would be drawn. Turns out, Gibson was the prophet, but Stephenson was the barbarian, breaking ground with a riveting, relentless new age thriller.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is a wild trip.
A fun conglomerate of Hunter S. Thompson, Philip K. Dick, Anthony Burgess and John Brunner, written 8 years after Neuromancer and 19 years before Ready Player One this is a bright light on the cyberpunk literary landscape. Set in a near alternative future, Stephenson introduces a world where governments have collapsed and societies are held loosely together by anarcho-capitalism.
The book was nominated for a Prometheus Award but what could be a libertarian dream may also be seen as a laissez-faire nightmare. This is a blitzkrieg of ideas, a cacophony of sci-fi, techno-socio-economic observations, a kaleidoscope of theological and philosophical concepts thrown together in a Mark Twainian fantasy hopped up on Red Bull and amphetamines.
Above all this is an intelligent, modern adventure that expertly weaves in elements of pre-history and archeological thrill seeking. If Bladerunner led to The Matrix, then this is what’s next. And, if Stephenson had not boiled it all together enough into a steaming cup of Have At You!, then he also has the best name for a lead character of all time: Hiro Protagonist.
A very, very Goodread, five stars, two snaps and a bag of chips.
** 2018 addendum - it is a testament to great literature that a reader recalls the work years later and this is a book about which I frequently think. As great a hero as Hiro is, the scenes between Raven and YT are those that I recall the most and Raven is a character about whom more could be written. The casting of Ravinoff by Jason Momoa would be a good one.
Neal Stephenson
Schon mit der ersten Zeile des bahnbrechenden Cyberpunk-Romans Snow Crash katapultiert Neal Stephenson den Leser in eine nicht allzu ferne Zukunft. In dieser Welt kontrolliert die Mafia den Pizzaservice, die USA bestehen aus einer Kette gleichartig organisierter Stadtstaaten und das Internet -- im Buch verkörpert durch das Metaverse -- sieht aus wie es uns der Medienrummel vom letzten Jahr glauben machen will. Das ist die Welt des Protagonisten Hiro -- Hacker, Samurai-Schwertkämpfer und Fahrer beim Pizzaservice. Als sich sein bester Freund mit einer neuen Designerdroge, Snow Crash genannt, ins Jenseits befördert und seine gleichermaßen schöne wie kluge Exfreundin Hiro um Hilfe bittet, was macht unser Protagonist? Er eilt zur Rettung herbei. Snow Crash, halsbrecherischer Roman des 21. Jahrhunderts, verarbeitet so ziemlich alles vom sumerischen Mythos bis hin zur Vision einer postmodernen Zivilisation am Rande des Zusammenbruchs. Schneller als das Fernsehen und weitaus unterhaltsamer zeichnet Snow Crash das Portrait einer Zukunft, die bizarr genug ist, um plausibel zu sein.
Empfohlenes Buch für die Sektion Science-Fiction und Fantasy
Dieses spannende Cyberpunk-Abenteuer sicherte Neal Stephenson seinen Platz in der Science-Fiction-Szene und schon allein die ersten 30 Seiten sind Ihr Geld wert. Das Buch beschwört eine zukünftige Welt herauf, in der das Internet virtuell ist und Avatare -- virtuelle Identitäten -- die Eintrittskarte zum Metaverse bilden. Aber eine Sache, die Snow Crash genannt wird, lichtet die Reihen der wichtigen Persönlichkeiten des Metaverse und eine Infokalypse droht. Hier kommt der Protagonist Hiro ins Spiel, Pizzaauslieferer, Ausnahme-Schwertkämpfer und Superhacker. Hiro und Teenie-Girl/Super-Skatepunk Y.T. sind wahrscheinlich die einzigen, die noch alles retten können, aber nur wenn sie nicht vorher von der Mafia oder von einem mit eigener Atombombe bewaffneten Psychopathen umgebracht werden.
Snow Crash
I expected this to be bizarre. I was not disappointed!
In the past I have not had much luck with Cyberpunk. While I did enjoy this one more than my previous experiences, I still don’t think it will be a genre that I will generally go out of my way to read. It is just a little but too out there, to the point of being a chore to push through, from time to time.
This book goes from cinematic action to humor to religious philosophy to computer hacking to mafia violence with great abandon. In discussing this with my book club we had to clarify timelines and how one chapter might relate to another because of the fuzzy jumps in the plot. But, then I would find giant sections of great and extremely interesting clarity. It really did keep me on my toes!
I am not sure who I might recommend this to because I don’t think I know anyone that I would point at and say “yeah, this book is so you!” But, it is considered a modern classic, so it may come up in book discussions and it might be worth having it as a point of reference between you and your book buddies. But, be warned, I feel like the majority might find it to be a bit of a chore and lose interest quickly.
Neal Stephenson Did you ever have a kid at school who tried to appear smart and as the font of all knowledge by catching on to the tail-ends of things while listening to adults, absorbing some of it, and then spouting forth in front of an assembly of kids, his (or her, --let's be fair here) own regurgitation of what he had heard in the adult quarter, which would often make most of the other kids hang on to his/her every word simply because they themselves didn't have a clue what he was talking about?
Well, with Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson is that kid grown up. Stephenson latches on to all kinds of ideas and then regurgitates his reductionist, lopsided version of them in 'novel' form. The effect it had on this reader, is similar to what the screeching of chalk on a board does to most people; it set my teeth on edge.
There are so many lopsided, half-developed ideas with huge holes in logic in them, in this novel, that I cannot mention them all and remain as brief as I am sure that you, dear reader, would prefer me to be. Most of them pertain to Stephenson's lopsided extrapolation of how a virtual reality world would work, and his (to me loopy) ideas on neurolinguistics, ancient history and religions.
I was ambivalent about his snarky depiction of capitalism taken to the extreme. In the Snow Crash world, everything is privatised to the point that civil services such as police and prisons are privatised, and 'burbclaves' (small city states) have their own laws and services to the point that America doesn't have federal law anymore--yet there are still Feds! The latter institution is highly satirised by Stephenson, with regard to the typical bureaucratic yards of red tape and the tech and intel gathering overkill and so on. I admit that I found these bits humorous. I reckon Stephenson is, by their inclusion into a state that has no laws, and where the federal government seems merely a token from days gone by, saying that the FBI was superfluous to start with in any case, hah. But the overall effect of the Snow Crash background setting is that of an almost schizophrenic collage of bits and pieces stuck together to create a highly disjunctive world.
I enjoyed the action sequences and I very much enjoyed his two female protagonists; slightly less so the male one.
In this early novel, Stephenson shows faint glimmerings of promise. His clumsy explanations of the tech aspects of the world is jarring and often nonsensical, so the main little points of light lie with the action sequences and the characterization, the latter which I found not too bad since many of his stereotypes were slightly more rounded than actually stereotypical and many of the characters were relatively believable and even likeable in spite of the clumsiness. The hero Hiro, (or shall I say, Hiro Protagonist, the protagonist) did feel paper-thin however, like just a another piece of deus ex machina.
So, four stars for the fact that the novel passes the Bechdel test, and for having created the eminently likeable character Y.T.
But minus a star for the jarring racism and lack of cultural and ethnic sensitivity, and minus another star for setting my teeth on edge with his loopy ideas and his lopsided, cartoony projections into a future consisting of what feels like a world constructed of cardboard cutouts.
(And minus a virtual star for positing that patriarchal religions are more rational than matriarchal ones. )
Oh, and pretty important to me is to mention the subtraction of another virtual star for the sex with a fifteen year old girl, and her 'relationship' with a mass murderer more than twice her age.
Add half a star back for the humor.
Many people credit Stephenson with being the first person to think of a cyberverse in which humans could participate represented by avatars, but by his own admission, Lucasfilm with Habitat was there before him. ;)
In fact, it might not be an overstatement to say that Stephenson had pretty much gypped his idea off of developers Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar. (Please be my guest and Google them.)
In his book The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Howard Rheingold writes in Chapter Six:
In Austin, Texas, in 1990, at the First Conference on Cyberspace, I met the two programmers who created the first large-scale, multi-user, commercial virtual playground.
In their address to the conference, and the paper they later published, The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat, Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer recounted their experience as the designers and managers of a virtual community that used computer graphics as well as words to support an online society of tens of thousands. Much of that conference in Austin was devoted to discussions of virtual-reality environments in which people wear special goggles and gloves to experience the illusion of sensory immersion in the virtual world via three-dimensional computer graphics.
Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar stood out in that high-tech crowd because the cyberspace they had created used a very inexpensive home computer, often called a toy computer, and a cartoonlike two-dimensional representation to create their kind of virtual world. Farmer and Morningstar had one kind of experience that the 3-D graphics enthusiasts did not have, however--the system they had designed, Habitat, had been used by tens of thousands of people.
Source: http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/6.html
Papers presented by Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar :
http://www.stanford.edu/class/history...
Some fascinating thoughts on the internet as a marketplace:
http://www.stanford.edu/class/history...
PS. I relented and added a half star for making YT female and such a fun character and subtracted a quarter star for making her blonde, then added back a quarter star for the way in which NS made fun of the FBI bureaucracy. Neal Stephenson It had great world building, great concepts, and great satire, but story wise the last 20% completely falls apart. I was a little disappointed by the ending. Also, I had a hard time with the active voice used throughout this book. Reading it felt like a friend pitching a movie to me.
The language-as-programming concept was terrific though, even though I think that Max Barry (obviously influenced by this book) wrote a much more compelling story using the same high concepts when he wrote Lexicon. Neal Stephenson First published in 1992, Snow Crash is considered one of the seminal cyber-punk novels. I wasn’t even sure what that meant when I picked it up; I plucked it from the stacks at the used bookstore with the vague feeling this was one of those classics I’m supposed to have read. For once, the inside voice was right–this was a book I didn’t want to miss.
The opening scene of a mad-cap pizza delivery quickly draws the reader in. Hiro Protagonist (cringe), thirty year-old hacker, chronically unsuited for the career-track, has now found his longest term employment delivering pizzas for the Mafia, who now run pizza chains along with more dubious enterprises. He’s racing against the clock, trying to get the pizza delivered so Uncle Enzo, spokesman and Don, doesn’t have to apologize and give up a whole wad of cash. His delivery credentials get him through most of the gated suburbs, but a short cut lands him in deep water. Thankfully, a skateboarder who was hitching a lift using a special skater harpoon takes pity on him and completes the delivery with seconds to spare. Her actions bring her to the attention of Uncle Enzo. Hiro’s actions, unfortunately cost him his job, but it isn’t long before his genius ex-girlfriend recruits him to find a virus that’s wiping computers clean–and hackers’ minds.
That’s just the first few pages. It goes on to involve a shared computer simulation, religious evangelicals, an ear-destroying rock concert, a sociopath on a motorcycle, a fusion-powered attack dog and a floating raft-like armada.
Three and a half static-y stars
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Unfortunately, my windy and critical review will have to be continued someplace permanent, where it won't be deleted.
Find it at:
http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/0...
or
http://carols.booklikes.com/post/7602... Neal Stephenson I have a little SAT analogy to help you understand how awesome this book is: Snow Crash is to Books as The Matrix is to movies (with only the absolute BEST parts of Tron and Da Vinci Code thrown in). I'm not talking about all the commercialized Matrix-saga and the weird hype... I'm talking about the first time you sat in the movie theater and saw that chick in the Matrix spin around in suspended animation and kick the crap out of a bunch of cops and thought, What the #@*%??? COOL! That's pretty much how this entire book reads. I actually had to add it to my favorites list. Can't believe I'd never heard of it before?! (my thanks for suggesting it, Erich)
I guarantee there is not a sentient male breathing who won't count this among their top 20 at least. As for you fellow females, if you enjoy a great action romp like I do... and I don't mean the stupid, dime-a-dozen shoot-em-ups, we're talking Die Hard I/Aliens/Terminator 2 (and aforementioned Matrix) caliber here... then you'll love it, too. It has everything: Mafia pizza delivery tycoons, robot dogs, samurai fights, brainwashing hackers, ancient Sumerian gods, hydrogen bombs, hallucinogenic drugs, punk skateboarders... SWEET, as J.T. would say.
My favorite parts: Stephenson's out-of-this-world unique writing style, the analogy of hacking into a persons brain using language in the same way people hack into computers using code, the amazing action sequences, use of the second person (you/we) to directly connect to the reader, the sections written from the robot dog's perspective, the use of binary code-type language in terms like hacker and harpooning (for example, the hero can both hack into a computer AND hack your body to pieces with a katana). BRILLIANT!
A couple tiny complaints: There wasn't nearly enough of Raven, the villain. He ranks right under Hannibal Lector and that guy from the movie Serenity to me... everything a villain should be: a sexy, terrifying brute of a nuclear mutant who rips people to pieces with glass knives. Also, Hiro Protagonist wasn't much of a... well, hero protagonist. He did a little too much research and not quite enough slashing people with his katana for my taste. Raven's foil, Y.T., stole the show--TOTALLY. Not like I minded. I'm all for a 15-year-old skater chick saving the world. SWEET!
(Rated R for an isolated sex scene, medium violence, and consistent swearing.)
FAVORITE QUOTES:
Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest mother****** in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime... Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer had to worry about trying to be the baddest mother****** in the world. The position is taken.
He turns off the techno-**** 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.
BMW drivers take evasive action at the drop of a hat, emulating the drivers in the BMW advertisements--this is how they convince themselves they didn't get ripped off.
Interesting things happen along borders--transitions--not in the middle where everything is the same.
[We've:] got millions of those Young Mafia types. All destined to wear blazers and shuffle papers in suburbia. You don't respect those people very much, Y.T., because you're young and arrogant. But I don't respect them much either, because I'm old and wise.
The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it.
Neal Stephenson