Neal Stephenson. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.

This is perhaps the pinnacle of the cyberpunk novel. Neal Stephenson characterizes everything about the cyberpunk foresight in this book. In essence, he has taken the trends of today and projected them to the degree which we as a society are most likely to push them. Principal among the concepts are the incredibly huge industry of information collection and sales, a VR version of the internet which substitutes as life for nearly everyone (interestingly enough, Stephenson popularized the term avatar, and the Black Sun is his imaginative creation), and titanic corporate franchises, mass-producing every aspect of life from federal government to religion. One of the chief franchises to play a suprisingly protagonistic role in the book is the Costa Nostra Pizza Franchise. For, suggests Stephenson, once the mafia is able to operate without secrecy, there is no other organization or business that can handle dependable pizza delivery more reliably.

The protagonistic characters of the novel are Hiro Protagonist (!), who is essentially an un-heroic and dubiously employed hacker of the original team that created the Metaverse (the VR internet), a 15 year old courier girl named Y.T., who has an attitude exceeding that of even the worst courier (because the transfer of sensitive information via the Metaverse has become unsafe, the courier industry has become one of the largest and most influential of franchises, run entirely by skateboarding, angst-and-attitude-filled kids), and the aging, but feared and respected, Uncle Enzo, don of the Mafia franchise.

Although it takes the reluctant team a while to realize it, the chief antagonist of the novel is a right-wing, capitalistic, evangelistic, fanatical Texan named L. Bob Rife. Rife owns the largest communications franchise in the world, and secretly owns the largest religious franchise in the world, Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates. Because of his insatiable desire to control the world at large, he has been steadily working on his scheme to secure it.

The plot, of course, revolves around L. Bob Rife's nefarious plot. Essentially, he has been pouring much of his resources into creating a virus, called of course Snow Crash, in binary form to sling at hackers (one of his worst enemies and biggest threats), and a narcotic version distributed to the thousands of refugees making their way towards America (a convenient, Snow Crash-enslaved workforce which he collects onto a mile diameter floating raft, comprised of thousands of boats lashed together in the Pacific), and a verbal version, on the lines of biblical babel, imparted to the needy masses of his religious franchise (which will help him to take over the world with little resistance). The team is slowly discovering the plot, and will eventually move to interdict it.

One of the unique angles of the book is Stephensons allusions, both directly and indirectly, to the ancient Sumerian culture, and the concept of babel. This philosophical exploration eventually becomes critical to the plot.

As for the cyberpunk projections, Stephenson has created a very probable and realistic prediction of the future. Los Angeles is the primary city of action. In Stephenson's world, Federal Government has been dismissed as a governmental force, and it now operates as an information and programming industry. Thus, policing has moved to the private sector, as have all other forms of governmental or municipal concerns. So, the construction and maintenance of roads has fallen to many competing franchises, housing is handled by themed franchises (chillingly similar to today's gated communities), justice is a franchulate, and so on.