|
''Snow Crash'' is Neal Stephenson's third novel, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's other novels it covers history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics and philosophy. Stephenson explained the title of the novel in his 1999 essay ''In the Beginning... was the Command Line'' as his term for a particular software failure mode on the early Apple Macintosh computer. Stephenson wrote about the Macintosh that "When the computer crashed and wrote gibberish into the bitmap, the result was something that looked vaguely like static on a broken television set—a 'snow crash' ". Stephenson also mentioned a book by Julian Jaynes, ''The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'', as one of the main influences for ''Snow Crash''. The book presents the Sumerian language as the firmware programming language for the brainstem, which is supposedly functioning as the BIOS for the human brain. According to characters in the book, the goddess Asherah is the personification of a linguistic virus, similar to a computer virus. The god Enki created a counter-program which he called a nam-shub that caused all of humanity to speak different languages as a protection against Asherah (a re-interpretation of the ancient Near Eastern story of the Tower of Babel). ''Snow Crash'' was nominated for both the British Science Fiction Award in 1993,〔(【引用サイトリンク】 1993 Award Winners & Nominees )〕 and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1994.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 1994 Award Winners & Nominees )〕 ==Background== The story begins in Los Angeles in the 21st century, no longer part of the United States. The federal government of the United States has ceded most of its power and territory to private organizations and entrepreneurs.〔"''Snow Crash'' depicts a twenty-first-century America in which the needs of entrepreneurs have won out over hopes of a free and egalitarian society." Rorty, ''Achieving Our Country,'' 4.〕 Franchising, individual sovereignty, and private vehicles reign supreme over the landscape (along with drug trafficking, violent crime, and traffic congestion). Mercenary armies compete for national defense contracts while private security guards preserve the peace in sovereign, gated housing developments. Highway companies compete to attract drivers to their roads and all mail delivery is by hired courier. The remnants of government maintain authority only in isolated compounds where they transact tedious make-work that is, by and large, irrelevant to the dynamic society around them. Much of the territory ceded by the government has been carved up into sovereign enclaves, each run by its own big business franchise (such as "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong", or the corporatized American Mafia) or the various residential ''burbclaves'' (suburban enclaves). This arrangement resembles anarcho-capitalism, a theme Stephenson carries over to his next novel ''The Diamond Age''. As described in both novels and the short story "The Great Simoleon Caper", hyperinflation has sapped the value of the U.S. dollar to the extent that trillion dollar bills—''Ed Meeses''—are nearly disregarded and the quadrillion dollar note—the ''Gipper''—is the standard 'small' bill. Hyperinflation encouraged people to instead use electronic currency which is exchanged in encrypted online transactions and is hence untaxable. For physical transactions they resort to alternative, non-hyperinflated currencies such as yen or "Kongbucks" (the official currency of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong). Hyperinflation has also negatively affected much of the rest of the world (with some exceptions like Japan), resulting in waves of desperate refugees from Asia who cross the Pacific in rickety ships hoping to arrive in North America. The ''Metaverse'', a phrase coined by Stephenson as a successor to the Internet, constitutes Stephenson's vision of how a virtual reality-based Internet might evolve in the near future. Resembling a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), the Metaverse is populated by user-controlled avatars as well as system daemons. Although there are public-access Metaverse terminals in ''Reality'', using them carries a social stigma among Metaverse denizens, in part because of the poor visual representations of themselves as low-quality avatars. Status in the Metaverse is a function of two things: access to restricted environments such as the Black Sun, an exclusive Metaverse club, and technical acumen, which is often demonstrated by the sophistication of one's avatar. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Snow Crash」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|