I read Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash a week ago, after a couple of friends have been bugging me to read it for literally years. I meant to write down some thoughts sooner than this, but I had to digest to pin down what was bugging me.
First, the good stuff. The main character's name is Hiro Protagonist and that's pretty much the best character name of all time. He's the best swordfighter in the world and an expert hacker, but despite being such a cool skilled guy, he's cleverly not portrayed as unbeatable as he constantly gets into trouble that can't be solved with swordfighting and hacking. There's lots of action and chases across franchise-countries, the deadly serious Mafia pizza delivery business, and eventually on a privately owned but still armed aircraft carrier.
The digital world is neat because it's not just a magical computer land - there are quirks and workarounds and backdoors because of haphazard development, and the history and reasoning are frequently explained.
The core plot deals with a neurolinguistic virus and all kinds of really cool ideas and history, which is normally the kind of thing I love. My issue with Snow Crash is that, unlike the rest of the book, all the neurolinguistic explanation is done via infodump dialogue - Hiro researching with the help of a librarian program that explains everything. The delivery of these segments feels clunky compared to the more natural revelations of the other history and background of the world.
Anyway, a neurolinguistic virus is an extremely cool idea, and actually quite similar to an idea I've been working on for a D&D game - a memetic infection, or "thought plague" - a plague that infects the mind through the spread of words and ideas. Stephenson's virus is more fleshed out and historically-based than my D&D ideas, which are more fantasy/horror than sci-fi. So that's given me some food for thought for D&D planning.
Oh yeah, and you should probably also read Snow Crash.
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