Snow Crash has one of the most effective opening hooks in science fiction, a loving description of a high-tech armored driver and car. A man with a mission. A man with wonderful high-tech toys and samurai swords, who works for the Mafia doing one of the few things that the United States still does better than any other country in the world. High-speed pizza delivery. It's a beautiful setup, even if the pizza delivery job doesn't last far beyond the opening pages. It introduces the reader to Hiro Protagonist ("Stupid name." "But you'll never forget it."), the skateboard courier Y.T., and some of the major players and political structure of Stephenson's future Los Angeles. Even better, it effectively introduces Stephenson's off-beat world, in which things like Mafia-owned pizza chains and franchised private countries guarded by dogs with nuclear power packs not only prompt an amazed chuckle, they start to make a bizarre amount of sense. The easiest box to put Snow Crash into is cyberpunk humor, and it certainly works as that. Stephenson's characters approach an insane, satirical world with an unflappable, sarcastic attitude, full of choice comments and well-timed skewering of idiots. But he's not content to just give the reader humorous ideas. He digs beneath the surface, filling out the corners and edges with bits of trivia and extrapolation, resulting in a highly improbable world that feels, while reading, like a living, breathing place just a few exaggerations around the corner from our own.
