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February: Fiasco by Stanisław Lem
March: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse #1) by Dennis Taylor
Discuss Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson in the comments below.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein was published in 1966:
The book popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL ("There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"), and helped popularize the constructed language Loglan, which is used in the story for precise human-computer interaction. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations credits this novel with the first printed appearance of the phrase "There's no free lunch", although the phrase and its abbreviation considerably predate the novel.
The virtual assistant Mycroft is named after a computer system from the novel.
Previously: Announcement post • Mars, Ho! • Foundation • The Three-Body Problem
(Score: 1) by callmeemo on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:08PM
I went into Snow Crash a few years ago expecting a cool cyberpunk adventure. I was somewhat new to the genre as far as books go (fantasy's my preferred), so I was excited for this staple (and Neuromancer). Now I'm down with the dystopian future, reflective and all that, 1984 is a warning not a guide, whatever. I just found the author's style to be underwhelming. I enjoyed the concepts, his world and technologies were interesting to learn about, and his characters were fun if lacking depth. The plot, however, just felt somewhat strung together from act to act with characters suddenly moving somewhere else entirely, often. It felt like things happened off the spotlight that could be justified or explained, but weren't really.
As deimtee mentioned, Stephenson just seemed like he was in a hurry to get to the end of it. Too many things left undone or unsaid to really feel enjoyable. I don't regret having read it, the concepts and Hiro Protagonist himself were certainly memorable (I'm a sucker for Tower of Babylon stories, thanks SMT), it just needed more time in the oven.