THE 30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION WITH NEW NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED MATERIAL After the Internet what
came next? Enter the Metaverse - cyberspace home to avatars and software daemons where
anything and just about everything goes. Newly available on the Street - the Metaverse's main
drag - is Snow Crash. A cyberdrug that reduces avatars in the digital world to dust but also
infects users in real life leaving them in a vegetative state. This is bad news for Hiro a
freelance hacker and the Metaverse's best swordfighter and mouthy skateboard courier Y. T..
Together investigating the Infocalypse they trace back the roots of language itself to an
ancient Sumerian priesthood and find they must race to stop a shadowy virtual villain hell-bent
on world domination. In this special edition of the remarkably prescient modern classic Neal
Stephenson explores linguistics computer science politics and philosophy in the form of a
break-neck adventure into the fast-approaching yet eerily recognizable future. 'Fast-forward
free-style mall mythology for the twenty-first century' William Gibson 'Brilliantly realized'
New York Times Book Review 'Like a Pynchon novel with the brakes removed' Washington Post 'A
remarkably prescient vision of today's tech landscape' Vanity Fair
