Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash has a beautiful opening that shows a high-tech armored driver and car. Hiro is a man with a mission who with high-tech toys and samurai swords and working for the Mafia, doing one of the few things that the US still does better than any other country in the world - high-speed pizza delivery. Hilarious and clever. The first chapter of the book had a nice fast paste to it.

The setup works really well too. It introduces the reader to Hiro Protagonist ( so basically “Hero”!!), 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. So this is crazy! Because its so true and logical. Another way to look at it is: Big companies have the money. They own the food industry as well as the technology industry. Due to war and poor economy companies have taken over governments. Due to lack of resources  companies became few but big. Close future of our world!? Interesting idea for a movie possibly.  

Snow Crash  is a cyberpunk humor, and it certainly works as that. Stephenson's characters approach an insane world with a sarcastic attitude, filled with confidence of what they know to be right. Stephenson also goes further by 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 away from our own. Beautiful. 

The plot of Snow Crash  isn't quite as believable - someone has developed an information virus that affects people, not just computers, and the resulting fast-paced detective work and running fight scenes involve religion, archeology, and ancient Sumerian myth. It’s unbelievably simple but it works so well together! This is the book that made Stephenson's reputation as a sci-fi writer, and it's still one of the best books he's written.