Snow Crash is 100% over the top satire but also 100% enjoyable. When the first chapter of the book introduces you to your protagonist, Hiro Protagonist, you know you’re in for something a little off.
It is a story that knows exactly how stupid it is, and that means it can get away with anything. It’s just played so straight that half the target audience misses the joke. That’s like if Bored Of The Rings was somehow more popular and enduring than the Tolkein novels it mocked - the high-fantasy tropes are still there, and the book does function as a hero’s journey. It just stars Dildo Bugger and his son Frito.
The measure of any adaptation - if that somehow exits development hell, one of these decades - will be the car chase in the middle. If they show it, they’ve failed.
For anyone seeing this and wishing there really was a stupidly enjoyable satire of 1980s cyberpunk tropes:
It’s called Snow Crash.
Snow Crash is 100% over the top satire but also 100% enjoyable. When the first chapter of the book introduces you to your protagonist, Hiro Protagonist, you know you’re in for something a little off.
It is a story that knows exactly how stupid it is, and that means it can get away with anything. It’s just played so straight that half the target audience misses the joke. That’s like if Bored Of The Rings was somehow more popular and enduring than the Tolkein novels it mocked - the high-fantasy tropes are still there, and the book does function as a hero’s journey. It just stars Dildo Bugger and his son Frito.
The measure of any adaptation - if that somehow exits development hell, one of these decades - will be the car chase in the middle. If they show it, they’ve failed.
Guess I gotta go read Snow Crash then.
Snow Crash is a very good book by Neal Stephenson. The post is just about an invented parody of the genre.
Check out William Gibsons Neuromancer (which mote or less coined the genre), it sticks maybe more to OPs post IMO anyways.
Snow Crash is an extant parody of the genre, hence the recommendation.
The main character is named Hiro Protagonist.