I think it was self-contained in a way that genre books sometimes aren't. While Snowcrash was a great read and very memorable I wouldn't consider it a breakthrough book in regards to popularizing SciFi for a mainstream audience. I would argue that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), Snow Crash (1992), and Ready Player One (2011) have all held similar positions in their relative, similarly spaced generational pop-cultures. Looking just now, I was surprised to note that not only do they have similar rankings on Goodreads the reviews are practically interchangeable. But to be fair, there was also an age and digital experience divide for Snow Crash.īut the two books have a lot in common in terms of book reviews, reader reviews, sales, NYT bestseller list duration, etc. MeFi skews old for the book's intended audience, I think the 80s references are neither fun nor nostaligic for us. Well then I am going to have to go back to my original answer of Ready Player One.

'what current book holds the broad cultural position once occupied by Snowcrash' Not enough of the Magicians trilogy lives and grows in those weird cracks too little of it is truly inventive.'īoth RP1 and Magicians remix and retread popular tropes in their selected genres, which can be satisfying, but they both suffer from this problem. And those littler fissures, those breaks with reality, is where magic is born. 'Fantasy is ultimately about invention-pushing the imagination so far it threatens to snap. This is not what you asked for but is an interesting read that may, by means of a specific example, address the difficulty of pointing to such a book, since I think the flaws it outlines in The Magicians trilogy (which holds that kind of popular place, but is still somehow not Snowcrash, and not just because it's technically not SF) are the flaws of RP1 and other books: Different circles, maybe, but most people I know panned it hard and roll their eyes at it.

Snow crash audio book