When comparing Snow Crash vs The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, the Slant community recommends Snow Crash for most people. In the question“What are the best cyberpunk books?” Snow Crash is ranked 3rd while The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Snow Crash is:
The greatest success of Snow Crash, however, is that it's fun... for a certain type of reader, at least. In defiance of all the rules and protocols of science fiction writing, Snow Crash is like crack for geeks precisely because it doesn't do things the way they're supposed to be done. The break-neck opening chapters, those massive infodumps on Sumerian religion, information theory and everything else were -- from my perspective at least -- a vertiginous rush the first time through, and I still get a kick out of them now after maybe six re-reads.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro More fun than traditional cyberpunk novels
The greatest success of Snow Crash, however, is that it's fun... for a certain type of reader, at least. In defiance of all the rules and protocols of science fiction writing, Snow Crash is like crack for geeks precisely because it doesn't do things the way they're supposed to be done. The break-neck opening chapters, those massive infodumps on Sumerian religion, information theory and everything else were -- from my perspective at least -- a vertiginous rush the first time through, and I still get a kick out of them now after maybe six re-reads.
Cons
Con Sumerian history infodumps might not be for everyone
The book includes a lot of information about Sumerian history that simply might feel like a history lesson to some.