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. Trouble is Snow Crash is also a computer virus - and something more. Because once taken it infects the person behind the avatar. Snow Crash bleeds into reality. Which is really bad news for Hiro, freelance hacker and the Metaverse's best swordfighter (he wrote the code), and Y. T., skateboard kourier, street imp and mouthy teenage girl - because reality was shitty enough before someone started messing with it . . . Exploring linguistics, religion, computer science, politics, philosophy, cryptography and the future of pizza delivery, Snow Crash is a riveting, brake-neck adventure into the fast-approaching future. 'Brilliantly realized. Stephenson [is] an engaging guide to an onrushing tomorrow' New York Times Book Review 'A fantastic, slam-bang-overdrive, supersurrealistic, comic-spooky whirl through a tomorrow that is already happening. Stephenson is intelligent, perceptive, hip' Timothy Leary 'Like a Pynchon novel with the brakes removed' Washington Post