Stephenson originally planned Snow Crash as a computer-generated graphic novel in collaboration with artist Tony Sheeder.[9] In the author's acknowledgments Stephenson recalls:
it became clear that the only way to make the Mac do the things we needed was to write a lot of custom image-processing software. I have probably spent more hours coding during the production of this work than I did actually writing it, even though it eventually turned away from the original graphic concept...[10]
Ideas and ideologies
The books themes include history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy.[2]
Snow Crash takes place under anarcho-capitalism, a theme Stephenson carries over to his next novel The Diamond Age. As described in both novels and the short story "The Great Simoleon Caper" (1995), hyperinflation has sapped the value of the US dollar to the extent that trillion-dollar bills are nearly disregarded, and the quadrillion-dollar note is the standard "small" bill.[8]: 241 This hyperinflation was created by the government overprinting money due to loss of tax revenue, as people increasingly began to use electronic currency, which they exchanged in untaxable encrypted online transactions. For physical transactions, most people resort to alternative currencies such as the yen or "Kongbucks" (the official currency of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong). Hyperinflation has also negatively affected much of the world, resulting in waves of desperate refugees from Asia who cross the Pacific in rickety ships hoping to arrive in North America.
The Metaverse, a phrase coined by Stephenson as a successor to the Internet, constitutes Stephenson's early 1990s vision of how a virtual reality–based Internet might evolve shortly. Resembling a massively multiplayer online game (MMO). The Metaverse is populated by user-controlled avatars, as well as system daemons. Although there are public-access Metaverse terminals in Reality, using them carries a social stigma among Metaverse denizens, in part because of the poor visual representations of themselves as low-quality avatars. Status in the Metaverse is a function of two things: access to restricted areas such as the Black Sun, an exclusive Metaverse club, and the sophistication of one's avatar.
