Snowcrash: Background, date, etc

Constantinople

Banned
For anyone who has not read Snowcrash, it takes place in an Anarcho-Capitalistic USA, where everything is privately owned and the country is one giant strip mall. It deals with a computer-virus/religion/real virus/linguistically spread diseases of some sort.
What I've always wondered is when (for people who have read it) do you think it takes place, and what do you think the background to this world is?
 

Zyzzyva

Hiro and Raven's parents are both war vets; it takes place a generation after WWII - probably early 90s, around the time it was published.
 

Baradas

From what I remember from another story of his, the government collapsed because a means of completely anonymous internet access was invented, so you could buy anything on the internet and not have it be taxed by the government.

Without the means of income from taxation the government began to collapse and the corporations moved in.

We also actually see what happens in the future of that world in Diamond Age, where people are organized by phylum rather then geographical location. So it's gone back to the tribe as the main organizational method for humanity.

And I always assumed anywhere between early 90's to early 00's as when it was set.
 

Zyzzyva

Baradas said:
From what I remember from another story of his, the government collapsed because a means of completely anonymous internet access was invented, so you could buy anything on the internet and not have it be taxed by the government.

Without the means of income from taxation the government began to collapse and the corporations moved in.

We also actually see what happens in the future of that world in Diamond Age, where people are organized by phylum rather then geographical location. So it's gone back to the tribe as the main organizational method for humanity.

And I always assumed anywhere between early 90's to early 00's as when it was set.
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That's The Great Simoleon Caper, right? I need to read that.

OTOH, he takes a more reasonable view of it in Cryptonomicon where he notes that worst come to worst the government can just go back to land taxes - as he says, it's kinda hard to hide land on the internet.
 

Dr. Strangelove

Banned
IIRC, Don Vito, who happens to be a man in his 60's, was a Vietnam vet, which would place the setting sometime in the beginning of the 21st century, around 2010. This is consistent with the theory that Y.T. and one of the teachers of the boarding school at The Diamond Age being the same person, since The Diamond Age is mostly set around the 2040's.

From what I remember from another story of his, the government collapsed because a means of completely anonymous internet access was invented, so you could buy anything on the internet and not have it be taxed by the government.
Click to expand...

Actually, it is implied that it is what happens after Randy and his hacker friends succeed in creating the Vault at the end of Cryptonomicon; which means that all of these Stephenson's works are set in the same universe. I like to think that Randy's history is set at the end of the 90's or the early '00s in a world where either the .com bubble never burst, or his grandpa's invention of the modern computer during WWII led to an earlier development of computing.
 

Bob D

I know that by opening my mouth here, I'm going to remove all doubt about myself being a fool, but...

I thought Snow Crash and Diamond Age took place in the future. :(
 

Bob D

When I read the two books, I got the feeling that they didn't seem like predictions whose projected time of fulfillment had come and gone. It seems like that future could still come true OTL once we get our virtual reality tech up to snuff.
 
Electric Monk

Electric Monk

Dr. Strangelove said:
Actually, it is implied that it is what happens after Randy and his hacker friends succeed in creating the Vault at the end of Cryptonomicon; which means that all of these Stephenson's works are set in the same universe. I like to think that Randy's history is set at the end of the 90's or the early '00s in a world where either the .com bubble never burst, or his grandpa's invention of the modern computer during WWII led to an earlier development of computing.
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Not quite.

Two universes, I'm afraid, as Jipi is set in the future (probably in a similar timeframe to Snow Crash) but has no links to Snow Crash—not least because the workable government solution was already brought up in Cryptonomicon: property tax.

(Sales tax would also work for any non-Internet item, as the government wouldn't have to know who it was taxing to get the money. However e-cash, for those that used it, would probably result in the same "not on the books" cash transactions as occurs today in that some but not all e-cash/cash is reported to the government. Also credit cards would still be used, certainly, and would be taxable I imagine.)

Great Simoleon Caper-->Snow Crash-->Diamond Age

Baroque Cycle-->Cryptonomicon-->Jipi and the Paranoid Chip
 

Makwa

I had an idea once, of having a TL, starting around this year, where the world ends up in a world like Snow Crash. If I could only remember the details
 

The Lurker

You know, I wonder if the events of Interface (technologically-based manipulation of US presidential politics by secret corporate interests) couldn't also fit into that scheme somehow?

I never thought Cryptonomicon tied in with Snow Crash, etc. before but I guess it's possible if you read it that way.... I wonder what role there would be for Enoch Root in Diamond Age?
 

The Lurker

Actually, there are a couple real-world things that could dovetail into this.... one is the legal standing granted to 'corporate persons', another is the Davis-Stirling Act in California, which granted condo associations the right to raise taxes and maintain infrastructure..... add in a few things like private military contractors... and you could see a definite shift in peoples' status, from being dependent on a government for certain services to dependency on a quasi-corporate thing.

Wal-Mart Uber Alles.
 
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