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    103 pages of summaries and analysis on Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.This comprehensive study guide includes the following sections written by BookRags.com: Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, and Topics for Discussion.

    The people who care have remade the Earth in their image, and its an Earthly Paradise. Humanity is joined together under a single, popularly-elected world government. Gay marriage is a normal institution, the Libertarian Party rules, and the First Lady is Head of State.But who are the new underclass called Touchables, and why are they hunted for sport? Why are clones treated as inferior? Why do men outnumber women seven to one? And why are teenage women being drafted into government service for three years?This 1984 Prometheus Award-winning novel is the story of Joan Darris, a brilliant young artist in the medium of laser concerts. Is it her destiny to play music for men's eyes, or to make herself a plaything for their desires? How does the lingering horror of the murder she witnessed at five threaten to rob her not only of her artistic triumph, but also threaten the life of a man she loves?Like the novels of Huxley, Burgess, and Rand, The Rainbow Cadenza uses black humor to show you a future you fear but ends with a rainbow of hope.

    Paul Wilson, a practicing physician as well as the bestselling author of the Repairman Jack series, turns his attention to the day after tomorrow and shows us how genetic engineering might change the world.Just a few hundred genes separate humans from chimpanzees. Imagine someone altering the chimp genome, splicing in human genes to increase the size of the cranium, reduce the amount of body hair, enable speech. What sort of creature would result?Sims takes place in the very near future, when the science of genetics is fulfilling its vaunted potential. It's a world where genetically transmitted diseases are being eliminated. A world where dangerous or boring manual labor is gradually being transferred to "sims," genetically altered chimps who occupy a gray zone between simian and human. The chief innovator in this world is SimGen, which owns the patent on the sim genome and has begun leasing the creatures worldwide. But SimGen is not quite what it seems. It has secrets . . . secrets beyond patents and proprietary processes . . . secrets it will go to any lengths to protect. Sims explores this brave new world as it is turned upside down and torn apart when lawyer Patrick Sullivan decides to try to unionize the sims.Right now, as you read these words, some company somewhere in the world is toying with the chimp genome. That is not fiction, it is fact. Sims is a science thriller that will come true. One way or another.

    Three individuals obtain the control of three strange silver boxes of extraordinary power that, if combined, could unlock the secrets of the universe, and each owner battles private demons in their quest to unite the boxes.

    But now, poised on the brink of manhood, he feels himself moved by strange new urgings - urgings that will lead him far from the quiet life he has known. Though these stirrings are unfamiliar to him, virtuous Hari recognizes them for what they are: a hunger for spiritual enlightenment. As so many have before, he sets his feet upon the pilgrim's path, becoming a wanderer in search of true wisdom. But who can know the ways of the Gods, or foretell the twists of fortune? Unbeknownst to Hari, his quest has become the subject of a wager between two immortals: Mohini, a pulchritudinous Apsara; and the vilely demonic Ravana, who lusts after her.

    He hires the husband-and-wife detective team of Ted and Cynthia Randall to follow him and find out. But Ted and Cynthia are mystified when they find that their own memories of what happens during their investigation do not match. There is a thirteenth floor to Jonathan's building that does not exist, there are mysterious and threatening beings living inside mirrors, and all of reality is not what they thought it was.Contents...And He Built a Crooked House... (1941)They (1941)The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (1942)Our Fair City (1949)The Man Who Traveled in Elephants (1957)...All You Zombies... (1959)

    Technology has made significant advances, and there are more robots--and clones.One such is E.A. Smithe, a borrowed person, a clone who lives on a third-tier shelf in a public library. His personality is an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. Smithe is library property, not a legal human. The father of Colette Coldbrook, a wealthy library patron, has disappeared and been proclaimed dead. She decides to check Smithe out of the library because he is the surviving personality of the author of Murder on Mars. A physical copy of that book was the sole item in her father's safe, and it contains an important secret, the key to immense family wealth. Her brother, Conrad, turned up dead in the family home shortly after giving the book to her. Colette has reached the end of her options. She's afraid of the police, and there are others who might want the book's secret. Smithe is her last hope. Borrowing him might help her find the connection between the deaths and Murder on Mars. Together they find something far beyond their expectations--something almost anyone would kill for.

    This reborn civilization is one in which every individual is incorporated at birth, and spends many years trying to attain control over his or her own life by getting a majority of his or her own shares. Life extension has made life very long indeed.Now the incredible has happened: a billionaire businessman from our time, frozen in secret in the early twenty-first century, is discovered and resurrected, given health and a vigorous younger body. Justin Cord is the only unincorporated man in the world, a true stranger in this strange land. Justin survived because he is tough and smart. He cannot accept only part ownership of himself, even if that places him in conflict with a civilization that extends outside the solar system to the Oort Cloud.  People will be arguing about this novel and this world for decades.

    The only problem is that the Confederacion needs him as one of its twelve Prime Operators for its secret service, the TBII. The TBII wants him as a spy, thief & assassin. It's not, of course, a problem for the Confederacion, which simply uses immersion therapy & hypnotic personality overlay for Otto's training, then sends him out in deep cover, encased in plastiflesh, on a variety of dangerous missions on a number of bizarre worlds. But for him, it's a different matter: what he has to witness & what he's forced to do take a terrible toll. Always he returns to his original self--his conscience stabbed by the memory of all those he'd killed in the service of interstellar harmony.

    Computers will catch the killers--but not this time. One cop will unearth the truth, but it's not human. From the author of "Jed the Dead."

    The Church preaches that life is too brief to contemplate the mysteries of the universe: eternity is required. In order to achieve this, the converted become Monks -- cyborgs with human brains, enhanced robotic bodies, and virtually unlimited life spans. Enter Avery Cates, a dangerous criminal known as the best killer-for-hire around. The authorities have a special mission in mind for Cates: assassinate Dennis Squalor. But for Cates, the assignment will be the most dangerous job he's ever undertaken -- and it may well be his last.

    His quest takes him from Dayzone into the permanent dark of Nocturna. As the vicious, seemingly invisible serial killer known only as Quicksilver haunts the streets, Nyquist starts to suspect that the runaway girl holds within her the key to the city’s fate. In the end, there’s only one place left to search: the shadow-choked zone known as Dusk.

    Other outlandish tales include John Wayne battling cancer using a highly alternative therapy, a gene for integrity being harvested from the brain of an unwilling donor, and the landing of Christopher Columbus in modern-day Manhattan. Included are the Locus and Nebula Award-nominated novelette Auspicious Eggs and several previously unpublished pieces.ContentsIntroduction by Michael Swanwick“Auspicious Eggs”“Come Back, Dr. Sarcophagus”“Director’s Cut”“Fucking Justice”“Isabella of Castile Answers Her Mail”“Martyrs of the Upshot Knothole”“The Cat’s Pajamas”“The Eye That Never Blinks”“The Fate of Nations”“The War of the Worldviews”“The Wisdom of the Skin”“The Zombies of Montrose”

    In the festering sewers below a darker game is afoot: a Wall Street takeover artist has been murdered, and Gant’s crusading ex-wife, Joan Fine, has been hired to find out why. The year is 2023, and Ayn Rand has been resurrected and bottled in a hurricane lamp to serve as Joan's assistant; an eco-terrorist named Philo Dufrense travels in a pink-and-green submarine designed by Howard Hughes; a Volkswagen Beetle is possessed by the spirit of Abbey Hoffman; Meisterbrau, a mutant great white shark, is running loose in the sewers beneath Times Square; and a one-armed 181-year-old Civil War veteran joins Joan and Ayn in their quest for the truth. All of whom, and many more besides, are caught up in a vast conspiracy involving Walt Disney, J. Edgar Hoover, and a mob of homicidal robots.