Neal Stephenson’s 6 Metaspace ½¾

HILE PAT CADIGAN is definitely a science fiction writer W who identifies with the genre, Neal Stephenson only occa- sionally contributes to science fiction. Sometimes he uses the pseudonym Stephen Bury, as for the novel Interface (1994). His novel Snow Crash can perhaps be regarded as one of the first to parody the cyberpunk formula, and thus marks the boundary between original and derivative contributions to the sub-genre. By the early 1990s, cyberpunk was already stale: nothing appeared to both adhere to the sub-genre any longer and contribute something significantly new. The novelty value of cyberpunk may have been rapidly fading, but the cyberpunk plot device of virtual reality has been permanently added to the pool of science fiction themes. Many writers who do not produce cyberpunk as such still employ the idea. For example, Catherine Asaro, in her Skolian saga, Primary Inversion (1995) and Catch the Lightning (1996), invents a new virtual space called psiber- space, which is based on telepathic lineages between humans and computer networks. Stephenson alone explores a new dimension of the virtual reality trope (called the Metaverse), which displays meta- fictional tendencies much less explicit in other cyberpunk writers. He therefore represents an interesting case of overlap between the mainstream in general and the science fiction genre in particular. Why is the metafictional tendency of cyberspace strongest in Stephenson’s Snow Crash, which marks the waning of cyberpunk? Perhaps metafiction is rarely exploited by core cyberpunk writers 172 VIRTUAL GEOGRAPHIES ½¾ such as Gibson, Bruce Sterling, or Jon Williams, because the laws of science fiction do not easily accommodate such writing strategies. Science fiction is a genre which relies heavily on realistic narrative conventions for the portrayal of its invented worlds. Perhaps it is exactly Snow Crash’s peculiar position between science fiction and the mainstream that allows it to best exploit the metafictional potential. Stephenson’s Metaverse is foregrounded by frequent references to the algorithms underlying this secondary fictional universe. The rules and algorithms by which the Metaverse operates are the work of Hiro Protagonist, “last of the freelance hackers,” one of the pioneers of Metaverse code and programming (327). By writing the code for the virtual places and characters embedded within the novel, Hiro mirrors Stevenson’s role as the author of a parallel fiction. The notion of the Metaverse does not break with the illusion of the story universe so much as it renders the rules of construction humorously explicit. As the plot develops, language is treated as an encrypted code that can transmit potentially dangerous “memes,” a form of death to both humans and computers. But language is also the common denominator for communication between humans and machines. Moreover, the very concept of a common language or code between man and machine is a fundamentally cyberpunk notion. Stephenson then rewrites the entire history of human language, starting with its dispersal over many cultures and languages. He casts this “con- fusion of tongues” or “Infocalypse” in a new light: the diversity of languages actually impedes the spreading of bad “memes.” In any culture with a common language, the transmission of memes be- comes more rapid and highly infectious. The villainous and powerful Bob L. Rife plots to re-create the universal ur-language, believed to exist before man’s fall from the tower of Babel. He pursues a double strategy: first he infects the alliterate and illiterate population with subliminal television messages and religious cults; then he infects the information elite (or hackers) with the Snow Crash virus in the Metaverse. His goal is simple: world domination. Hackers become infected merely by look- ing at the program code of the virus and begin to speak in tongues,