Talk:Snow Crash

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Snow Crash article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1, 2: 2 years

Novels: Sci-fi Mid‑importance

	Novels portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the general Project discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions.NovelsWikipedia:WikiProject NovelsTemplate:WikiProject Novelsnovel articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Science fiction task force (assessed as High-importance).
	This article is currently undergoing a peer review.

Science Fiction High‑importance

	Speculative fiction portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Science Fiction, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of science fiction on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Science FictionWikipedia:WikiProject Science FictionTemplate:WikiProject Science Fictionscience fiction articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Smartwheels was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 2 Feb 2014 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Snow Crash. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

Video game adaptation source

Snow Crash is on Google Books

Someone was going around tagging this article to point out how it needs citations, especially for many assertions which are based on the book itself and should be easy to cite directly to pages in the book.

I don't have the time to do this right now, but I want to point out that Snow Crash is already available on Google Books. So it should be possible to set up citations with direct links to the relevant Google Books pages, as I have done for many other Wikipedia articles. --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:30, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead and took care of adding direct citations to the novel on Google Books. --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:17, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not verified in body fixes

The opening line of this article--"Like many of Stephenson's novels, it covers history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy"--has the tag "not verified in body." It seems these thematic suggestions could easily be backed up by a link to the description of the book on the current Australian publisher's website. You'll see here that the publisher describes the book as having themes of "linguistics, religion, computer science, politics, philosophy, cryptography and the future of pizza delivery." This should verify at least the majority of the title paragraph's assertions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.188.142.254 (talk) 22:30, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"U-Stor-It" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect U-Stor-It has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 March 22 § U-Stor-It until a consensus is reached. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 15:03, 22 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Improving the synopsis?

Don't want to get *too* meta, but the synopsis is a bit lacking. Would better science fiction editors than me be able to take a look? Theheezy (talk) 08:52, 17 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The synopsis is brief in the usual style of this encyclopedia, but I don't find it to be lacking. A verbose or complex summary is not required, the story is a mystery, so recapping it after the fact can be concise if you stick to just the plot. Exploring and explaining the background, the technology, and the themes, does require greater length but that is better left to other sections of the article. -- 109.76.136.1 (talk) 03:06, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

American and wikilinking genre in the lead

I disagree with at least parts of this and this recent edit to the lead. Anon editor 35.139 said that the nationality is "irrelevant" and I'm not sure that is the case. It's pretty standard across Wikipedia to include an author's nationality. In fact, I checked a few dozen WikiProject Novels featured articles (which you can find here) and most of them included nationalities. If there was a genre, that was wikilinked as well. As those are featured articles, they've been scrutinized by a great number of editors and I'd say they're in line with the project as a whole.

Now 35.139 mentioned overlinking as well. I'm mostly neutral on that, although I could see it for terms like "history", "religion", "computer science", "politics", and "philosophy". Personally, I think that "linguistics", "anthropology", and "archeology" (at least) should probably stay linked—I just feel like the average reader probably doesn't know what they are.

Oh, and I agree that MOS:BIO doesn't apply. That was a total brain fart that I'd realized later. I still think the nationality should be included and the genre wikilinked, to follow the tendency of the project. Thoughts? Woodroar (talk) 22:22, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion is also about this edit at Anathem and this edit at Cryptonomicon. Woodroar (talk) 22:36, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, thanks for taking the time to start the disucssion...I can certainly be a little too eager on the revert button, so I appreciate it. There are a few things going on here. Most disputed seems to be nationality. The majority of the Stephenson novel leads I spot checked didn't include nationality, which I agree with, so these changes also helped increase consistency. As for why, it's because, among other reasons, we have a biography of Stephenson which mentions his nationality, along with any other biographical information a reader might be interested in. Should we mention age, sex, weight, etc? From time to time, some of these things might actually be relevant, but in those cases, they can and should be discussed in context.

This is sort of a weird Wikipedia tic that a lot of editors pick up because they read other articles that do it, but it doesn't make it right. I think it's a little more clear that we should omit "author", as anyone who writes a novel is an author. Maybe if that's not their primary claim to fame, it might make sense to say something else here (like Carl Sagan wrote some fiction, so it might help to identify his main profession instead). But look what happens if we omit "author" from the sentence: "...by American Neal Stephenson". Suddenly it reads awkwardly...why are we emphasizing that he's an American?

This crops up all over Wikipedia. I see it constantly in math articles -- "...first proved by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler..." or some such. It takes focus away from the subject being discussed to provide irrelevant biographical detail of the person connected to the topic. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 23:51, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't make a big difference either way, but I think including "American author" is slightly preferable. Most people who write fiction books are American authors so this doesn't seem necessary, but it helps anchor the reader. And as 35.139.154.158 says, when the person isn't an American author this information is almost always included, so this is good for consistency.

The argument that omitting "author" from the sentence makes it read awkwardly is spurious. "American" is modifying "author", so removing the object and leaving the modifier isn't going to make sense. Dan Bloch (talk) 00:39, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]