Snow Crash

I was looking for a contemporary literary reference to the Tower of Babel and the proliferation of languages. I'm getting more than I bargained for in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. I could almost swear he had read Karen Armstrong's A History of God. Stephenson seems to be tracing the use and abuse of religion all the way from ancient Sumer to cyberspace in the near future. I'm forced to get my head around another conspiracy theory rooted more than 6,000 years ago when Yahweh was just a kid struggling for supremacy among an unruly rabble of Mesopotamian divinities. All this theology and occultism gives me a cynical feeling in my gut.

But Snow Crash also presents a plausible model for virtual reality. Not to mention a 15-year-old skateboarding heroine as sharp as Tendril was meant to me, but more street-smart and fearless. And I'm exploring a knowledgeable fictional universe as elaborately designed as Connie Willis's Bellwether (not as detailed as Foucault's Pendulum, thankfully).

I'm as intimidated as ever about starting to create my own fictional cyberspace. I haven't the luxury of time to conduct my own research as exhaustive as Stephenson's.

Or do I? Maybe patience is the real issue.

Etymon

Her dark sweatshirt
swathed in bright wet air
encircled on a cliff
converses with cloud.
Shrieking voices fly,
rhythmic percussion
rocks hidden below.
The origin no more
than a dream maybe,
wordless sounds
battering eardrums.
A pain more real
than truth.