Space in the Street, the City and the Raft

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, deals with issues of space and navigable spaces for both the characters in the novel and for the reader. Framed by Lev Manovich’s essay on navigable space, we can see Snow Crash to involve a complex interplay of "haptic" and "optic" spaces, both within the virtual reality in the book and the reality of the fiction itself (Manovich 253). We can see Stephenson’s conceptions of the Street and the Raft to be navigable spaces, and we can add a third navigable space, the City, as characterized by Los Angeles in the novel.

The Street is a virtual navigable space of the type that Manovich analyzes. To the users – the characters in the novel – the Street is characteristically haptic, where objects constitute "discrete entities" that are separate both from each other and from the background of the virtual world (Manovich 253). For Hiro, this is exemplified by how "colored shapes begin to swoop down on him from all directions" as soon as he steps onto the street (Stephenson 38), and how, "on the Street, avatars just walk right through each other" (Stephenson 40). The objects in the Metaverse can, and do, interplay, but this is a forced arrangement; there is no sense of the medium of space, as people can walk through each other and, in Manovich’s words as applied to the internet, objects are "each created by a different person" and "a user can easily add or delete objects without taking into account the overall structure of the scene" (Manovich 257).

This is complicated by the fact that, in the early days of the Street, "a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself," implying that there could be more interrelation of objects in the Metaverse, and even the possibility of interaction with the medium of space. Furthermore, some programs in the Metaverse instill a stronger – more optic – sense of space, like The Black Sun, where "avatars are not allowed to collide" (Stephenson 55). However, places like The Black Sun still lack a unification between objects and the space they exist in. To use Manovich’s term, they are not made from the same "bio-material" (Manovich 256).

This use of the word bio-material connects well with Hiro’s occasional references to the "biomass" in the City (Stephenson 189). To the characters of the story, the City constitutes an optic space, or a space that "unifies objects in a spacial continuum," one in which a person interacts with nearby objects whether she intends to or not (Manovich 254). Y.T. can "[establish] her space on the pavement" as she poons from one car to the next, implying that she affects the objects around her by taking up her own space; objects are all made of the same "biomass," or spacial matter, and mutually interact through space.

However, the reader of the novel sees the space of the City as very much haptic. It consists of compartmentalized city-states that have nominal interactions with each other; essentially, each Burbclave or franchulate exists as a separate, discrete entity that "sits on top of" the space of reality. So although the characters can interact with space at a localized level, from the larger world-view of the reader the objects in the City are barely integrated into the space that they exist in.

The Raft is an interesting mix of haptic and optic spaces. At first, it is perceived as a complex and inflexible map; although "the connections between boats are tangled and unpredictable" to a newcomer, an experienced person, like Raven, knows the specific paths that will get you from point A to point B (Stephenson 344). This suggests the people on the Raft exist on top of the background space a complex web of trails – one that is inflexible to navigate through and difficult to interact with or organize.

However, every move on the path involves interaction with other elements in the space; "you make your way around by hopping from one boat to the next. But each boat is home to about three dozen people, so it’s like you are constantly walking through people’s living rooms" (Stephenson 345). The Raft is also surprisingly malleable, highlighting Hiro’s concept of everything being a part of the same biomass. When the Core begins to attack Hiro and sinks a boat, the boat is described as "falling off the surface of the water, trying to pull in the entire neighborhood like a black hole" (Stephenson 411).

This is, in fact, exactly what Manovich is referring to as an optic space; everything on the Raft is interconnected in a spacial continuum. When one object in the space of the Raft is altered, it, in turn, augments every other part of the Raft, like the boat pulling down the community around it. This can be seen from the eye of the reader better than from the eye of the characters; locally, the Raft seems like an inflexible background that people exist on top of, whereas from a more removed view, all major objects are literally roped together and are constantly interacting.

Snow Crash offers views of both haptic and optic spaces to both the characters and the readers. But does it, in itself, constitute a navigable space for the reader? Perhaps; it does describe a world space that the reader immerses himself in. However, this is clearly a haptic space, as interaction with the space in the novel is impossible. We can follow the story as the reader, or even from the perspective of Y.T. – Yours Truly, which can be interpreted to be the reader – and we can jump around the text and navigate however we choose. But this navigation does not affect the text in any tangible way.

It Looks Like You're Writing a Bibliography

Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York, NY: Bantam Dell, 1992.
(Annotated in text as (Stephenson #) for page number)

Manovich, Lev. "Navigable Space." The Language Of New Media. 2000. p.244-285.
(Annotated in text as (Manovich #) for page number)