Snow Crash

Memetics posits that ideas can spread like a virus. In the modern day, for example, one field of memetics studies how memes go viral. Snow Crash presents a similar idea in which an idea, belief, or religion acts like a virus, literally and metaphorically. In Snow Crash, data can be transferred by viruses. These viruses come in many forms, from religious texts to computer code to certain words uttered in certain languages. These viruses jump from subject to subject, changing their DNA, their minds, or their behavior. Da5id views a bitmap image of the Snow Crash virus, and he immediately has what appears to be brain damage, only being capable of speaking in what is allegedly ancient Sumerian. When the Pentecostal Christians begin speaking in tongues, they are demonstrating the way the virus has altered their behavior. They have been injected with a physical virus, while Da5id was exposed to a digital virus. The effect is the same, corrupting and rewiring the brain of the infected person to achieve a political end.

In the novel, memetics and viruses evolve out of Rife’s need to control others. A person exposed to the virus loses control of themselves, surrendering to Rife’s viral rewrite of their mind.