Snow Crash is in many places meant to be intentionally silly and absurdist as an extrapolated, exaggerated satire on contemporary American lifestyle at the time it was written, such as in the users manual for the "Reason" railgun

And it is pretty obviously referring to 1992 current events. To modern readers L. Bob Rife is just a funny villain, but he was obviously a parody of 1992 outsider US Presidential Candidate H. Ross Perot.

Oh. To this modern reader, L. Bob Rife was just an obvious parody of L. Ron Hubbard.

But he wasn't a Texan, so I suppose I see your angle. Interesting bit of flavor.

Snow Crash is childish, that's why it's more successful.

Snow Crash is built around an airport novel style narrative.

Neuromancer has a far more literary tone, and is trickier to digest.

That's the entire reason Snow Crash is cited. Airport novel readership is far more widespread.

To each his own, I suppose.

I found Neuromancer and and Count Zero eminently forgettable. I never read Snow Crash, so I can't really speak to it though I've read a half dozen of Neal Stephenson's other novels, all of which I found rich with ideas. While I appreciate the literary style, I honestly can't remember the plot of either Neuromancer or Count Zero.

Dry and boring I can imagine people calling Egan or Vinge but unimaginative? They both throw off ideas like confetti.

Here's an example I remember from some Vinge novel ("A Fire Upon the Deep" maybe) I read decades ago: some ancient species/entities were supposed to have transcended a long time ago. What did that transcendence consist of? Where did they go? What's their life like after transcendence? Vinge gives the reader nothing. I call that a failure of the imagination.

Yes, I get that the post-singularity world is supposed to unpredictable/unimaginable in principle... but it's the author's job to imagine it anyway, else why am I even bothering to read his books on the singularity? If he doesn't/can't imagine it, I judge it a failure and a disappointment.

I don't remember details about Egan's work, except that nothing in it seemed particularly interesting and nothing wowed me... hence I really can't remember much about it except the premises of some of his novels, like Permutation City.

This is contrary to works by authors like Gibson, Herbert, and Dick, for instance, which I'll never forget. They're just leagues ahead of lesser authors like Vinge and Egan.

Well, he doesn't know. Most of Vinge's works were about getting close to the Singularity without crossing over, because he expected that technology and society would change massively and unpredictably at that time.

The point of introducing the fantasy element of the Zones of Thought was to allow Vinge to write a FTL space opera without having to deal with post-Singularity speculation.

When species transcended, they left the Beyond and went into the Transcend.