Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Have any of you read the famous sci-fi novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson? I've had it on my bookshelf for ages, long intending to read it, and now I've finally started it.


I think the main reason I avoided it for so long was that I simply disliked the name of the protagonist, which ironically is Hiro Protagonist. It was too cutesy for me, though while reading it now I can see how it fits within the atmosphere of near-future California that Stephenson is creating.

I'm not far into the book, and I am enjoying it, but I was pulled up abruptly by one line that made absolutely no sense to me, thus ripping me right out of the story.

Early in the book, the narrator is discussing Hiro's two Samurai swords, and he says, "Hiro's father looted these from Japan after World War II went atomic..."

Now, my grandfather was a young man fighting in the Pacific during WWII, and I'm not young myself. How can it be Hiro's father who got these from Japan at the end of WWII while Hiro is a young man at the time of the story and it is set sometime in the future beyond our current time? It flat out doesn't add up...not even close actually.

Admittedly I stopped right there to write this, so maybe the author will come up with some fantastical logical explanation, but right now it just feels like a huge, lazy blunder to me.