Exactly how steamy is this story?
R
With such awesome and driven characters in this book, would you seriously expect them to not get it on at some point? Or even think about it? There's only really one sex scene in the book, when Y.T. and Raven hook up, and it's not super-graphic, so we don't get endless pages of heaving bosoms or whatever, just a short and fairly straight to the point (ha) account of them making out and then doing the deed.
Sex also pops up where it's not expected (ha ha ha), or even describing anything related to the act of intercourse, thanks to Stephenson's inventive imagery. Here's a prime example for you:
As Hiro crests the pass on his motorcycle at five in the morning, the town of Port Sherman, Oregon, is suddenly laid out before him: a flash of yellow loglo wrapped into a vast U-shaped valley that was ground out of the rock, a long time ago, by a big tongue of ice in an epochal period of geological cunnilingus. (42.1)
That right there is a novel image, eh? And probably not one you want to read aloud to your grandma.