I thought it was supposed to be a cash grab because Stephenson was hurting for cash so wrote a book that was real campy and targeted edgy geeky crowd that wanted more fantasy than harder scifi and it ended up being even more of a success than he had anticipated. So to a degree satirical and maybe a bit eye rolling to who the expected readership would be. Not mean but I remember reading the book and thinking these characters are like how someone would poke at super geek scifi fantasies