[HN Gopher] We Are All Nerds: The Literary Works of Neal Stephenson ___________________________________________________________________ We Are All Nerds: The Literary Works of Neal Stephenson Author : Topolomancer Score : 164 points Date : 2022-08-28 16:52 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (bastian.rieck.me) (TXT) w3m dump (bastian.rieck.me) | ttepasse wrote: | > Stephenson's worlds are not populated predominantly by | Heinleinian larger-than-life characters than can do anything ... | | Funnily enough I have in Stephenson's more recent books the | contrary impression. The last near future books read more like a | love letter to billionaires, all that seems missing is the long | flowery dedication to patrons like authors did it in the 1700s. | Maybe twenty years ago I was to young or blind to register it but | modern Stephenson has just with this trope put himself from my | must-read into the meh/maybe category. | | (Contrapoint: I can see a structural need for billionaires in his | storytelling: He needs a source of financing for the fictional | projects. But somehow Stephenson seems to be to unimaginative as | to consider other means of realization than the magic | billionaire.) | cantSpellSober wrote: | Anyone successfully convert their "I'm not into sci-fi" friend | into a Stephenson fan? If so, with what book? | | (Having read em all, I would _not_ recommend _Fall; Or Dodge in | Hell_ as an entrypoint) | ghaff wrote: | Snow Crash is maybe the most accessible. And, while one of his | older books, the association with the metaverse, etc. makes it | rather timely. | cl42 wrote: | Diamond Age has been a hit with a lot of my friends, even ones | not into scifi. | | Agree with you re _Fall_. Terrible book. | the__alchemist wrote: | I thought Fall was outstanding; the apes, MOAB, and Ameristan | parts were remarkably relevant, and the last part was fun. | cl42 wrote: | I think the concepts were pretty neat, I agree. However, it | felt like two books in one. I will admit that I'm not a | fantasy reader -- aside from LOTR, I'm not a big fan of the | genre. Spending so much time on that was just not | interesting to me. If that entire section was missing, the | book would've been extremely compelling. | | But to each their own! :) | aoanla wrote: | This seems to be a thing that Stephenson likes: The | Diamond Age has apparently deliberate significant changes | in style and genre across it, Cryptonomicon is part very- | near-future tech thriller and part-1940s spy thriller, | Seveneves (as noted elsewhere here) has a big genre | change some way through, and arguably The Rise and Fall | of D.O.D.O also blends a few different genres together, | some of them historical. He's certainly more egregious | about it in Fall, but it's something he obviously likes | doing... | roughly wrote: | I really liked everything about Fall except the main plot. | The Ameristan parts felt almost prophetic - that's the book | I wanted to read. | zxexz wrote: | I've leant my copy of Cryptonomicon to many people who went on | to read his other books. | Ono-Sendai wrote: | Snow crash | nocoiner wrote: | I've had good luck on that with Diamond Age, but I feel the | need to couple that with a strident warning about how | incredibly unsatisfying the ending is (which to me is a | recurring thing with his books). | | I disliked Fall intensely. I either didn't finish it, or | skimmed the last third of it or so just to try to get a sense | of what happened. I think I did finish it, but only because I | was on vacation and had nothing else to read by the pool. | jojoo wrote: | For educators i always suggest "The Diamond Age". In the last | few years, AI has just catched up enough for non-tech people to | take it serious. | | I really liked the first half of Fall; Or Dodge in Hell. But it | has been the only Stephenson book where i needed discipline not | to get enough sleep, but to get through the second half. | lelandbatey wrote: | Agree, "Fall" is not one of the more accessible of his works | IMO. Neither Anathem, even though it's my favorite of his | books. I feel like if Neal Stephenson wanted to write a DND | campaign, he'd revolutionize that niche with his incredible | world building and excellently pervasive themes. | haroldl wrote: | I feel that his novels are becoming more and more mainstream | friendly, and Termination Shock is my suggestion. The world is | very similar to our own, set in the near future (versus The | Diamond Age) of our planet (versus Anathem) and is very | relatable. | | My other suggestions would be REAMDE for people who are into | action movies or spy novels, or the first half of Seveneves for | space nerds. | lb1lf wrote: | I think they are becoming more mainstream friendly as, well, | the world has caught up with him, more or less - I find he's | a master at grasping what technologies will explode into the | mainstream a few years early, then spin a wonderful yarn | around that. | | Cryptonomicon, REAMDE (to some extent) and The Diamond Age | seemed really future-y when released - but now, their basic | concepts are all over the media and on people's minds. | nibbleshifter wrote: | REAMDE came out a very short time before awareness of | ransomware went from "a handful of people in the hacker | world" to "infosec industry starts becoming aware of it". | | To more than a few people, it seemed very prescient. | ghaff wrote: | Reamde is much more thriller than SF. My big objection to it | is that it was one of those novels where if everything didn't | fall right into place again and again, there wouldn't be a | story. | sidibe wrote: | Anathem if you can convince them the to stick through the | beginning and learn the words. | | Absolutely not Cryptonomicon unless you're sure they're | libertarian and male. I reread this recently and I think it | aged very poorly for women and liberals because what was once a | quirky set of characters in the modern part of the story are | now a widespread and polarizing demographic today (our free | thinking hero has to deal with some very exaggerated wokeness, | and spends a few pages explaining that women aren't as obsessed | with tech because they're so good at everything else). | | This is not the author to start people who aren't into sci-fi | on though. I really love some of his books but I think anyone | who can get through one of them is probably already a sci-fi | fan. There's more immediately fun books that people can get | hooked on like Vinge and Brin or more literary and less tech- | describing stuff like Ursula le Guin that appeal to wider | audiences and from which they can look for other books with the | same themes | nibbleshifter wrote: | Neal is _terrible_ at writing female characters, which is | probably at its most obvious in Cryptonomicon. | Barrin92 wrote: | he's gotten better at it. I really don't like his more tech | bro-ish books but I liked Reamde a lot, which features a | pretty good set of characters. | notahacker wrote: | Stephenson's take on e-gold might offend some libertarians | too! In all seriousness, as I recall it the weirdness about | women was mostly in-character views of nerds whose perception | of the wider world isn't necessarily supposed to be that | reliable, and the male-dominated cast actually makes sense in | context. There are other Stephenson books more likely to | annoy people in terms of gender roles and digressions about | liberals and universities... | | But yeah, Stephenson isn't the author to start non-sci fans | on (though Vonnegut fans might love Cryptonomicon and spot an | influence or two). Atwood's Oryx and Crake is probably my | answer to that, since it's classic near future sci fi | disguised as literature. The first book is all about near | future society and the implications of plausible tech, she | just writes about the _people_ in it and doesn 't waste words | describing the details of stuff they wouldn't know or how it | actually works. And the subsequent books are _cliche-trope | heavy_ dystopic sci-fi and still probably doesn 't feel that | way to people who tend to avoid that stuff. | harrisonhope wrote: | I really enjoyed Zodiac. It's reads like a thriller novel but | it's a little more grounded and less weird than Snow Crash. I | think it's a good entry point for Stephenson novels. | yetanotherloser wrote: | The first half or so of Snow Crash is a great entry point if | the recipient already read some cyberpunk and thought "this | has something interesting but also has a stick up its arse, | it's about time someone ripped the piss out of it" - and I | say this as a fan of Gibsonian prose excess. | | The only problem is this puts the recipient in a too-cynical, | too-stylistically-demanding mode for the rest of Stephenson. | | - Posted on my Ono-Sendai Rig, from some kind of Zone, while | experiencing Hacker News as some kind of geometric | hallucination, under a sky the colour of a television | switched off... | notahacker wrote: | Zodiac is the easy introduction because it's the least _Neal | Stephenson_ book of the lot: short, minimal infodumps and | tangents, and it really doesn 't get much nerdier than the | protagonist being a chemist [as well as a wetsuit-wearing | crime fighter] or much weirder than there being a metal band | in there because Stephenson wanted there to be a metal band. | pmdulaney wrote: | This is a curated (or annotated) list of Neal Stephenson's scifi | novels. Very helpful if you're trying to decide which of his | books to start with. | dsr_ wrote: | It's interesting that it simply leaves out: | | The Big U | | - About 7/5 on the weirdness scale of the other books. It was | out of print for quite a while. Strange things happen at a | thinly disguised Boston University. The Citgo sign becomes The | Big Red Wheel. | | Zodiac | | - About 1/5 on the weirdness scale, except for the protagonist | himself, who is about a 3/5. Modern thriller about pollution in | Boston Harbor. | | Interface | | - About a 2/5 weirdness: a candidate runs for US President, | aided by a direct brain interface that feeds immediate polling | results and media reactions. | mpettitt wrote: | Was going to mention Interface! It's very much Cambridge | Analytica vibes - you feel that there are teams as described | doing pretty much the same things, just without the direct | brain interface. | | Personally, I think Anathem is the best of his works, | although I enjoyed DODO - the sequel, which he wasn't | directly involved with was less good though. | jabl wrote: | I really loved the Baroque cycle; Is there any other author that | writes similar stuff? | | I've liked other Stephenson novels I've read (Cryptonomicon and | Diamond age), but to be honest they haven't been the mind blowing | experience of the Baroque cycle. | | I'm planning to read Anathem and Termination Shock in the | hopefully not too far future, but we'll see. | jimmygrapes wrote: | Not quite at the same scale, but Dan Simmons writes some pretty | great alternate/fictionalized history that tend to be pretty | lengthy (if that's your thing). I particularly enjoyed Drood | and The Terror (from which the TV series was adapted), and | Black Hills is pretty nice as well. He also did Hyperion Cantos | and the Ilium/Olympos series if you're more into s-f. | cl42 wrote: | A bit random, but I always think about how _Seveneves_ could be a | fantastic RPG. | sprkwd wrote: | I'm (very slowly) writing a video game mostly based on this | book. | cl42 wrote: | I'd love to learn more! | tryauuum wrote: | yeah, sign me up as well, email is nick @gmail.com | balentio wrote: | I'm probably in the minority opinion here, but I'd say his newer | work is in some ways less inventive than his older work. I think | a lot of it boils down to being around silicon valley weirdos for | too long wherein the books take on themes the extremely wealthy | technocrats are actually trying to accomplish. It goes from being | Sci-Fi to Sci-we-really-are-doing-this. | decebalus1 wrote: | I agree with you. Avid Stephenson fan, I read all of his works | but 'The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.' was the last novel I | actually enjoyed.. | wolfram74 wrote: | I read Termination Shock and was pretty let down when it seemed | like the innovative new social dynamic to resolve climate | change was monarchy. It was a fun enough read, but I don't | think I'll revisit it like I do with Cryptonomicon or Anathem. | labrador wrote: | I wish I could get the time back in invested in reading | "Cryptonomicon." I had high hopes after "Snow Crash", but they | never materialized. It's my fault: I knew I should have quit | after the author indulged himself by going on about his furniture | sorting algorithm. Inexcusable in a book over a 1000 pages long. | | "What is your favorite rambling, tangential aside from a Neal | Stephenson novel and why?" | | https://old.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/362bej/what_is_you... | criddell wrote: | I consider the entire bit about Sumerian history in _Snow | Crash_ to be an unnecessary aside. | | I actually really enjoyed _Cryptonomicon_. For it being a long | book, I thought it moved pretty good. | jameshart wrote: | It's not _the author 's_ furniture sorting algorithm. It's _the | Waterhouse family 's_. It tells us a considerable amount about | the Waterhouse family's particular dysfunctions, and the | various Shaftoes' ability to tolerate, or slot into supporting | roles around that, and in particular it digs deeply into the | conflicts that arise between hyperrational people who think 'we | can build an algorithm that will permit a fair and equitable | distribution of wealth' and the reality of people who _will | abuse the properties of that algorithm to make sure they get | what they want_. | | If you think that was an irrelevant aside to the rest of the | book's themes, I dunno what to tell you. | labrador wrote: | Snow Crash appears on at lists of the best Science Fiction | books of all time, while Cryptonomicon is in no danger of | appearing on any list of favorite Science Fiction books. | Cryptonomicon is 25 times less popular than Snow Crash on | Amazon (rank #6,737 vs #153,999) and no one on reddit | challenged the assertion that Stephenson sometimes writes | "rambling, tangential asides." I prefer my Science Fiction | books have a good story, not teach me about math and game | theory. There are better books for that. If you liked | Cryptonomicon, congratulations, you have the same taste as | the author. I stand by my disappointment going from Snow | Crash to Cryptonomicon. | the__alchemist wrote: | Stephenson is by far my favorite fiction author. His style of | sci-fi is what draws me to the genre: It's filled with on-the- | edge-of-plausibility concepts that makes me wonder "What if we | could do that", or gets me hacking on a project. The only other | sci-fi I've found on his level have been the Children of Time | books. | | I've read them all except Reamde, and found Termination Shock to | be the tamest, so perhaps if you're new to Stephenson, don't | start there. | Rebelgecko wrote: | Even though Termination Shock wasn't super out there, I thought | it's better than a lot of his book wrt characterization (even | if there were a few moments that didn't work for me) | skybrian wrote: | Not mentioned but somewhat related: _The Mongoliad_ series, for | which Stephenson is one of the co-authors. (It 's a collective | work that came out of a failed startup; it's complicated.) | | This is historical fiction and it's very long, but I found it | interesting. You might say it arose in part out of Stephenson's | interest how historical fighting might have actually worked. | | https://www.amazon.com/The-Mongoliad-Series-5-book-series/dp... | lb1lf wrote: | Much as I love Neal Stephenson's novels, I really wish he'd | stayed around at the writer's class he surely took until they had | learned how to wrap up books and write endings; more often than | not, I turn the page on a Stephenson novel only to find it was | the last... | | (While I exaggerate a little, his stories do not end as much as | END - I would be thrilled if he could spend a few pages wrapping | it up in the end before leaving us waiting for the next title...) | | The yarns he constructs are definitely entertaining enough for me | to cope with this very minor annoyance, though. | narrator wrote: | Besides his endings, his couples intimacy scenes are also | absolutely awful and the women can be cartoonish. He makes up | for everything with his worldbuilding skill though. Authors | lean heavily on the parts of writing they're good at. For | example, I've been reading Asimov's foundation, and he almost | ignores characterization and describing any of the locations in | the book. The whole thing revolves around the plot. | rvbissell wrote: | [Stephenson] To this very day, I still cannot purge the | phrase "imperial pint of semen" from my brain. | epberry wrote: | Good observation. I wonder if this is a reason the TV | adaptations have been tough. Plot seems best enjoyed in | written form whereas world building shines on screen. | mgarfias wrote: | I _HATED_ Foundation as a kid. Only now do I realize that | Asimov basically wrote a history book. | alibrarydweller wrote: | I think in the last decade or so he certainly learned how to | end (REAMDE had like 90 pages of climax) but I'm not sure the | reader is actually better off for it. Seveneves denouement is | almost its own book with its own characters and the end of Fall | and Termination Shock just left me wanting to know the next | development in their respective worlds. | John23832 wrote: | LOL man I was looking for this comment. I cannot upvote this | enough. | | He needs to cowrite something with Andy Weir. One can start, | they collaborate on the middle, and then the other finishes. | isoprophlex wrote: | Fantastic idea, but PLEASE let Weir be the one to finish! | stuartbman wrote: | Came here to say this. Both Seveneves and Fall have long | unending psuedo-epilogues which add little to the main story, | but also don't really wrap anything up satisfactorily either. | ghaff wrote: | My issue with Seveneves is the first part (two parts I guess) | was a pretty first-rate thriller then hard to believe | transition to equally unlikely and not very interesting IMO | outcomes which, as you say, weren't really wrapped up either. | aoanla wrote: | I think the disconnect here is that I get the impression he | wrote the entire first part just to justify writing his "SF | with multiple humanoid species that all have 'hats' but | there's a good reason for it" story which forms the second | part. (Part of the problem being that... there's really not | a good reason for it - Stephenson's grasp of biology is | much worse than his grasp of computing technology.) | ghaff wrote: | Oh I pretty much agree. There's a good argument that the | whole first part of the book was to get him to a point | where he could right the story he wanted to write. But, | if so, there were probably better ways of getting to that | point. | | And, even if you accept how they got there, the last part | of the book just wasn't very compelling for me. | usrusr wrote: | I kind of liked how openly seveneves seemed to be about | building some fantasy world for storie _s_ (or perhaps even | for some video game or p &p rpg, with a number of clearly | cut out character classes?), then getting gloriously | sidetracked in the background explanation story and finally | accepting that the world just built isn't remotely as | interesting as that background explanation story. It's as | if at some point half way through he realized just _how_ | much he was being "typical Neil Stephenson" and decided to | go with it, to ten-up himself. | | That last part almost seems like a form of trolling, the | smallest viable story to claim "I had you on a sidetrack | all the time and you did not even notice" | haroldl wrote: | It's clear he _can_ do it: the ending of Anathem ties up | everything very neatly and it is hard for me to imagine any | major events happening in the characters ' lifetimes that would | rival the plot arc they've been through. | majormajor wrote: | Anathem is one of his few books with a denoument. It's not | super long, but it's nice to have some scene hinting at where | things are going next after the main crisis is resolved. | MichaelCollins wrote: | I don't think Anathem had a good ending per-se; rather the | whole novel sets up a gimmick revealed at the end that | explains away the lack of a good ending. | | It's still my favorite Stephenson novel though. | majormajor wrote: | I'm not sure "the whole novel sets up" and "gimmick" work | together there. :) | sdwr wrote: | Yeah, first half of Anathem was captivating, second half | went off the rails. | wizofaus wrote: | Going by the comments on this thread, it's hard to | believe everyone's talking about the same book... (which | I haven't read, and I'm now torn as to whether I should!) | sdwr wrote: | Yeah it's wild! Second-guessed myself a tiny bit after | seeing all the conflicting views. | | Minor spoilers: | | I loved the world-building and mystery in the first half, | the main character lives in a post-apoc monastary, tons | of great details and tidbits. It felt vibrant, deep, | reminded me of Redwall and the 5th Harry Potter, with the | sexual repression and small-scale rebellion against | authority. | | He leaves the walls in the second half and stuff happens, | I forgot most of it. The journey part felt like an | afterthought. Something something aliens, really didn't | feel earned or connected. | lb1lf wrote: | That sounds great; I have had Anathem on my bookshelf for | years after life got in the way just after starting it; I had | planned to finally read it this fall. Your observation makes | me look forward to it even more, thank you! | dwater wrote: | I like about 2/3 of Stephenson's novels and Anathem took | some work for me to get into. It really gets moving several | hundred pages in and then the last 1/3 makes it all worth | it. | DIVx0 wrote: | It took me a few tries to get past the first 1/3rd of | Anathem but once I did, it became one of my all time | favorite books. Stephenson paints a rich rich world which | I have often thought about outside of the major plot | points of the book. | ghaff wrote: | It's one of those books where you have no idea what's | going on for the first chunk of the book--and probably | don't really realize what's fully going on until close to | the end. Reading a book in at least partial confusion can | be taxing and hard to hold interest. (Though I certainly | liked Anathem quite a bit overall.) | scbrg wrote: | Way, way back I ran into a comment on Slashdot saying | essentially: | | _Neal Stephenson doesn 't really do endings. At some point, he | just declares victory and stops writing._ (not an exact quote, | though the second sentence is probably very close to the | original) | | I thought this was a hilarious observation, and shared it with | my coworkers. This then became our standard phrase when we | decided that a task wasn't really worth more development hours. | _So, should we spend another day polishing this, or do we just | declare victory?_ | | So thanks, random Slashdot poster 20 years ago, for | contributing to our company culture for a few years :) | ghaff wrote: | I've certainly run into "Let's just declare victory and move | on" in many different contexts. And it really is a pretty | good philosophy for many situations. | sidibe wrote: | The beginnings of his books are pretty difficult too, since | he just drops you into a world with its own vocabulary and | weirdness that takes forever to understand or in the case of | Seveneves does many hundreds of pages of infodump details on | how they build their space stuff. I guess the middle parts | and ideas of his books are usually a thrill enough to make it | worth the other parts. | sanderjd wrote: | I really felt this with Seveneves, which was otherwise one of | my favorites of his. That book (or series maybe...) was nowhere | close to over. | baggsie wrote: | One of my all time favourite books too. | | I'd recommend 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson if you've not read | it - it's in a similar vein / world to the third part of | Seveneves. | sanderjd wrote: | Thanks so much for the recommendation! I love Kim Stanley | Robinson - _Aurora_ and the _Red Mars_ series are some of | my all time favorite books - but have had trouble getting | into the one of his I 'm on right now ( _The Ministry for | the Future_ ). So I'm very pleased to get a different | recommendation. | JZL003 wrote: | I agree, I don't think diamond age gets enough interest. It's one | of my favorite books and the ending is unsatisfying but at least | upbeat. Seveneves is also tons of fun. And if you know anyone who | likes history, his older Baroque Cycle is pretty great | | I haven't heard this in an interview or anything but I think now | Stephenson is older and successful enough, he just writes the | books exactly how he likes. Diamond age feels like he was | agonizing over every word to keep everything so short. But Fall, | and his newest book Termination Shock (which I also didn't like | most of) ,just feels like an author who likes writing. Both have | these amazing moments, which reminds me like a jazz musician, | where it's almost effortlessly insightful and funny. But with no | editing or second thoughts | JZL003 wrote: | Also for anyone who likes weird scifi, read Cory Doctorow's | Rapture of the nerds, it has an amazing audiobook and is just | fun and clever | cl42 wrote: | _Spoiler Alert_ | | The idea that rich people have access to more compute power | in the cloud, and can experience more compute cycles per | minute (and thus have more experiences in a metaverse!), is | exactly how I see a dystopian universe based on cloud | computing developing. When I read that part in the book, it | blew my mind. | notahacker wrote: | The thing about the Diamond Age is the first half is a | brilliant book full of great ideas that seems to be set for a | complex and enthralling finale, and the second half is an | absolute mess that ruins the first half. Only book I can think | of comparable in that respect is Stranger in a Strange Land | (note to sci-fi authors: don't think you can tie the plot of | your killer high-concept idea together with the first thing | that comes to mind, especially not if the first thing that | comes to mind is the need to come up with creative reasons for | your characters to have orgies) | cainxinth wrote: | I sorta agree, but I also think one of the reasons that the | first part is stronger has something to do with the | protagonist's age. When she's just an innocent little girl, | you feel incredible tension every time she is threatened. As | she gets older and more capable, the danger doesn't connect | as viscerally to the reader (in my case anyway). | | But, warts and all, still one of my favorite novels ever. | notahacker wrote: | Agree it's inevitable that it loses some tension and | sweetness (and the role of the all-important Primer), but | it's more that Stephenson just takes her in terrible | directions (she decides to work in a brothel dictating BDSM | fantasies, then she gets violated by rebels, then she | _unironically_ becomes the Victorian colonialist ideal of | the great White Leader the Chinese girls need) and the | others in even worse directions (disappear from the | narrative, die a pathos-free death, wake up after 12 years | of drug induced orgies and have no emotional reaction | whatsoever but a compelling need to wander into a pace- | killing subplot about a theatre). The plotting is clunky, I | 'm not sure the writing is as good despite a few nice | moments and the whole Drummers orgy-computer concept is | best reserved for another book, preferably unpublished. | aoanla wrote: | Yeah, I think the dissonance I fundamentally had with the | ending of The Diamond Age is that it seems to not have | any sense of irony (or any concept that, maybe, the Seed | _might_ not be the awful idea that his protagonists are | trying to sell us that it is, for example). | number6 wrote: | I can totally relate. Despite the shortcomings I love the | book; there are parts better to be forgotten though... | | I secretly dream of a distributed republic. | notahacker wrote: | I secretly dream of discovering a second half of the book | I enjoyed as much as the first... | nixlim wrote: | This. Absolutely the feeling I had after reading both of them | jamestimmins wrote: | I accidentally purchased the "uncut" version of Stranger in a | Strange Land, which included 85,000 more words that were | edited out of the original release. | | If ever there was a book that didn't need an extra 85,000 | words... | number6 wrote: | I read Stranger in a Strange Land in my youth and it was | mind-blowing. The unnecessary Lewdness was nice in puberty | but looking back today it's more like a thing of its time | thing... | mordymoop wrote: | Diamond Age is the one I keep going back to and getting more | out of over the years. | bergenty wrote: | Seveneves is all women protagonists, cannot get behind that | though I tried. | the__alchemist wrote: | Probably my favorite, edging the others out slightly... as you | might guess. | sedev wrote: | There's a Blood Knife article https://bloodknife.com/inadequacy- | of-inspirational-scifi/ critiquing Stephenson that makes an | interesting companion read to this. I have enjoyed Stephenson's | novels tremendously, but when OP says they're not "preachy," that | is rather a whopper -- particularly thinking of _Cryptonomicon,_ | but _Termination Shock_ also digresses into it. | zuluonezero wrote: | The Baroque Cycle made me understand maths and the impact of the | 18th century renaissance on computing. It made me more curious to | learn algebraic concepts that I had neglected. Plus he wrote | those long books by hand with ink and a feather dip pen! It has a | kind of crazy genius stupidity to it that is serious and light at | the same time. | The_Colonel wrote: | My favorite Stephenson's novel is Anathem with superb world | building (as usual) but also a pretty good story and ending. | | But it's also a book whose world (specifically the avout society) | attracts me. I've grown up in a Catholic setting, but "converted" | to atheism/agnosticism pretty early. But even with its many | failings, there are certain aspects of religions which seem worth | preserving - the focus on community, the rituals, a particular | rule framework, meditation (prayers) and introspection. | | The book presents a (on a certain level) pretty attractive model | of society which combines the practical religious patterns with a | full rationalism. | | I kind of understand why such "atheist religion" is unlikely to | get off in the real world, but it's still something I would wish | for. | jacquesm wrote: | If anything the Avout are the scientists. | Rebelgecko wrote: | Agreed. I think there is definitely a certain kind of person | who attaches to the idea of academic monks (myself included). | Especially the slower pace of life and limited pop culture | influences. I remember a few years ago someone on the Anathem | subreddit tried to live "cloistered" for a year- not totally | isolated, but intentionally avoiding media throughout the year, | then they listened to a few albums and watched the best | regarded movies. | oliwary wrote: | I agree! There is something very beautiful about people having | the time to just think and learn, without access to distracting | technology or practical concerns. I wonder what would happen if | this was a real pathway in society. I also wonder what were to | happen if driven individuals would take sabbaticals in places | like this - what kind of ideas would they come up with? | | Superb book in any case, may pick it up again. | bradleyjg wrote: | Anathem is also my favorite, fairly easily. | | I'm not surprised there are Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, Diamond | Age, or Baroque Cycle favorite-rs but I am when I come across | someone that thought Seveneves or Dodge was his best. | noSyncCloud wrote: | I absolutely loved Seveneves; easily my second favorite. The | first part was too long and the second too short, however, | and it's obviously not as good as Anathem ;) | stuven wrote: | I've only read Seveneves to the end and was blown away (and | simultaneously a bit disappointed if that makes sense?). I've | started Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash but they didn't interest | me as much. | smogcutter wrote: | Same! I love Diamond Age and to a lesser extent | Cryptonomicon, but for my money Seveneves found him leaning | into his worst instincts. | | At his best, Stephenson's love of oddball, hyper-focused | engineers leads him into in-depth explorations of niche | fields & communities. In Seveneves though it manifested as | boring Heinlein-esque heroic Mary Sue libertarian engineers | who are never wrong, while every other character is somewhere | on a spectrum of stupid to nefarious. | PBnFlash wrote: | Fall, dodge in hell has a super interesting take on post fact | reality. | | Ai spam can get a lot crazier. | anubhav200 wrote: | Thanks, I was looking for exactly this only. | progre wrote: | Not even mentioned in the article, but a book I really like: | Zodiak | | Not sf exactly, it's an "eco-thriller" but it has its fair share | of science. And it's a pretty good thriller. | jpm_sd wrote: | I reread Cryptonomicon every couple of years. It's so very 90s, | so very startup, I revel in it every time. It's delightfully | appealing and appalling | odiroot wrote: | I really loved Snow Crash. That's a perfect balance between | science fiction and reality, without crossing the cringe- | threshold. Really wish someone adapted it into a mini-series. | | Encouraged by that lecture, I tried Cryptonomicon and liked it | even more. I then listened to the audio-book version read by | Stephenson himself. It's actually hilarious in this way. | | REAMDE has actually been quite disappointing. I put it down after | 2 chapters (it crossed the cringe-threshold for me). Haven't | picked up any of Neal's books since. | mgarfias wrote: | Author here forgot The Big U and Zodiac. The writing wasn't as | polished as his later stuff, but still good stories. U's | weirdness rating would be a 5/5. | jameshart wrote: | And, since _D.O.D.O_ being included means we 're evidently | including collaborations, _The Interface_ , which reads as more | prescient of modern political discourse every year. | LiberationUnion wrote: ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-28 23:00 UTC)