Love Neal's work. He's created so many great worlds but I think Snow Crash and Anathem are my favourites. W
I have this vague feeling that I bumped into him in a provincial high street in England once. I've no way of actually verifying it was him but if we ever meet again next time I'm prepared to give him better directions. :P
I haven't read Anathem yet (adding that to my reading list) but Cryptonomicon is high on my list! Snow Crash was incredible and it's one of the few books where I still remember most of the characters in it.
Honestly, IMHO it's complete and utter crap compared to the AMAZING, INCREDIBLE work Stephenson did with everything that came before.
Snow Crash? A milestone in modern sci-fi. Diamond Age? A truly incredible work of art! Even lesser stuff like The Big U or In the Beginning Was the Command Line were really, really good.
Then came Cryptonomicon, and it was good too ... but he was already deteriorating into loving the sound of his own voice way too much by then, so you had to wade through a bit to get to the good stuff.
And then there was Anathem ... where he made up half a language and required you to learn it to read the book (and it was like ten zillion pages long). Good writing is NOT about just throwing whatever brilliant ideas you have onto the page ... it's about cutting it down to the good stuff. Stephenson just stopped doing that by the time he got to Anathem.
To be fair, lots of people were willing to wade through all that fake language BS and Stephenson writing 100 words when 10 would do, and they all report loving the book ... but as a complete and utter Stephenson fanatic, even I abandonded him at Anathem.
I'd disagree. Especially his last two books are very much getting to the point, and I really liked Seveneves and Termination Shock as well, all after Anathem. ("Fall" is the exception that proves the rule/trend; I'll just pretend that didn't happen. One of the very few books I've ever not finished after making it beyond the first half.)
> as a complete and utter Stephenson fanatic, even I abandonded him at Anathem.
You might want to give his later stuff a try. I think he's really improved his ability to wrap a story up, without compromising on the grand ideas.
I noped out of Anathem when I realized learning the new language was going to be non-optional and non-trivial. I was also at a place where I needed my reading to be recreational rather than mind expanding.
Makes me wonder what Anathem looks like in other translations and whether... Mathic was it(?), was as much an issue in translation. Maybe I'll take another go at it. It's been years, and people that I respect greatly have told me it's one of their favorites.
Anthem is my favorite as well. Picked up a first edition a while ago, was hoping his book tour would have taken him near me so I could get it signed but looks like he stuck to the coasts and Texas.
Thirded for Anathem. It isn't for everyone, you've got to have a high tolerance for made up words and enjoy puzzling things out but if that is you (likely if you read HN) then it is great. Probably my favourite sci-fi book ever by number of re-reads!
Neal Stephenson has worried (or rather hasn't, but I won't spoil the plot of "Fall" here) about deepfakes way before most people have even heard about generative AI.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 9.2 ms ] threadI have this vague feeling that I bumped into him in a provincial high street in England once. I've no way of actually verifying it was him but if we ever meet again next time I'm prepared to give him better directions. :P
Snow Crash? A milestone in modern sci-fi. Diamond Age? A truly incredible work of art! Even lesser stuff like The Big U or In the Beginning Was the Command Line were really, really good.
Then came Cryptonomicon, and it was good too ... but he was already deteriorating into loving the sound of his own voice way too much by then, so you had to wade through a bit to get to the good stuff.
And then there was Anathem ... where he made up half a language and required you to learn it to read the book (and it was like ten zillion pages long). Good writing is NOT about just throwing whatever brilliant ideas you have onto the page ... it's about cutting it down to the good stuff. Stephenson just stopped doing that by the time he got to Anathem.
To be fair, lots of people were willing to wade through all that fake language BS and Stephenson writing 100 words when 10 would do, and they all report loving the book ... but as a complete and utter Stephenson fanatic, even I abandonded him at Anathem.
> as a complete and utter Stephenson fanatic, even I abandonded him at Anathem.
You might want to give his later stuff a try. I think he's really improved his ability to wrap a story up, without compromising on the grand ideas.
Makes me wonder what Anathem looks like in other translations and whether... Mathic was it(?), was as much an issue in translation. Maybe I'll take another go at it. It's been years, and people that I respect greatly have told me it's one of their favorites.
I also really enjoyed this conversation including him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7FN53FqB1U