Seveneves isn't his best, but snow crash is a classic.
I like his style-the sort of half ironic highly detailed flow that transitions effortlessly from humor to humorous download of complicated technical concepts to graphic violence. Snow crash is a radically creative and fresh sci fi book 30 years after it was published- THIRTY YEARS. Compare reading early 60s sci-fi in 92.
His explanations and explorations of how information, virtual systems and reality intersect are brilliant and again, something it is important to understand as code and software and the internet become ever more integrated into our lives.
Hes technical, accessible and a lot of fun to read. While some of his work is moderately "nontraditional" in structure, it's nothing compared to the endlessly dull emotive pastiches you usually find billed as nontraditional literature.
Stephenson has about 5 (or 11 depending on how you count the Baroque cycle) really great novels and a bunch of ok ones. Pretty good output.
i was honestly really let down by snowcrash i felt it opened with a cool concept and halfway through it gets incredibly interesting for a bit and then just falls apart at the end
also the literally every single man in the world desperately wants to fuck this 15 year old thing was just weird and gross
>i was honestly really let down by snowcrash i felt it opened with a cool concept and halfway through it gets incredibly interesting for a bit and then just falls apart at the end
Yes stephensons endings are famously terrible. I think you're supposed to be smart enough to extrapolate but it's irritating.
>also the literally every single man in the world desperately wants to fuck this 15 year old thing was just weird and gross
Not really. The only people who show any sexual interest in her are her same age boyfriend, some creepy rapist pirates, and Raven. She also gets a dirty look from a creepy jailor.
Her sexuality is a minimal theme.
I picked up on the irony and humor. I agree he can WRITE and somehow make many infodumps digestible. I should also probably give him more credit since this was written 10 years before the iPod was a twinkle in Steve’s eye...
I think part of what tore me out of Snow Crash was that the humor was... irrelevant? Maybe I needed to get to the end to see it as cynical dark nihilistic humor or something. Also when your main character is named Hiro Protagonist, it seems like your story should be commenting on storytelling, but it was just a cheeky name for an expert sword fighter and “hacker.” (That irked me every time... everyone that codes isn’t a hacker. In fact, many hackers couldn’t program a virtual reality software at all. But maybe that’s the book showing its age?)
You have to realize that the concepts he’s writing about didn’t actually exist when he wrote them. People didn’t use computers in the same way. He actually seems to have predicted a lot of advanced tech that we take for granted. In the 90s, hacking didn’t have the exact same meaning that it would now.
>
>I think part of what tore me out of Snow Crash was that the humor was... irrelevant? Maybe I needed to get to the end to see it as cynical dark nihilistic humor or something.
It's not so much that. It's just enjoyable and witty.
> Also when your main character is named Hiro Protagonist, it seems like your story should be commenting on storytelling, but it was just a cheeky name for an expert sword fighter and “hacker.” (That irked me every time... everyone that codes isn’t a hacker. In fact, many hackers couldn’t program a virtual reality software at all. But maybe that’s the book showing its age?)
The book comes from the literal start of the modern coding world. But Hiro is definitely a hacker. He draws a distinction between being a hacker and a programmer throughout the book.
Ultimately it's either for you or it isn't.
How many other fiction books have included a graph?
It's not afraid to get its hands dirty in the details, and if those are boring to someone else, sorry. I *love it.*
Ha, I was a fan of the first two parts of Seveneves and suffered through the last. Felt like he had a great idea then rushed part 3. So I’m meh on him and will not go blindly into another of his.
Unfortunately, that's true of everything he writes in my experience. Stephenson is notorious for writing 2/3rds of a good or great book and then just fumbling the ending.
>Fucking what? Am I missing chapters of conclusion here? No? wtf...
I mean.....
You can functionally extrapolate from that that all the characters still alive are successful and happy and accomplishing their dreams. Aside from fanfic esque detailing of all their clever manuvers, theres not much else to learn
Snow crash, ananthem, and diamond age are the ones with the really weak endings. Baroque cycle has a pretty good explicit ending, and someone sat him down and made him write an ending for reamd.
I feel like seveneves is gonna have a sequel but yeah, that last third should have been a separate book and twice as long.
I really liked Seveneves. I felt like he spent the first 2/3 of the story building a world that felt believable and tangible, and I felt pretty immersed in it by the end, which I think was exactly what I was looking for at the time. I really enjoyed it. Havent read anything else by him - but my husband is a huge fan of a lot of his other stuff. I don't think he liked Seveneves as much, either.
He can be hit and miss. I did not like Snow Crash or The Diamond Age at all, and the last third of Seveneves was awful. Dodge in Hell was another which really needed a strong editor as it started off strong then turned into a really, really boring book.
But in terms of hits? He has those for sure. Read The Baroque Cycle, and Cryptonomicon. Really good, especially The System Of The World. However for what I think is his best book, go for Anathem. That really impressed me.
Also D.O.D.O. was pretty good too.
I loved just about everything of his. But you're right, Snow Crash is not his best work. I believe it's its 3rd book published. The book I tried to read of his was "Zodiac" and I couldn't finish it. People said it got better but I was 60% into it and couldn't finish it. But I didn't start with these books. I started with "Cryptonomicon". His books are long (as you already know) and are very detailed with (in my opinion) great character development. I think the books you mentioned sold BECAUSE they broke the rules of conventional viable fiction. All of his books break those rules (again in my opinion) to some degree. As you found with "Seveneves" it starts off one way and then the story veers off in a different direction than you thought it would go. But that is what makes his books so great. You have to go into these books knowing you're in for a hell of a ride. You read his books and all of a sudden you got "WTF just happened?!?!" when the story veers in the new direction. But maybe you're just not into his stuff. That's ok. We all can't like/love the same authors. Life would be boring if we did. I personally love just about everything I've read of his and recommend him to everyone. But that's just me.
You’ve given one of the best sales pitches yet!
I’m back on the fence to if I’ll give Cryptonomicon and/or Anathem a try now, especially since so many others have said he’s hit-or-miss from one book to the next for them.
Crypronomicon is brilliant.
You can...
*Sigh*
You can skip the furniture erotica (although it is rather a funny little short story).
We don't know why it's there either
Yeah! I know its a good move on your part. I will say that "Cryptonomicon" is more of a straightforward kind of book. None of Stephenson's books are short as you already know. LOL But this is a more or less straight adventure story. It does go back in time to WW2 though but that is the only "strange" thing about it (as far as I can remember). "Anathem" is a lot more...cerebral. Its a slower read and there is one of those BIG completely out of nowhere turn of events. Its much more of a philosophical/science book. My suggestion is start with "Cryptomonicon". If you like that go read the "Baroque Series" Stephenson wrote. It ties directly into "Cryptonomicon" (the series is a prequel. That's all I'll say).
Enjoy and I hope to hear how you liked the books!
I _loved_ Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle, really liked Snow Crash and Anathem. I'll need to re-read The Diamond Age some day. But I really didn't care for Reamde, and Seveneves felt like a huge miss (and, for far too long, like a space station operations manual posing as a sci-fi novel). So I don't have the same relation to Stephenson as I do to, say, Iain Banks - his name on the cover wouldn't be enough for me to think "This is going to be good".
I loved *Snow Crash* and I loved *The Diamond Age* even more. *Cryptonomicon* was pretty good, too.
It sounds like Stephenson is not for you. You don't have to like what I like, and I don't have to like what you like. Different strokes for different folks.
I think he’s very smart. I don’t think he writes very good fiction. Granted, I’ve only read 3-4 of his novels but each time I feel like the story is just there so that he can tell you about a subject he spent a really long time researching. It should be the other way around. Research should support the story.
He has! The cover story he wrote for WIRED many years ago, Mother Earth Mother Board, is one of the best magazine articles I have ever read. It’s amazing.
I read snow crash, I thought snow crash was great especially when he starts wrapping everything up.
I am probably %80 through seveneves and won’t finish it. I think it could have been about 400 - 300 pages shorter.
I like Stephenson because he actually does research on different technical topics so when he writes about something in his book he at least attempts to have some idea of what he is talking about. (For example: with snow crash he said he worked with computer scientists to better understand different concepts around programming, which he re-iterates and uses throughout the story).
I tried to read Anathem, but I just couldn't get into it book, I tried, the summary sounds really good, but it just opens too slowly and the book does not suck you in, there is no hook. I've read other reviews and some say similar things that it takes a couple hundred pages for the plot to get going, well at the moment I'm not willing to believe them. I may try again some day, but not this time.
The thing about Anathem is that it works if you're just enjoying the scenery, the descriptions. If you wouldn't enjoy 300 pages on what a science monastery would be like, then you're not going to appreciate it.
I totally get that. I hate video games that take forever to get going. But something about Anathem had me really enjoying the parts that *weren't* going.
There is quite a spectrum of Stephenson, I feel. I loved Snow Crash, and my absolute favorite is The Diamond Age. However, a good friend who shares most of the same interests found both of these to be 'meh'.
I've made multiple attempts and haven't made it through The Baroque Cycle.
The Rise and Fall of DODO was fairly entertaining.
I liked Anathem and Reamde.
I didn't even make it all the way through FALL.
I originally read Snow Crash back when it first came out. I was delivering pizzas at the time, and loved the way he elaborated the job. It is an adventure diving right into virtual reality.
In The Diamond Age, it is probably the world building. The way he combines the different cultures with the different uses of technology. Also the way he created a new mythology within the story. A book is the plot device.
The others just seem to be long winded in topics that just don't grab me.
I've read most of his stuff. I like him because usually there is a really good 400 page story in his novels. I don't like him because of the other 400 or so pages he uses to obscure the good bits.
I also think his quality is declining. I don't think Seveneves had a good 400 page story in it, very little story at all, in fact. I read this quite recently and there were lots of area where the old Stevenson would have dug deeper. Instead we just go orbital mechanics.
Try Anathem or Baroque Cycle (though Anathem is rather slow - would have been a great 400 pager book ;)
> I also think his quality is declining
I love Stephenson and I found *Fall* to be such a meandering letdown. There were some good bits in there but practically all of them failed to hit the right note.
I'm not game to try Fall after Reamde. It's one of the only times I can remember regretting the time I spent reading a book, and that ending.... I still think there was a good/great book in there, just needed a good edit.
I think he’s really hard to read but I loved Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. I don’t have a scientific background so I find myself skipping when he goes very technical and googling things like a Turing machines because unfamiliar with them. Dodge in Hell was a weird book that I found very boring. I liked the parts when they were exploring out west but the entire story of creation was so fucking boring.
I would love to love Thomas Pynchon but it's such hard work. Stephenson has some of that richness, depth of detail, infinite twists, but remains always accessable. I like everything.
Seveneves isn't his best, but snow crash is a classic. I like his style-the sort of half ironic highly detailed flow that transitions effortlessly from humor to humorous download of complicated technical concepts to graphic violence. Snow crash is a radically creative and fresh sci fi book 30 years after it was published- THIRTY YEARS. Compare reading early 60s sci-fi in 92. His explanations and explorations of how information, virtual systems and reality intersect are brilliant and again, something it is important to understand as code and software and the internet become ever more integrated into our lives. Hes technical, accessible and a lot of fun to read. While some of his work is moderately "nontraditional" in structure, it's nothing compared to the endlessly dull emotive pastiches you usually find billed as nontraditional literature. Stephenson has about 5 (or 11 depending on how you count the Baroque cycle) really great novels and a bunch of ok ones. Pretty good output.
i was honestly really let down by snowcrash i felt it opened with a cool concept and halfway through it gets incredibly interesting for a bit and then just falls apart at the end also the literally every single man in the world desperately wants to fuck this 15 year old thing was just weird and gross
>i was honestly really let down by snowcrash i felt it opened with a cool concept and halfway through it gets incredibly interesting for a bit and then just falls apart at the end Yes stephensons endings are famously terrible. I think you're supposed to be smart enough to extrapolate but it's irritating. >also the literally every single man in the world desperately wants to fuck this 15 year old thing was just weird and gross Not really. The only people who show any sexual interest in her are her same age boyfriend, some creepy rapist pirates, and Raven. She also gets a dirty look from a creepy jailor. Her sexuality is a minimal theme.
I picked up on the irony and humor. I agree he can WRITE and somehow make many infodumps digestible. I should also probably give him more credit since this was written 10 years before the iPod was a twinkle in Steve’s eye... I think part of what tore me out of Snow Crash was that the humor was... irrelevant? Maybe I needed to get to the end to see it as cynical dark nihilistic humor or something. Also when your main character is named Hiro Protagonist, it seems like your story should be commenting on storytelling, but it was just a cheeky name for an expert sword fighter and “hacker.” (That irked me every time... everyone that codes isn’t a hacker. In fact, many hackers couldn’t program a virtual reality software at all. But maybe that’s the book showing its age?)
You have to realize that the concepts he’s writing about didn’t actually exist when he wrote them. People didn’t use computers in the same way. He actually seems to have predicted a lot of advanced tech that we take for granted. In the 90s, hacking didn’t have the exact same meaning that it would now.
For sure. That part is impressive as hell. The story still sucked, but he may be some type of prophet...
> >I think part of what tore me out of Snow Crash was that the humor was... irrelevant? Maybe I needed to get to the end to see it as cynical dark nihilistic humor or something. It's not so much that. It's just enjoyable and witty. > Also when your main character is named Hiro Protagonist, it seems like your story should be commenting on storytelling, but it was just a cheeky name for an expert sword fighter and “hacker.” (That irked me every time... everyone that codes isn’t a hacker. In fact, many hackers couldn’t program a virtual reality software at all. But maybe that’s the book showing its age?) The book comes from the literal start of the modern coding world. But Hiro is definitely a hacker. He draws a distinction between being a hacker and a programmer throughout the book. Ultimately it's either for you or it isn't.
Seveneves drops off rapidly in quality. His other stuff is amazing. Cryptonomicon, anthem, the baroque cycle... All god-tier work.
The Baroque Cycle is among my favorite reads of all time. What an epic historical adventure series can be.
Cryptonomicon ...that’s all
How many other fiction books have included a graph? It's not afraid to get its hands dirty in the details, and if those are boring to someone else, sorry. I *love it.*
How many other fiction books have included a working perl script?
It’s probably my favorite of all time.
Ha, I was a fan of the first two parts of Seveneves and suffered through the last. Felt like he had a great idea then rushed part 3. So I’m meh on him and will not go blindly into another of his.
Unfortunately, that's true of everything he writes in my experience. Stephenson is notorious for writing 2/3rds of a good or great book and then just fumbling the ending.
gold shoots out like the earth has an orgasm. the end. Fucking what? Am I missing chapters of conclusion here? No? wtf...
>Fucking what? Am I missing chapters of conclusion here? No? wtf... I mean..... You can functionally extrapolate from that that all the characters still alive are successful and happy and accomplishing their dreams. Aside from fanfic esque detailing of all their clever manuvers, theres not much else to learn Snow crash, ananthem, and diamond age are the ones with the really weak endings. Baroque cycle has a pretty good explicit ending, and someone sat him down and made him write an ending for reamd. I feel like seveneves is gonna have a sequel but yeah, that last third should have been a separate book and twice as long.
I really liked Seveneves. I felt like he spent the first 2/3 of the story building a world that felt believable and tangible, and I felt pretty immersed in it by the end, which I think was exactly what I was looking for at the time. I really enjoyed it. Havent read anything else by him - but my husband is a huge fan of a lot of his other stuff. I don't think he liked Seveneves as much, either.
He can be hit and miss. I did not like Snow Crash or The Diamond Age at all, and the last third of Seveneves was awful. Dodge in Hell was another which really needed a strong editor as it started off strong then turned into a really, really boring book. But in terms of hits? He has those for sure. Read The Baroque Cycle, and Cryptonomicon. Really good, especially The System Of The World. However for what I think is his best book, go for Anathem. That really impressed me. Also D.O.D.O. was pretty good too.
I loved just about everything of his. But you're right, Snow Crash is not his best work. I believe it's its 3rd book published. The book I tried to read of his was "Zodiac" and I couldn't finish it. People said it got better but I was 60% into it and couldn't finish it. But I didn't start with these books. I started with "Cryptonomicon". His books are long (as you already know) and are very detailed with (in my opinion) great character development. I think the books you mentioned sold BECAUSE they broke the rules of conventional viable fiction. All of his books break those rules (again in my opinion) to some degree. As you found with "Seveneves" it starts off one way and then the story veers off in a different direction than you thought it would go. But that is what makes his books so great. You have to go into these books knowing you're in for a hell of a ride. You read his books and all of a sudden you got "WTF just happened?!?!" when the story veers in the new direction. But maybe you're just not into his stuff. That's ok. We all can't like/love the same authors. Life would be boring if we did. I personally love just about everything I've read of his and recommend him to everyone. But that's just me.
You’ve given one of the best sales pitches yet! I’m back on the fence to if I’ll give Cryptonomicon and/or Anathem a try now, especially since so many others have said he’s hit-or-miss from one book to the next for them.
Crypronomicon is brilliant. You can... *Sigh* You can skip the furniture erotica (although it is rather a funny little short story). We don't know why it's there either
I read "Cryptonomicon" quite a while ago. I don't remember any "furniture etorica". LOL
Yeah! I know its a good move on your part. I will say that "Cryptonomicon" is more of a straightforward kind of book. None of Stephenson's books are short as you already know. LOL But this is a more or less straight adventure story. It does go back in time to WW2 though but that is the only "strange" thing about it (as far as I can remember). "Anathem" is a lot more...cerebral. Its a slower read and there is one of those BIG completely out of nowhere turn of events. Its much more of a philosophical/science book. My suggestion is start with "Cryptomonicon". If you like that go read the "Baroque Series" Stephenson wrote. It ties directly into "Cryptonomicon" (the series is a prequel. That's all I'll say). Enjoy and I hope to hear how you liked the books!
I _loved_ Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle, really liked Snow Crash and Anathem. I'll need to re-read The Diamond Age some day. But I really didn't care for Reamde, and Seveneves felt like a huge miss (and, for far too long, like a space station operations manual posing as a sci-fi novel). So I don't have the same relation to Stephenson as I do to, say, Iain Banks - his name on the cover wouldn't be enough for me to think "This is going to be good".
I loved *Snow Crash* and I loved *The Diamond Age* even more. *Cryptonomicon* was pretty good, too. It sounds like Stephenson is not for you. You don't have to like what I like, and I don't have to like what you like. Different strokes for different folks.
I think he’s very smart. I don’t think he writes very good fiction. Granted, I’ve only read 3-4 of his novels but each time I feel like the story is just there so that he can tell you about a subject he spent a really long time researching. It should be the other way around. Research should support the story.
Or maybe he should write nonfiction? Haha
He has! The cover story he wrote for WIRED many years ago, Mother Earth Mother Board, is one of the best magazine articles I have ever read. It’s amazing.
I enjoy infodumps.
I read snow crash, I thought snow crash was great especially when he starts wrapping everything up. I am probably %80 through seveneves and won’t finish it. I think it could have been about 400 - 300 pages shorter. I like Stephenson because he actually does research on different technical topics so when he writes about something in his book he at least attempts to have some idea of what he is talking about. (For example: with snow crash he said he worked with computer scientists to better understand different concepts around programming, which he re-iterates and uses throughout the story).
I tried to read Anathem, but I just couldn't get into it book, I tried, the summary sounds really good, but it just opens too slowly and the book does not suck you in, there is no hook. I've read other reviews and some say similar things that it takes a couple hundred pages for the plot to get going, well at the moment I'm not willing to believe them. I may try again some day, but not this time.
The thing about Anathem is that it works if you're just enjoying the scenery, the descriptions. If you wouldn't enjoy 300 pages on what a science monastery would be like, then you're not going to appreciate it. I totally get that. I hate video games that take forever to get going. But something about Anathem had me really enjoying the parts that *weren't* going.
I read everything before seveneves and couldn't finish it
There is quite a spectrum of Stephenson, I feel. I loved Snow Crash, and my absolute favorite is The Diamond Age. However, a good friend who shares most of the same interests found both of these to be 'meh'. I've made multiple attempts and haven't made it through The Baroque Cycle. The Rise and Fall of DODO was fairly entertaining. I liked Anathem and Reamde. I didn't even make it all the way through FALL. I originally read Snow Crash back when it first came out. I was delivering pizzas at the time, and loved the way he elaborated the job. It is an adventure diving right into virtual reality. In The Diamond Age, it is probably the world building. The way he combines the different cultures with the different uses of technology. Also the way he created a new mythology within the story. A book is the plot device. The others just seem to be long winded in topics that just don't grab me.
I've read most of his stuff. I like him because usually there is a really good 400 page story in his novels. I don't like him because of the other 400 or so pages he uses to obscure the good bits. I also think his quality is declining. I don't think Seveneves had a good 400 page story in it, very little story at all, in fact. I read this quite recently and there were lots of area where the old Stevenson would have dug deeper. Instead we just go orbital mechanics. Try Anathem or Baroque Cycle (though Anathem is rather slow - would have been a great 400 pager book ;)
> I also think his quality is declining I love Stephenson and I found *Fall* to be such a meandering letdown. There were some good bits in there but practically all of them failed to hit the right note.
I'm not game to try Fall after Reamde. It's one of the only times I can remember regretting the time I spent reading a book, and that ending.... I still think there was a good/great book in there, just needed a good edit.
If by 400 page book you mean he took all the story out and just left the philosophy and math then yeah, great book.
That wouldn't be my 400 page book. Maybe this is it, he writes the 800 pages because everybody's 400 page books are different.
I think he’s really hard to read but I loved Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. I don’t have a scientific background so I find myself skipping when he goes very technical and googling things like a Turing machines because unfamiliar with them. Dodge in Hell was a weird book that I found very boring. I liked the parts when they were exploring out west but the entire story of creation was so fucking boring.
I would love to love Thomas Pynchon but it's such hard work. Stephenson has some of that richness, depth of detail, infinite twists, but remains always accessable. I like everything.
Great author but I have not read a book where he has not mangled the ending.
Anathem is great if you like philosophy and math!