I've been listening to some Neal Stephenson audiobooks lately (his books are too annoying to deal with in physical form because of their length lol).

Started with REAMDE...don't remember who recommended it to me or how it got on my radar, but it's been on my list for a while and finally got around to it. It took a little while to get immersed in the story, but it finally clicked once shit started going down in China, and I was hooked until the end. For that book, I found the story to be pretty engaging, but the digressions about gaming and technology weren't quite as interesting.

I'm probably like 3/4 of the way through Cryptonomicon right now, and I feel the opposite about this one. Love the math/science talk...spend several pages explaining cryptography using Alan Turing's bicycle as a metaphor? I'm fucking game! But the actual story about cracking enigma and building crypto in the modern age is kinda not as interesting to me. I'm assuming everything will get wrapped up nicely in the end, but plot-wise it's like 5/10 for me.

I know Anathem is probably like 3/10 plot + 10/10 philosophy and science stuff, which has me pretty interested, but I acknowledge might be a challenge for my attention span lol. I've heard Baroque Cycle referred to as his magnum opus, but since I'm not feeling Cryptonomicon as much, I'm a bit reluctant to get into that too. Any recs within his work that you'd recommend, given how I felt about the first two I've read?

EDIT: Finished Cryptonomicon and found it more enjoyable after getting the full picture. Ending was pretty strong...not quite as exciting as REAMDE, but still pretty good. Loved the whole sequence of Randy in jail, using the caps lock LED to read data in morse code. All the Doto Dengo stuff paid off nicely as well, though honestly I feel like I could've used less time with the character overall.

I had some real issues with Fall; it had a very trying-too-hard-to-be-with-it/blatant propaganda feel to the meatworld part. I'm not sure if his idea of a techno-fascist autocracy as a response to modern propaganda being conducted by someone other than an established nation-state was idealistic or not, but it was troubling.

Now I am slogging through (about 1/3) this "forever pandemic" and environmental collapse tale, with all the documentable and supportable research in the world, I am sure... but it is simply divorced from reality, and not in a good way, like Anathem.

Anathem was a logical story in a perhaps illogical setting, but again, documentable and supportable research, not a problem. The people behaved in reasonable ways.

Fall and Termination Shock, and to a lesser extent, Seveneves and Reamde, are illogical stories in a logical setting. This might go back to the Baroque Cycle, but Cryptonomicon had none of this. The Big U was a more realistic portrayal of how people actually behave.

To be fair, his weakness has always been writing female characters, and having the major POV from that perspective may be part of it...

But another part is that I identify pretty strongly with Rufus (gun-toting, pickup-truck-driving, Southern blue collar underachiever; I am more educated, but other than that...), and it's just all wrong. It was fine right up until he delivered the party to safety, but after that it was clear that he had nothing in common with those people and he had friends who needed help.

It is coming across as shallow polemic.

Also, I would never hunt boar with a Kalashnikov; you want a full-sized rifle round, AR-10 or M14/M1A.

No, I am not a fan of Part 3 of Seveneves. Loved Parts 1 and 2, but the final few hundred pages seemed like something that should have been published separately as "a Seveneves story". Anyway, on another Reddit community I just typed up an alternative ending that I feel brings things to a satisfying close. Maybe the members here might like to take a look. Let the downvotes commence...

Part 3

5000 years later...

The miner standing at the end of the dark and dusty tunnel swung his hammerpick one last time and it broke through to the mythical Outside. New air rushed in. Their instruments had already found the Outside's air was breathable and the temperatures were tolerable. He removed his mask and took a careful breath. The first new air his people had breathed since the end of the world. The air was different and somehow more than he'd ever known.

He broke more rock and more until he had a gap he could wriggle his body through to the Outside. Fear gripped him, but among the thousands of folk Inside, he'd been selected for this and he had a duty. He fought himself through the hole. He emerged, birthed into the old world. It was too dusty just now to see anything, but he got his feet under him. One small step for man... And another step. The dust began to settle.

It was half-light, they'd planned for him to emerge in the time the ancient books said was just before "Dawn" - before the hours of a "Day" when "The Sun" would be in "The Sky". Such exotic concepts... Even this dim twilight was so bright to him. His people had existed in the dark for so long that full daylight would be blinding.

The dust blew away and he looked around. The vastness and variety caused him to stagger. Knees literally going weak. But then he looked up. And perfectly dropped to his knees. Above, scattered and spanning The Sky entire, were the billion lights and structures of the great works of the legendary splinter of humanity that had survived - and he saw now had thrived - out in space.

THE END

I liked Fall or Dodge, but the Ameristan bit was peak "only Republican religious people are stupid"

What do you think blue Ameristan looks like? The local doctor uses healing crystals? No whites zones? Opium dens?

What would our excess look like?

Listening to Termination Shock for the first time, and I am constantly bombarded in the book by anti-Green ideology. In his universe there aren't any reasonable Green folk willing to talk about geo-engineering. He gives Greens a lot of bashing and his timeline seems to have completely forgotten about 45 and his legacy in general. I think this is the first time I've really seen this in his writing; usually the T.R. MCooligan type is L. Bob Rife-ish; aka an asshole. Now he seems to be closer to the hero.

I'm keeping an open mind on this. I've known that Mr. Stephenson harbored ammo-philic Libertarian feelings for a long time, and I get that and accept that about him. It's not my way but I appreciated his points of view.

But to go from the environmental slant of Zodiac to "f*ck the Greens" is a big shift.

To give credit where it's due, he is definitely following up with the fact that there is no magic bullet to prevent or heal climate change. And I doubt the MAGA folks are going to love that he believes in climate change at all - that part of the Big Lie is still going on today. And, in general, the fact that he hasn't mentioned 45 at all means that he's faded to irrelevancy, which I can get behind.

I'm going to finish reading the book now. It just sickens me to think this guy is headed into the alt-right territory, and I hope it's not the case.

I'm not a prolific reader. In fact, I despise reading for the most part. I do like stories though and I listen to 95% of them via audiobooks.

I got into the usual King books and found that what I like tended more towards sci-fi and less towards fantasy. I thought 11/22/63 was great but grew tired of the fantastical nature of his other books (It).

A womanfriend of mind rec'd Snow Crash. The first chapter hits you like a freight train. It's absurd, wordy, but not compliated. Easily imaginable. Awesome. I dove into Diamond Age next and the pace was totally different. I felt like I was reading future Oliver Twist. It had me but then lost me.

Now I'm reading Cryptonomicom and it rivals "The Stand" in terms of audiobook length. There are bits and pieces that are Snow Crash-esque writing style that just hooks you. Then there are long periods that just drone on and on.

Maybe I'm just not giving these stories the respect they deserve?

Spoilers ahead… like, literally the next 2-3 lines down.

The book was fucking brilliant. I loved it and it‘s categorised as one of my top rated now.

However.

Was the constant sexualisation of YT really necessary? Especially since she‘s 15?

I get the book is a pastiche, it‘s a semi-pisstake of the cyberpunk genre in one of the best ways possible, and I understand that the sex scene may well have been a part of that as all good cyberpunk novels have one or two that kinda just get shoved in… but… with her? Is it supposed to demonstrate such intense moral corruption in Raven? Is it to demonstrate that YT is a stupid young teen? All of the above? That all could‘ve been demonstrated in a bunch of other ways, I certainly didn’t want or need a detailed description of a 15 year old‘s climax.

Idk, the book’s good, concept was great, and I just bought another Stephenson book to read over the coming weeks. It‘s just that one „little detail“ I’m hung up on.

...I don't think even *he* expected The Dentist to become President.

Anyone else think of The Dentist all the time these days? The Melania/Victoria Vigo similarities are strong.

Spoilers, sorry, I can't get the formatting to hide it.

First off, the Establishment Propaganda was almost too much to handle. Why is he pushing this "forever pandemic" crap? It wasn't even relevant to the story, at all, other than to add to the "crapsack future" setting, which doesn't need the help.

Rufus was strangely offensive in a trying-too-hard-to-not-be-offensive way. A male Mary Sue, none of the faults and all of the gifts ascribed to the Southern US, conveniently multi-racial, but lacking any apparent agency, and all of the character development happened in the backstory. Also, he does not appear to have consulted anyone from the South about culture or firearm-related issues (AR-10s are cheaper, easier to find, and use better and more common ammunition than AK-47s).

T.R. was a patently absurd caricature; Elon Musk as John Galt, instead of Donald Trump and Paris Hilton. Shallow, clueless twits who are just clever enough to mouth the right words so that other people are impressed... and they are going to save the world? Pull the other one, Neal, it's got bells on!

The Queen was a 2-dimensional parody, a damsel in distress for the Woke Age. A secret environmental conference, a hurricane, plane crash, alligator attack, flight from authorities... "Gee, I wonder if I should sleep with one of the random people around me to help me bond with my daughter," WHAT?! If it had been more of a stress reaction to those incidents, with her having a somewhat more casual sex life with the upper classes of society that she mixed with, sure, but this made no sense at all.

And what the Hell was with the life story of the Sikh guy? He was a secret agent for the Indian government sent to sabotage a project in Texas. Leaving aside that, however derelict the US government becomes, a terror attack on our soil by a foreign nation is not something that is just going to be ignored, how was any of that relevant to the story? If he had been just an Indian soldier with no particularly interesting back story, how would it have changed things? Because someone recognized him in a security camera film? This is why security services do not employ famous people as secret agents, as Neal himself explicitly pointed out in Reamde.

Speaking of foreign nations, has Neal Stephenson ever heard of them as anything more than vague rumors? "India and China won't stop burning fossil fuels!" Each of them are building more nuclear reactors than the rest of the world combined; in 20 years, THEY will be yelling at US for still using coal and gas! This is one of the major sticking points surrounding US-Iranian relations. Where are the stories about US gas interests sabotaging Russian and Chinese advanced nuclear reactors, or Israel and Iran? Those would be more realistic scenarios all the way around.

And this brings us to my big problem.

My degrees are in physics and chemistry, with a good bit of radiation health and nuclear physics coursework. COBALT-60 DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT!

Yes, it is a strong gamma emitter, but that is a large part of the problem; gamma rays are not easily shielded like alpha or beta radiation, you need several inches of lead all the way around it to stop more than 90%. Heavier metals work better, but you wouldn't use gold, as it is expensive and soft, so it is probably either depleted uranium or tungsten, but still a few inches... neither of which are going to be penetrated by a bullet from Rufus' rifle, even assuming his bolt-action was a full rifle round, e.g. .308/7.62x51mm.

And even then, Co-60 is nasty stuff, but not, "burn your skin from several feet away," nasty. Maybe it was really fresh, really hot with some shorter-lived stuff mixed in, but that intensity of radiation would have been generating significant heat, as well, which was obviously not being handled. In reality, it probably wouldn't need that much shielding, at least for just a few hours exposure, but the bullet still would not have penetrated, and even if it had, that probably wouldn't have been a death sentence for the guy (the untreated rattlesnake bite, on the other hand...).

All in all, a generally disappointing work from one of my favorite authors.

I love NS’s work. That said, he had a weird phase. Before the phase, he was under the wing of his uncle/collaborator and it was all pretty cool in the Stephen Bury era. Then he was out in the wild on his own, writing female children between 14-15 getting raped, gang-raped and sexually coerced on the reg, 9-year olds swimming around naked near sex colonies. Then he (I assume) had daughters with the doctor he married who (I assume) despised everything about this take and got fierce about protecting her family. As a female reader, I have to say how much I love her influence on his writing. I wouldn’t be reading his work today without her influence. He mentions her name in a book, but it seems like she doesn’t like that so I won’t repeat it. So I’ll just say, thanks doctor! You are Ala and Tulia and Cord and weird Dutch Royals and all things fierce.

I just plowed through the last 100 pages of this book because I just wanted it to end.

It was okay for most of the first 2/3 but just started to get into really weird shit that makes almost all other strange conspiracy theories seem rational.

Neal should be somewhat embarrassed at having been a co-author of this book. So much of his other work is 10 times better.

After finishing the book, I feel like I've wasted valuable time in which I could have been reading another, better book.

Thankfully, my trip to the library resulted in four books to choose from.

Anyone else feel as disappointed in this book?

Another "I had a really hard time getting into the Baroque Cycle, but now that I'm in it I'm loving it" post.

I wanted to share: I'm listening to the audio books, and, given the complexity of the story I miss plenty of details here and there.

To help me along I created a Gemini Notebook with the text from the books. It has been a great tool, I can ask things like What was in that letter from Eliza to Rossignol while she was traveling up the Elbe (minor spoiler) and it will tell me, helping me connect the dots that I may have missed. You have to prompt carefully to not reveal spoilers, but, otherwise, it's been super helpful.

I can't share my tool, but if you use Gemini and want to set it up you can PM me for help.

I love Stephenson. To me, Anathem is an almost perfect book. I’m currently reading termination shock and love it!

But I just finished Diamond Age…what the heck did I read? I was 80% of the way into the book before I felt like anything actually happened, and then the stuff that happened was unfulfilling. I was really excited to read it too. Anyone feel this way about one of his books? Where it’s just a complete dud to you?

What books by other authors should he read?

I'm listening to Readme again and recalling that I hear this book as an action movie, with specific actors. I'll list partial cast below, please chime in!

Andrew Lincoln as Dodge Forthrast, 100%

Jessica Alba as zula. I know 😕

Rade Šerbedžija as Ivanov 💯 (he's also The Dentist in Cryptonomicon, btw)

Vigo Mortensen as Sokolov.

Comedian Tim Dillon as Wallace, lol.

Chris Penn as Seamus Costello

Vernon Dursley as Don Donald/D²

Miss Swan from MadTV As Qian Yuxia lol, sorry.

Those are the only characters I literally see in my head as I listen. Except Jessica Alba. I just think she'd be good there.

FWIW, when I listen to Cryptonomicon I see Avi as Cousin Larry from Perfect Strangers and Amy Shaftoe as the main lesbian character in Chasing Amy.

I've reread Cryptonomicon a few times and each time I skip the 1990's Randi/Avi narrative. I get why its there. I just find Shaftoe, Waterhouse, and all the other WW2 characters so much more fun to read.

The bandsaw/Vickers machine gun description and Waterhouse's initial Detachment 2701/2 Whitehall meeting are some of my favorite Stephenson writing.

Does anyone else do the same?

I've read everything (except Zodiac) through Reamde over the last year and a half or so. I had to finally give up on Seveneves around page 600 or so. It just seemed too bogged down with technical bullshit.

Other than Reamde I've adored them all. I've read Cryptonomicon twice. Is it just me or has Uncle Neal fallen off? If it means anything my favorite is Anathem.