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Sonny Bunch's avatar
The Bulwark
Across the Movie Aisle
The Sprawling History of Neal Stephenson's 'Polostan'
0:00
-49:30
Chris Fox's avatar

Stephenson bears the distinction of becoming less interesting with each book, even as his brilliance becomes more evident.

I read Snow Crash a dozen times; The Diamond Age half as many I struggled to finish Cryptonomicon. I didn’t even start on the Baroque Cycle.

Still, the topic of this emerging series is one dear to my heart, Bohr and Dirac are my heroes, we shall see.

Steven Insertname's avatar

Cryptonomicon is amazing, I've read it multiple times. Snow Crash is of course incredible. The Baroque Cycle was... a slog. I bought and read them all, but couldn't tell you much about what happened. After that series, he never quite returned to the form he had in Anathem or REAMDE, both of which are incredible (for wildly different reasons). The Mongoliad was excellent, too, tho it was a collab effort. I love the premise and the first half of Seveneves, but the 2nd half falls down a bit (tho s…

Chris Fox's avatar

I thought Seveneves was horrid. First of all, we never learned why the moon suddenly began to crumble, but it reminded me of a Paddy Chayevsky book e.g. Altered States or Network: good premise, great buildup, and then 2/3 of the way through it just falls apart and made me feel I'd wasted time I could've better spent reading something more educational. I would not consider reading it again. The title feels like an afterthought, as if he came up with the seven Eves wondering "how can I wrap this …

Steven Insertname's avatar

If you haven't finished (or even started) them, I can't recommend REAMDE and Anathem highly enough. Neither feels like 800 pages, since he is (was) so good at keeping things moving (The Baroque Cycle notwithstanding lol).

Chris Fox's avatar

Anathem, I found unreadable. Intellectual cock-polishing; it felt like Stephenson has had too many people tell him how smart he is.

I just read about README as I bought the new book (yay Kindle) and, sorry, but I have no interest in games, none have ever held my interest.

I have a long time friend who has been in the game industry most of his life who tells me that the big game companies hire psychologists specializing in addiction to adjust the reward intervals in their products to entice kids t…

Sonny Bunch's avatar

I love REAMDE and it's only nominally about "video games"; really, it's about money and finances and the internationalization of commerce.

Chris Fox's avatar

None of which interest me in the slightest. I have had a life goal for years, to read and understand Gravitation by Misner Thorne and Wheeler (bit.ly/3BSQk6h) the authoritative tome on general relativity, and far over my head; I thought I had many years left but suddenly I don't; a sequel to a book I found so disappointing is not in the stars, sorry.

Steven Insertname's avatar

REAMDE isn't a sequel to anything. Most of his stuff is standalone, other than the Baroque Cycle (and Cryptonomicon which is ostensibly a sorta kinda first book in that series). Mongoliad has 3 volumes (last I looked), but it's a collaboration.

Sonny Bunch was hoping for a sequel to Seveneves, that's what I was responding to. My disappointment with that book's ending was something I could feel in my viscera. I gave the guy another chance, he let me down hard. I managed to finish Cryptonomicon but I will never read it again; I couldn't stand Anathem. Just ... awful. Goo-goo about high finance has no appeal to me. I lived through the dotcoms and the condescending financial types I met revolted me. "What's the 'Periodic Table'?"

But hope springs eternal. It's hard to believe that someone who did work as fine as Snow and Diamond will never have another great book in him, so I bought the new one. But if it's another look-at-me letdown, it's the end.

Oct 23
at
8:54 AM