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Maybe she writes lots of licensed genre fiction? Game tie-ins, vocalizations, etc
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Jan 4, 2017 13:41
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Atlas Hugged posted:That summary sounds awful. Like teenager's first novel awful. "What if, get this, magic were real?" I also hate every name because seriously who the gently caress has names like that? Agreed. If your main characters are named "Melisande" and "Tristan," then your book is 100% guaranteed to be awful
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Jan 4, 2017 15:30
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Lewd Mangabey posted:Agreed. If your main characters are named "Melisande" and "Tristan," then your book is 100% guaranteed to be awful Considering what Neal Stephenson was able to do with a main character named "Hiro Protagonist", I disagree.
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Jan 4, 2017 16:44
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Atlas Hugged posted:That summary sounds awful. Like teenager's first novel awful. "What if, get this, magic were real?" I also hate every name because seriously who the gently caress has names like that? The plot of Snowcrash can be described as "What if there was a computer virus that could only infect hackers  " so i'm inclined to give this one a try too.
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Jan 4, 2017 17:16
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Coca Koala posted:The plot of Snowcrash can be described as "What if there was a computer virus that could only infect hackers As for Nicole Galland it looks like she's only written original work, no licensed stuff.
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Jan 4, 2017 19:33
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I think it's "commercial fiction" vs "literary fiction".
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Jan 4, 2017 19:47
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Sounds fairly dumb but I enjoyed Seveneves enough that I'll sign in for the ride.
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Jan 4, 2017 23:14
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ulmont posted:Considering what Neal Stephenson was able to do with a main character named "Hiro Protagonist", I disagree. You really don't see the difference between a character name that is dripping in satire and a dork named "Tristan". Unless there's a joke in there I'm not getting, it's not really comparable. Memento posted:Sounds fairly dumb but I enjoyed Seveneves enough that I'll sign in for the ride. Yeah I didn't hate Reamde and liked most of Seveneves and I figure the man that wrote Anathem and the Baroque Cycle is due the benefit of the doubt so I'll give it a try, but that is just a terrible synopsis. Coca Koala posted:The plot of Snowcrash can be described as "What if there was a computer virus that could only infect hackers There are a ton of angles you could take to summarizing Snowcrash and almost all of them immediately clue you in to it being self-aware. It's possible this book is going to dissect tropes of the modern-day-magical setting and it will be to Harry Potter what Snowcrash is to Neuromancer, but I have more reservations because it's being presented as totally serious which either means the publisher doesn't get it or the audience or they're being completely honest with us. Like I said, I owe it to the man to give it a shot, but I'm going in with incredibly low expectations.
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Jan 5, 2017 14:11
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I have not even tried seveneves yet, i'm very reluctant based on what i've heard. I'm just doing a reread of anathem now.
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Jan 5, 2017 23:06
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Atlas Hugged posted:You really don't see the difference between a character name that is dripping in satire and a dork named "Tristan". Unless there's a joke in there I'm not getting, it's not really comparable. Well, with an allusion it's hard to tell if it pays off before reading the book.
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Jan 5, 2017 23:14
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Plot summary does indeed sound super goofy, but Stephenson has a pretty good track record with goofy premises (come on, The Diamond Age)
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Jan 6, 2017 01:25
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I read Seveneves over Christmas as I read Snowcrash last year which I really enjoyed. The inside cover of the copy I borrowed had this intriguing diagram of something called the "Habitat Ring", which essentially kept me reading to find out what that was. In fact, I was so interested in this habitat ring I read through 600 pages of really not that great stuff until the final 3rd of the book blew me away. I don't think I have ever read something where the tone and quality of the last part is so different to the first two parts, it was actually really bizarre. I walked away actually really appreciating the first parts because of how good it made the last bit even if the "Seveneves" idea was kind of stupid from a biology point of view. Throughout the book I got the distinct impression that this was something the author had tried to write as a movie or TV show or something other than the form it was finally presented in. It felt like it was conceived as a homebrewed RPG setting perhaps with seven "factions" but was hastily smashed together into a book for some reason. I was also expecting to see Dougal Dixons excellent book Man after Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_After_Man) acknewledged because of the similarities of the pingers to Piscanthropus submarinus presented in that book 
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Jan 6, 2017 13:54
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I'm the opposite, I found the first part better than the second. Especially because there's so much exposition. I really don't care how your glider thing works, give me stuff about eating space captain crunch
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Jan 7, 2017 01:56
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Seveneses sounds like something I need to check out. I liked Snowcrash, but was not a fan of Cryptonomicon. It was probably the setting that made Snowcrash for me, and Cryptonomicon just didn't have it.
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Jan 7, 2017 03:25
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I thought Cryptonomicon had about half a good book hidden in it. All the WW2 stuff was great, I just couldn't give a poo poo at all about Randy and the Dentist. I did find the little tangents about his family and sorting furniture after his grandmother died amusing, but the plot did nothing for me at all.
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Jan 7, 2017 04:20
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Atlas Hugged posted:I just couldn't give a poo poo at all about Randy and the Dentist. Yep, same here. And the ending, same as The Diamond Age, felt like it should have been about 60-80 pages longer. I read Cryptonomicon and Diamond Age and thought to myself "oh well this guy can't do endings, still great stories and world building". Anathem proved that to be incredibly wrong, but I guess he doesn't always have time to flesh them out? 
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Jan 7, 2017 07:00
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I think Anathem was just a story whose ending was easy to naturally achieve. His endings are only bad when he doesn't have a clear throughline from the beginning to the end, which is why The Baroque Cycle has such a great ending.
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Jan 7, 2017 18:27
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Atlas Hugged posted:I thought Cryptonomicon had about half a good book hidden in it. All the WW2 stuff was great, I just couldn't give a poo poo at all about Randy and the Dentist. Same. My career at the time was math and communication based, so I was interested in all of that. Even if it wasn't really the cyberpunk that I'd expected from him after reading Snowcrash. I just couldn't find a reason to like the rest, and found myself reading it just to get it over with. It was a hard book to pick back up if you'd set it down a while.
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Jan 7, 2017 21:03
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JustCait posted:Same. My career at the time was math and communication based, so I was interested in all of that. Even if it wasn't really the cyberpunk that I'd expected from him after reading Snowcrash. I just couldn't find a reason to like the rest, and found myself reading it just to get it over with. It was a hard book to pick back up if you'd set it down a while. precision posted:I think Anathem was just a story whose ending was easy to naturally achieve. His endings are only bad when he doesn't have a clear throughline from the beginning to the end, which is why The Baroque Cycle has such a great ending. The Baroque Cycle is basically just a better version of Cryptonomicon. It benefited from him having a more clear idea of what he wanted to do with it and only a single timeline rather than bouncing back and forth between two tenuously connected ones. I waffle on if it or Anathem is his magnum opus.
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Jan 8, 2017 06:24
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Both the first 2/3rds of Seveneves and the last 1/3rd of it were very good. Unfortunately, they should not have been one volume. Should have really been a book 1/book 2 thing, with both chunks being given a full novel's time to explore their ideas.
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Jan 8, 2017 06:36
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Atlas Hugged posted:The Baroque Cycle is basically just a better version of Cryptonomicon. It benefited from him having a more clear idea of what he wanted to do with it and only a single timeline rather than bouncing back and forth between two tenuously connected ones. I waffle on if it or Anathem is his magnum opus. It may be a single time period, but the plot threads are still really different.
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Jan 8, 2017 07:26
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Hackan Slash posted:It may be a single time period, but the plot threads are still really different. Sure, but they are able to interact and and influence one another far more directly than in Cryptonomicon with the various climaxes all coming together at the end.
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Jan 8, 2017 13:40
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So I'm close to two hundred pages into Quicksilver - does this thing actually develop any sort of plot soon? I realize the story spans 3 books, but drat it's testing my patience even more than the first hundred of Anathem. Also do the in-depth descriptions of english clothing ever pay off? I've been kind of glazing over them.
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Jan 9, 2017 16:13
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It's been ages, but if I remember correctly the fist 2/3 of Quicksilver is really the set-up or forward for the whole story. It's really hard to get through, but well worth it in the end. I'm not a huge European history buff and distinctly remember having my laptop open to Wikipedia while I was reading the first half. Re: The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. I hopped over to goodreads to see if there was any more discussion or info on the upcoming book and noticed that there was another entry for a separate upcoming book titled Fall. it's description was: pitched as a high-tech retelling of PARADISE LOST featuring some characters from REAMDE. Is this the same thing? I've never known Stephenson to release two books in the same year.
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Jan 9, 2017 16:40
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Colonel Taint posted:So I'm close to two hundred pages into Quicksilver - does this thing actually develop any sort of plot soon? I realize the story spans 3 books, but drat it's testing my patience even more than the first hundred of Anathem. Quicksilver is in my opinion the slowest of the three books. Jack/Eliza becomes more interesting but yeah it's pretty slow. I actually liked it better on the second read through. If you don't like in-depth descriptions of mundane things what are you doing reading Stephenson? Dr. Benway posted:It's been ages, but if I remember correctly the fist 2/3 of Quicksilver is really the set-up or forward for the whole story. It's really hard to get through, but well worth it in the end. I'm not a huge European history buff and distinctly remember having my laptop open to Wikipedia while I was reading the first half. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I'm surprised he's going back to REAMDE's characters. Things seemed to wrap up well and they frankly weren't very interesting. I guess I'm just too attached to the Waterhouses & Shaftoes.
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Jan 9, 2017 16:58
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I've read/listened to The Baroque Cycle 4 times now. Even though Quicksilver came out at the height of my Stephenson-worship, it took me an entire year of starting it and then giving up before I powered through. Once I did though, I very quickly read the next two books. The first 2/3 of Quicksilver is the best part of the series, but only on a re-read. First time through it definitely is rough and meandering, but once you realize how every single thing in that first 2/3 is setting up the rest of the series thematically and literally it's a real "whoah" moment.
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Jan 9, 2017 20:54
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precision posted:I've read/listened to The Baroque Cycle 4 times now. Even though Quicksilver came out at the height of my Stephenson-worship, it took me an entire year of starting it and then giving up before I powered through. Once I did though, I very quickly read the next two books. I was the exact opposite. I loved the start of Quicksilver and then I bounced hard off of everything else a couple of times.
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Jan 9, 2017 23:31
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Quicksilver is definitely easier to get through and more rewarding if you've read through the Confusion. System of the World is a lot more standalone than the other two volumes even though it wraps everything together. It's also the one I have the hardest time getting through on reread. The recommended reading order could almost be Quicksilver, Confusion, Quicksilver, System of the World since the framing device of Quicksilver leads straight into System of the World.
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Jan 11, 2017 12:03
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I found the endless reading of letters from one character to another in Quicksilver to quickly become tiresome. The 3rd part of it just killed me. but its important stuff.
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Jan 14, 2017 17:16
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Cimber posted:I found the endless reading of letters from one character to another in Quicksilver to quickly become tiresome. The 3rd part of it just killed me. but its important stuff. It's all worth it for 2000 pages later Comstock's letter to Eliza
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Jan 14, 2017 17:34
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I'm re-reading Anathem a couple of years after powering through it and thinking it was too weird to be any good and consequently not really remembering any of the plot apart from a-bomb powered spaceship from different cosmos. Holy smokes, was I wrong! I'm actually pretty happy that I failed to appreciate it the first time around, because I now get to read it for what feels like the first time. Actually, I haven't read a Stephenson book I didn't really, really like apart from Anathem (the first time). According to this thread, I am the only person alive who thinks both parts of Seveneves are great in their own ways - and that they absolutely should not be in separate books. The last third feels like the reward for schlepping - albeit with pleasure - through the orbital mechanics and OH THE HUMANITY of the first two thirds. I guess I just enjoy good, nerdy, unnecessary stories
Mzuri fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Jan 14, 2017 |
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Jan 14, 2017 17:59
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I would have happily had the second part of Seveneves be as long as the first part. It could have used another hundred pages fleshing out the middle, and another hundred pages at the end showing us how everything played out after the Diggers and Pingers had been contacted.
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Jan 15, 2017 01:39
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The thing I'll say about the last third of Seveneves is that he tried to use a cheap narrative trick to make us care about the characters rather than giving us an actual reason to care about their situation and the ongoing political conflict between Red and Blue.
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Jan 15, 2017 06:59
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I think the beef I have with Seveneves is that I can buy all the orbital mechanics stuff and the comet etc I am not a physicist or engineer so I can't dissect out what is "This could actually be done" and "This is an exaggeration for narrative effect". For instance, the Luks that the russians sent to the ISS seemed to me, plausible if not already possible. In the real world I am a biologist and so when the first part came to its end and the "Seveneves" moment I just couldn't really get past all the "but epigenetics" parts of it all. To me it seemed like all the "mechanical" aspects of the first part could feasibly be done in the timescale, but that all of the "lets edit our progeny to be whatever our ideals are" crossed a "hard sci-fi" boundary into complete fantasy within the constraints of the timescale the author set. If it were altered somehow that all the bio-hacking had happened gradually in the 5000 years between part 1 and 2 I might have found it easier to deal with. I still much preferred part 2 and thought it could have had a few hundred more pages easily. It felt very rushed.
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Jan 16, 2017 11:38
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Hackan Slash posted:It's all worth it for 2000 pages later Comstock's letter to Eliza How much time does The Confusion cover anyway? Like 15 years?
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Jan 17, 2017 21:50
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More than 15 years, surely, based off the ages of the Shaftoe lads.
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Jan 18, 2017 08:12
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precision posted:More than 15 years, surely, based off the ages of the Shaftoe lads. Also Jean-jaques was conceived at the end on Quicksilver, and is a young man by the system of the world? E: J-J was conceived before the glorious revolution in 1688, and The Juncto ends in 1702, as per wikipedia exmachina fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Jan 20, 2017 |
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Jan 20, 2017 02:03
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I just picked up The Diamond Age, and man it's really good! Last book of his I read was Cryptonomocon, which I thought was ok but it took me forever to finish. With the Diamond Age I can't put it down. Haven't finished it yet but I'd love it if he wrote another book in this universe, the technology is cool and I think the idea of people organizing into phyles as nations become irrelevant is really interesting. Also I want to know if Stephenson says Nippon instead of Japan in real life while speaking conversationally. I hope so, it's so endearingly dorky.
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Mar 3, 2017 06:59
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MrWilderheap posted:I just picked up The Diamond Age, and man it's really good! Last book of his I read was Cryptonomocon, which I thought was ok but it took me forever to finish. With the Diamond Age I can't put it down. Haven't finished it yet Neither has Stephenson. 
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Mar 3, 2017 14:07
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MrWilderheap posted:I just picked up The Diamond Age, and man it's really good! Last book of his I read was Cryptonomocon, which I thought was ok but it took me forever to finish. With the Diamond Age I can't put it down. Haven't finished it yet but I'd love it if he wrote another book in this universe, the technology is cool and I think the idea of people organizing into phyles as nations become irrelevant is really interesting. I think you will find that there is nothing Stephenson does that is not dorky.
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