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Just finished it, had a good time. I feel it was crunched for space, I think I would have preferred it split in two volumes. There was to much exposition, especially in the last part. Baroque cycle is my favorite of his works, I wish he would wire something of that length again.
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Jun 15, 2015 18:16
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Atlas Hugged posted:Some of the letters I agree were a bit dull, others were fantastic. I mentioned previously the one where it seems like her code has been cracked but it's actually her writing a letter to the codecracker who is her new lover. That's one of the best bits in the series I think. I see all those formal letters as just a build up to the Comstock butt gold joke, and that's enough to justify them being dull in my book.
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Dec 4, 2015 16:00
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Nebakenezzer posted:Re: Seveneves I for one am glad he's grown out of his " knows how to write a satisfying ending" phase
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Jul 20, 2016 17:41
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smackfu posted:When exactly was that phase? Before he started writing books ? I thought Anathem and the Baroque Cycle had satisfying endings. Comedy answer is the Big U. It just gets crazier and crazier, but each step is somewhat believable after having spent some time in academia. Then you end up with LARPers fighting giant rats with a rail gun in an armored up golf cart.
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Jul 23, 2016 20:12
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Nebakenezzer posted:I'd also say Remde and Cryptonomicon had good endings as well, but mental fan, etc. I thought they were satisfactory. Remde seemed a bit by the numbers, while the lawyer part of Crypto seemed gratuitous. I would have much preferred of the climax was their meeting with Goto. Not nearly as bad as the decade orgy computer in diamond age.
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Jul 24, 2016 01:17
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DontMockMySmock posted:I definitely agree with this. It's almost entirely played straight, except for the fact that the main character is a weeaboo* named "HIro Protagonist" who delivers pizza for the mafia. It's a bizarre mix of silly and serious. Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
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Jul 26, 2016 20:25
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Gato posted:350 pages in or so, and it's somewhat better now that he's out of the setup phase Last quarter of book spoiler. I hope you enjoy the second setup phase!
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Aug 17, 2016 12:53
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Xtanstic posted:So I discovered Stephenson a while back and loved Cryptonomicon. I slowly made my way through The Baroque Cycle in the past year. I loved the first book but was underwhelmed by the ending, enjoyed the 2nd book and finally managed to slog through the 3rd book this year (I've been busy). I liked the series and was wondering where to go next? Snow Crash seemed revolutionary at the time but looks dated now? Should I just jump to Seveneves? I'm thinking about picking up a Stephenson audiobook to work through while I walk my dog. Anathem is probably his next best book. Snow crash has some dated sections, but still has some of my favorite parts. Ream.de is probably his most traditional book. Seveneves is okay. There's a lot more exposition than I prefer from him. Interface/the EPA one/the terrorism one/Diamond age are eh Big U is his first book, he doesn't like it himself, but I preferred it to the previous four.
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Sep 9, 2016 21:33
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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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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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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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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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withak posted:I think you will find that there is nothing Stephenson does that is not dorky. My favorite is his attempt to actually make the sword fighting program from Snow Crash. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang https://qz.com/268852/neal-stephensons-failed-500000-video-game-and-the-perils-of-using-kickstarter/
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Mar 3, 2017 16:09
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Memento posted:Sure, I know that now, but lots of really, really lovely sci-fi replaces words for regular things with weirdo terms often with too many apostrophes* in them. It was just a barrier to get over for me. Obligatory XKCD specifically calling out Anathem https://xkcd.com/483
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May 8, 2017 13:11
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Disillusionist posted:It looks like The Mongoliad books are on sale for $.99 each. When it comes to Stephenson I've only read Seveneves but I enjoyed it for the most part. Is the series worth picking up for less than $5? Neal only wrote a few sections of each book, they were written by committee. Book one has 7 authors. It's basically generic fantasy by a bunch of guys who really like swordfighting. I enjoyed them enough to read the first two books, but not enough to read the third when it came out. There are worse things to spend the five bucks on. A better thing to spend the five bucks on would be Anathem, the Baroque Cycle, or Snow Crash.
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Aug 21, 2017 17:31
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