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Jazerus posted:I see a lot of discussion about Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon whenever a Stephenson discussion pops up on SA for whatever reason, but very little about the Baroque Cycle. Personally I don't really enjoy any of his books other than the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver in particular) - do most people not care for them? I love the baroque cycle! IMO Jack Shaftoe is the most fun character to read in anything I've been exposed to. However, if Quicksilver is your favorite among those books that probably says something about your preferences and what you might not enjoy Stephenson's other work. Quicksilver was very difficult to get through for me. Upon finishing the trilogy I appreciated it a lot more, but mostly for all the setup it did, not as much for the story it told.
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Mar 8, 2014 21:47
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None of that happened in Anathem. Are you talking about Diamond Age? I haven't read it in a long, long time so I'm just assuming these characters and settings you're talking about are somehow relevant to the conversation. I do remember kind of liking Diamond Age but also being pretty let down by the ending. And maybe it was just because I had recently read Ender's Game, but I felt a strong parallel between the games played in those two books. Not sure if I've seen that remarked on here, but I thought it was kind of interesting. Inspector 34 fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Dec 27, 2014 |
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Dec 27, 2014 05:37
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I don't think Anathem's weird vocabulary is all that dense actually. For the most part there are a ton of context clues to let you know what's being talked about. "His jee-jaw rang and he answered, speaking into it..." That kind of thing. Or talking about the different types of lenses for a speelie-captor and what they're used for. Add in the definitions at the beginning of each chapter and I thought it was really well done. I guess I can see how constantly being forced to make those connections could take you out of the story, but I thought it was kind of fun.
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Jul 7, 2015 18:50
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I can definitely see how the pacing of Anathem would throw some people off. It's this weird exponential thing where it starts a dead crawl and very very gradually ramps up for the first half or two thirds of the book, then it just goes bananas. Luckily I really liked the world building in the first half. I thought Neal did a great job making the world feel really old. I've just finished part 2 of Seveneves btw. I've actually liked the book quite a lot so far. JBF was such a hateable character, a person who's only a contrarian for the purpose of creating factions, but without the self awareness to realize it.And without the technical knowledge to even know if she's right or wrong, she just assumes that because her intentions are good the means justify themselves. I think that was vague enough that it might not have needed spoiler tags, but better safe than sorry I guess. I'm only about 10 pages into part 3 and there's already talk of "I'm an x, so maybe that's why I think this way..." and "He's a y, so then..." It's a little grating to think that 5 thousand years into the future, with technology apparently having advanced significantly, that people define themselves this way. Though I've only been introduced to the one character so far so maybe it's just her. Inspector 34 fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Jul 7, 2015 |
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Jul 7, 2015 23:13
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I just finished this book and for the most part I like it. I guess I'm still digesting some parts of it, but I had a few minor gripes while reading. 1. When they finally reach the moon it seemed like Julia kind of realized what a shitbird she had been, so I assumed that she would try to teach her offspring not to make the same mistakes. Instead, 5000 years later it seems like instead she genetically engineered her kids to be the same brand of manipulative rear end in a top hat that she was. Is Stevenson making a nature/nurture argument here? At least Aida stated outright that she was going to just gently caress with everybody's plans. 2. The pingers seem waaaaaay more mutated than the spacers. I thought this was a weird choice to make since the spacers were actively engineering their genes while the pingers presumably could only use selective breeding. They did mention that there was potentially a similar program to survive in the sea, but we were kind of led to believe that all the most capable folks were ferried up to space. I really like the setting and the different factions that evolved, even if I don't really care for the way they came about. I kind of wish he would write a series about how the diggers, pingers, spacers move forward or how the diggers and pingers even survived in the first place. I feel like Seveneves would have worked better as a series of short stories filling in backstory for a larger series. But that's not really Stevenson's style and maybe kind of a dumb thing to want since Seveneves has already been written.
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Aug 3, 2015 21:01
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Well Neal made a choice to have all the various groups embrace their genetic and behavioral stereotypes, which I thought was kind of interesting. Most of the time people fight against those kinds of classifications in an attempt to be seen as an individual, but in Seveneves they're just like "Well, I'm from the class of dicks better be the biggest dick I can be!" Or "My people are known for being passive and helpful, better not behave too aggressively!" I didn't like that choice since it was another case if tell instead of show. I would have liked it better if he would have just had the characters do their thing without constantly reminding us they were a Julian or Aidan. Would have been more rewarding to read and make those connections on our own.
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Aug 14, 2015 22:35
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The guy who did the Baroque Cycle was amazing, but so was the guy who did Cryptonomicon and Anathem. I think Anathem might actually be my favorite audiobook since it's the only one I've listened through more than twice.
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Jul 23, 2016 11:14
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