|
Anathem rules very hard. Some of the math monks do martial arts which they call vale-lore and someone digs a little hole and then shits into it because they think the food they ate was from a different universe. Also near the end they get high on the air from a different universe and start skipping through different possible realities until they get one where they win.
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 04:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 10:20 |
|
|
True story: I had checked out "Fall; or Dodge in Hell" from my local library in maybe January or February of 2020, you know, back in the normal times. I finished the book and then all the lockdown poo poo happened and the library closed its doors for maybe forever and they said, yeah don't bother with late fees and returning books because we don't know what to do with them because the plague will kill us. I had the book sitting on my living room coffee table for easily 6-7 months, and never once did I feel tempted to read it again. I was bored out of my mind with nothing to do and still I didn't want to read the book again. So yes, I heartily recommend "Fall; or Dodge in Hell".
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 05:30
|
|
|
Anathem and The Baroque Cycle both strongly benefit from rereads but I have no idea what the above poster is talking about because I've never heard of Nelson Mandela and Alta Vista is turning up nothing.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 05:58
|
|
|
Fall or Dodge in Hell falls into the same kind of pitfall that Seveneves which is that halfway through it turns into an entirely different book than it was to start with, and although I find the second half of Fall to be notably better than the second half of Seveneves they both kind of suffer from this. I do appreciate that he wrote an explanation for Enoch and Solomon's whole deal which I personally found acceptable. If you've never read Stephenson I'd personally recommend Anathem before anything else, and if you don't want to read a massive book immediately start with Snow Crash instead (although honestly if you don't want Massive Books this is the wrong author to read). Cryptonomicon is pretty good and the Baroque Cycle is fantastic but is also a million pages and you may want to get used to Stephenson's prose before you immediately dive into that one.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 06:34
|
|
|
Going back to Gibson chat: I read Idoru for the first time recently and it aged incredibly well, far better than some of us other books.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 07:07
|
|
|
Meiteron posted:If you've never read Stephenson I'd personally recommend Anathem before anything else, and if you don't want to read a massive book immediately start with Snow Crash instead (although honestly if you don't want Massive Books this is the wrong author to read). Cryptonomicon is pretty good and the Baroque Cycle is fantastic but is also a million pages and you may want to get used to Stephenson's prose before you immediately dive into that one. Another thing to note is that you usually shouldn't expect much in the way of resolution for the characters or falling action. He's gotten better at this over the years, but not by much. Anathem does the best job out of anything of his I've read. To highlight the absurdity of it in Snow Crash, I usually describe to people how it seems like it's hitting the climax what with the nuclear-powered cyborg bulldog sprinting 600mph down the tarmac at LAX to save the girl it loves, while meanwhile the dude literally named Hiro Protagonist saves the virtual-reality metaverse from the computer virus that can infect human minds!!! and then BANG! That's it. Story's over. Go home, folks. The last time I re-read it, the anachronisms were a bit more glaring. It no longer makes much sense for Hiro and Raven's dads to have been WWII POWs at Nagasaki when the bomb went off. That's also the kind of twist that seems TOTALLY AWESOME when you're an impressionable teenager, but somewhat try-hard this many years later. Tech oligarchs pushing the idea that the metaverse dystopia is cool and good, actually, obviously diminishes the book's appeal, too. Atlas Hugged posted:Going back to Gibson chat: I read Idoru for the first time recently and it aged incredibly well, far better than some of us other books. I really, really enjoy the Bridge trilogy. Part of it's because I spent a lot of years working at the farmers' market right next to the Bay Bridge, and it was really easy to picture the Bridge culture he paints as something realistically possible. But part of it is also how it's such a solid '90s period piece, both capturing the concerns of the time and an idea of what was yet to come. Details like the dude from whom they derived an HIV vaccine practically being a secular saint, and the 5-SB drug being desirable to the creepy tech CEO Harwood despite the risk of psychosis, because it enables the user to discern patterns in massive data flows.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 07:17
|
|
|
I specifically liked the bit in cryptonomicon where Randy's character arc is starting as a lovely techbro nerd but slowly morphing into a better person by the end of the book. I read it as an aspirational moral to the target audience of the book.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 07:55
|
|
|
Some passages can be really good and then he suddenly feels the need to go on for pages about some obscure historic fact or technological detail that hes just discovered and its super boring. Re Gibson and Agency: after the peripheral I thought he was gonna go out with a banger of a triology but it seems age and Trump melted his brain into some Russia gate fantasy. So sad.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 09:06
|
|
|
I'm in the middle of reading Ministry for the Future. Also started this book. But I'm starting to think I may have had my fill of climate fiction. I mean, why read about it when you can live it am I right?
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 10:00
|
|
|
I remember reading Quicksilver many years ago and I remember thinking a lot of it was fun but also maybe theres a dude with a 17th century vibrator hand did i make that up?
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 10:18
|
|
|
lonelylikezoidberg posted:I remember reading Quicksilver many years ago and I remember thinking a lot of it was fun but also maybe theres a dude with a 17th century vibrator hand did i make that up? A different character makes it up as part of a scheme to force a noble into marriage.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2022 10:36
|
|
|
Atlas Hugged posted:Going back to Gibson chat: I read Idoru for the first time recently and it aged incredibly well, far better than some of us other books. There's so little difference between a great and a terrible Gibson book. The bad ones read like someone writing a Gibson patische. The Peripheral is excellent. Agency ... is not. Idoru is great, All Tomorrow's Parties is a bit limp. And so on. He's got the weird thing where major developments or plot twists often occur off-screen and the protagonists often make no difference to the plot.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 16:56
|
|
|
while i agree in general i do think Agency is like... noticeably worse than his second-worse which is probably, i dunno, Virtual Light maybe? but then again when i went back to Virtual Light recently i found a ton of stuff i had kind of forgotten was in it, details that made it way better maybe Agency will hold up better on a re-read. i did listen to the audiobook while mostly driving and with Gibson i usually prefer to read the text. disagree about All Tomorro'w Partyes tho. that book slaps nuts. edit: oh wait no Spook Country is the second worst... like Agency it was just kind of forgettable even tho Milgrim is a pretty dece protag
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 17:11
|
|
|
Spook Country is alright, I was a bit annoyed that he wrote a sequel to Pattern Recognition that didn't have any of the main characters from that book, but PR had resolved Cayce's story enough that returning to her aside from her appearance in Zero History would have felt cheap. I also like the similarities between the Blue Ant books and the Bridge books, with exploring augmented reality and drones, and similarities between Milgram and Laney. I like pretending that Spook Country's old man is Cayce's father, but I guess you're supposed to do that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 18:26
|
|
|
Baron von Eevl posted:Spook Country is alright, I was a bit annoyed that he wrote a sequel to Pattern Recognition that didn't have any of the main characters from that book, but PR had resolved Cayce's story enough that returning to her aside from her appearance in Zero History would have felt cheap. I also like the similarities between the Blue Ant books and the Bridge books, with exploring augmented reality and drones, and similarities between Milgram and Laney. I liked Pattern Recognition a bunch and got like, 15 pages in to Spook Country before losing all interest for whatever reason
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 18:27
|
|
|
Play posted:I'm in the middle of reading Ministry for the Future. Also started this book. But I'm starting to think I may have had my fill of climate fiction. I mean, why read about it when you can live it am I right? The first chapter of this book riveted me. Genuinely scared me shitless about the future for a solid 48 hours or so. The ending, not so much BIG BOOK SPOILERS FOLLOW because the book doesn't loving end. there's some magical math mumbo-jumbo about carbon credits, and then it turns out some dude has been running a completely unseen and undiscussed dues ex machina wet ops branch thats been murdering literally everyone up and down the chain to make these policies go through. 60+ planes are downed in one day as the largest act of terrorism ever recorded in history, and people's general responses are to just to think really hard before flying? loving seriously? and making rich people not so rich? It did get me thinking that I never want to live far away from the ocean, because if ocean were to get too hot like in that book than its all over anyway.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 18:56
|
|
|
AARD VARKMAN posted:I liked Pattern Recognition a bunch and got like, 15 pages in to Spook Country before losing all interest for whatever reason Yeah, I bounced off it a few times, but I think it's worth taking another shot at if you liked Pattern Recognition. It's barely a sequel, the only real connective tissue is Hubertus, but I think it's an appropriate continuation of looking at the zeitgeist of that very stupid decade.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 18:59
|
|
|
i did appreciate that in the end the entire plot of Spook Country is people fighting over the possession of literally nothing apt
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 19:13
|
|
|
Every Neal Stephenson book has a sex scene so bad it makes me wonder if it’s an in-joke he has with his fans. Also Charles Stross is more hip. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 20:19
|
|
|
its not a joke, stephenson has big "i'm a bad boy on the internet and i write about loving, i gently caress" energy and like i'm sure he does gently caress, but it is sometimes lol... it was especially lmao in DODO where he and the female author both had author-insert characters and those characters kept dirty talking to each other and it was like haha oh my godddddd
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 20:23
|
|
|
precision posted:i did appreciate that in the end the entire plot of Spook Country is people fighting over the possession of literally nothing I like that Zero History has a t shirt so ugly cameras are incapable of recalling anything wearing it and that one of the mcguffins is unrelated bad fashion.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 20:28
|
|
|
MyronMulch posted:So yes, I heartily recommend "Fall; or Dodge in Hell". same, it's been the most excruciatingly, plodding and boring take on e-afterlife I've ever read. it's also the only take on e-afterlife I've ever read.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 21:15
|
|
|
Bobcats posted:Every Neal Stephenson book has a sex scene so bad it makes me wonder if it’s an in-joke he has with his fans. i tried reading the laundry files books, the premise interested me, but that guy's books read exactly how he looks, bloatee and all
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 21:42
|
|
|
I’m ~230 pages into Fall, have lost steam and am wondering if it’s worth finishing. It is currently about some kids on a roadtrip and they just met a crucified guy. Has the plot started yet, or is it going to jump forward another 20 years? The book so far has been completely backstory for what I assume will eventually become a plot, but it’s so slow.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 21:50
|
|
|
Baron von Eevl posted:I like pretending that Spook Country's old man is Cayce's father, but I guess you're supposed to do that. I thought that was explicit, although it may only have been explicit in prepublicity not the book itself. Remembered that Zero History is about people fighting over a set of jeans, ffs
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 23:08
|
|
|
Bobcats posted:Every Neal Stephenson book has a sex scene so bad it makes me wonder if it’s an in-joke he has with his fans. most (all?) of his protagonists are a bland everyman guy who gets a job at a tech firm of some sort and then witnesses zany sci if things happening beyond their control the prot character is like a witness to the action and not necessarily the most interesting character, just in the right place at the right/wrong time for STUFF TO HAPPEN AROUND I imagine this what how Neil himself has felt at some point in life and it’s actually a pretty good form of self insert the sex scenes imo are those told from the viewpoint of, some guy, with a pretty good tech job, he fell into, and sexy techno-lady shows up and he’s like “what is happening naked lady omg” and it’s kinda actually nice and realistic to how nerds experience life, at least ones who fall into some money accidentally which I expect Mr. Stephenson knows a thing or two about
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2022 23:19
|
|
|
nonathlon posted:I thought that was explicit, although it may only have been explicit in prepublicity not the book itself. I don't remember it being explicit in the text, but I didn't follow the marketing at all. nonathlon posted:Remembered that Zero History is about people fighting over a set of jeans, ffs Kind of? I seem to remember most of the fighting was over the bootleg military fashion, even if what's-her-name's overall mission is the jeans. Whatever though the first book is about hunting down a more pretentious marble hornets over a web forum.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 01:03
|
|
|
I read Anathem last week because of this thread, it was pretty good.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 01:45
|
|
|
I got halfway through seveneves then skimmed the poo poo out of the rest of it. I feel like it will make a much better tv show than a book without all of the rambling about stupid bullshit before completely ham-fisting what could have been the best part of the book.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 02:04
|
|
|
Are they doing a seveneves show? The only ways I could ever see that working are if you either ignore the first 80% of the book and only focus on the future stuff, if you change it so drastically that it has almost no connection to the book, or if you do some funky present/future editing so you eventually get to the point where you understand where these insane future freaks can came from.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 02:35
|
|
|
Baron von Eevl posted:Are they doing a seveneves show? The only ways I could ever see that working are if you either ignore the first 80% of the book and only focus on the future stuff, if you change it so drastically that it has almost no connection to the book, or if you do some funky present/future editing so you eventually get to the point where you understand where these insane future freaks can came from. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 03:10
|
|
|
TBH cryptonomicon as a weird 90s piece would work infinitely batter in a long TV format than Seveneves. Precursors to buttcoin!
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 04:02
|
|
|
Combine cryptonomicon with the baroque cycle, plan for like 8 seasons and intersperse all the different time periods.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 04:37
|
|
|
more like Neal Stevenson imo
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 04:43
|
|
|
Baron von Eevl posted:Whatever though the first book is about hunting down a more pretentious marble hornets over a web forum. yeah it's kind of awesome how ahead of its time "The Footage" was
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 06:23
|
|
|
Call Your Grandma posted:more like Neal Stevenson imo Neil Stevenson
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 10:48
|
|
|
I don't remember Anathem having any explicit sex, just some making out. Another reason why it is the best. Sex scenes in The Baroque Cycle were hilarious because it was either Jack having to overcome his predicament or obviously fabricated encounters written by Eliza.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 10:55
|
|
|
Anathem ends with Raz's spasming body being used as a vibrator.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 12:35
|
|
|
Baron von Eevl posted:Anathem ends with Raz's spasming body being used as a vibrator. Yeah Neal *almost* makes it to the end and while he doesn't show the sex he implies it in a really bizarre way.
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 12:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 10:20 |
|
|
Either way though, Stephenson didn't have anything on King for weird unnecessary sex in his books
|
|
#
?
Feb 8, 2022 12:57
|
|