Neal Stephenson Returns with "Anathem" 248
Lev Grossman writes to tell us that Neal Stephenson, author of greats like Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, has another novel due for release in September. The catalogue copy gives us a small glimpse at what may be in store: "Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians--sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable 'saecular' world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown."
I've stopped reading... (Score:3, Insightful)
Has he gone back to writing enjoyable books or are they still self-indulgent treatises that he's too important to allow editing of? (Judging from ScuttleMonkey's "...author of greats like Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon...", the latter seems more likely.)
Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd never thought of putting it into an actual story with a more structured actual separation.
Should be a good read. He can be rather better at predicting how people react to changes in technology rather than how most people think we'd react. (I.E. Relationship role changes and the way we interact fundamentally changed rather than just slightly bent.)
Re:I've stopped reading... (Score:4, Insightful)
Excellent; he's one of my favourite authors (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading his books, you can't help but feel that he's constantly nudging and winking at you, sharing the joke and deligt of writing as it were. I can see why some people would hate that, or not have the patience to wade through it, but I can't get enough of it.
In that, he reminds me of Roger Zelazny. Lately, though, I find Charles Stross to feel rather similar.
"Raz and his cohorts" (Score:2, Insightful)
the forced need of self gratification by grandeur. too unrealistic when repeated that often and in every context.
Re:Shades of the Foundation Trilogy (plus) (Score:4, Insightful)
The worst would be if he tried to tie the Baroque Cycle, the Cryptonomicon, and Snow Crash all together in this book, like Asimov did at the end of Foundation.
Pity that S.F. authors seem to go a little nuts when they get old.
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Stephenson, among others, clearly plays to the the geek version of what makes elitism. I find him one of those authors whose generally mediocre work is peppered with intriguing ideas and even flashes of clever writing. He is a geek writing for geeks, satisfying their desire to have their own view of the world confirmed. I put Orson Scott Card in that category, too.
There are alternatives to that: writers who unsettle and shake up frameworks of thought. Among my favorite of them, in SF at least, are Thomas Disch and Samuel Delaney.
I stalled out 2 books ago... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fantastic (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to think that the reason for it is that Neal seems to have three distinct fanbases:
1. The ones who never got over Neuromancer and only like the books where he's channeling Bill Gibson.
2. The ones who appreciate the convoluted storylines and textured histories of Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle.
3. The Venn-diagram overlap of the two, which appears to be tiny.
I'm a #3, but I try not to evangelize.
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Growing up involved giving up certain pleasures in the discovery of other ones - more nuanced, complicated and difficult ones, at times. For most things, most of us are on the "low scale." We can accept it without resenting it or defending it. I think a lot of the problem with culture is the insistence that there is no such thing as "high" and "low," that all tastes are just as good - it's usually an insistence that people only make for their "low" tastes. In other words, you won't be able to convince a geek that Windows is just as good as Unix, but they'll insist that Stephenson is just as good as, say, Samuel Beckett. Conversely, a literati will express the same kind of convenient mix of egalitarianism / anti-egalitarianism.
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Fair enough. And to be honest, at times I've liked Stephenson - usually for short bursts at a time. His writing is often a pastiche of clever ideas and descriptions held together by - well, not really held together by anything at all. I think he's be more effective if he didn't even try to write novels, but wrote books of connected, somewhat related vignettes.
Still, life is short. I'm going to read, what, maybe one one-hundred-thousandths of all the literature that's ever been written? . .
Re:This makes me happy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obligatory comment about Neal's romance scenes (Score:2, Insightful)
Stephenson's hallmark is going into great detail, and when he does it right it has value of some kind. Plot, humor, exposition, etc. For example, the girl bursting into flames after sex was part of a whole exploration of computation-- it was an interesting bit of science fiction. The description of Waterhouse's sexual frustrations were amusing. The prostate-fingering set up character details and motivation that lasted to the end of the book. He dealt realistically with both health and political issues in 17th century west Europe, up to and including the mentioned surgery and fake sex.
I find it to be the exact opposite of how sex is treated by most other authors. It's not something stapled on to titillate; rather, it fits in just like all the other details and commentary. That's not to say everyone should like it. As with many of my other personal delights, I make no beefs that most of the population likely won't enjoy Stephenson as I do, and I am not a huge devotee of everything he's written. It seems to me that the singling out Stephenson's descriptions of sex is a reflection of the reader, not the writer, given that it is presented in the same manner as the rest of the book, like it or not.
Re:This makes me happy (Score:5, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. I think Stephenson, at his best, has a singular gift for conveying background information, often fairly technical stuff, without interrupting his narrative. Consider the passage in Cryptonomicon where he explains modular arithmetic using the broken spoke on Alan Turing's bicycle, or the gradual explanation of universal Turing machines that's woven into the second half of The Diamond Age.
Sometimes I think he takes it a little far... the first half of The Confusion sometimes felt like it was trying to explain the entire political framework of sixteenth-century France, and not always succeeding (at least, not in my case) - but by and large it's an aspect of his writing I enjoy very much.
(I also think it demonstrates an interesting contrast with another great sci-fi/'cyberpunk' author, William Gibson. Where Stephenson will take several pages explaining some neat gadget or system, Gibson just throws his technological ideas at you and lets you work out for yourself what he's talking about. Count Zero opens with the line "They sent a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair."... and closes 333 pages later without ever telling you what a slamhound is or how you would go about slotting one.)
I wonder if Enoch Root will be in this one...
Re:Slashvertisement? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are 'buying into' an author you've never read before this is going to put more possible stumbling blocks in the way. Both Snowcrash and Diamond Age have cracking stories that I think would be a bit more accessible to Stephenson novices first time out. You're going to want to read all three (and the others) anyway so I'd start out simpler. Alternatively grab anything by him you fancy - I can't help with your Bad Impulse Control.