First 26 Pages of Neal Stephenson's New Novel "Seveneves" Online 110
An anonymous reader writes Neal Stephenson has just released a teaser comprising the first 26 pages of his new novel Seveneves. The first words? "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason."
Wait! (Score:3, Funny)
That's no moon. It's a space station!
Re:An Odd Bird (Score:4, Insightful)
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I did get a Heinlein-ish feel from the first part of the preview, mostly from the Delilah and the Space Rigger era of Heinlein's work.
The thing that Stephenson does, which Heinlein never really tried to do, is set a bunch of smaller stories reeling about and, like a pile of icbms, cruise missiles and long range bombers, bring them all together at the final targeted story point
Maybe I am a pathetic doofus, but I really do enjoy Stephenson's work
Re:An Odd Bird (Score:5, Insightful)
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(shudder)
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yeah, what was it, "an imperial pint"?
(shudder)
TWENTY OUNCES!
ba-da-bing!
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Re:An Odd Bird (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Cryptonomicon popularly viewed as not being very good? I enjoyed it, not as much as Snow Crash, but what the hell can compare with that?
Re:An Odd Bird (Score:5, Informative)
Most people I know who finished it enjoyed it, but I also know plenty of people who couldn't finish it (which I understand-- the pages describing the broken tooth on Turing's bicycle as a metaphor for a substitution cypher were torturous. And tortuous.).
I mean, it's not high literature that scholars will be analyzing to death two hundred years from now, but Stephenson's books are generally creative and fun, and I enjoy them. OP's mom was probably at least half troll.
Re:An Odd Bird (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm an audiobook addict. Snow Crash and Diamond Age are awesome books read by two of the very best narrators around. I've listened to both multiple times.
Anathem isn't half as good as either of those, and I was initially put off by the reader, but for some inexplicable reason, it is also the book I've listened to the most -- six or seven times through at least. There is something slow and comfortable about the way that Anathem develops that I find highly comforting during periods where my life is in high
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I've read Anathem several times and have enjoyed it a lot, the internal contradictions notwithstanding. The lack of explanation of the interaction between the cloistered and common worlds rang a bit false - I'd like to have seen some more concrete stuff - but it's a great space opera. And the last hundred and fifty pages are just plain fun.....
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The lack of explanation of the interaction between the cloistered and common worlds rang a bit false
I haven't finished it yet, but so far it makes sense to me. They're basically the logical extrapolation if you take monks out of the middle ages and point their enthusiasm at knowledge instead of religion. Presumably it remained because of tradition and also wanting to only attract smart people who were serious about the pursuit of knowledge for knowledges sake without getting caught up in the specifics of implementation.
A system like that would also have a stabilizing influence on the planet. Remove the
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I was initially put off by the reader
I was as well, to the point I nearly shut it off and started looking for how to return it. I think it's a combination of the weird voice for the character talking, strange terms, and lack of context as to what's going on. Once I got a feel for what was actually happening it improved by several orders of magnitude. (I think the narrator toned down his voice acting a bit by then as well).
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the pages describing the broken tooth on Turing's bicycle as a metaphor for a substitution cypher were torturous. And tortuous.
I loved those parts when he goes off on a long nerdy tangent like that.
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That was actually one of my favorite parts of the book, but friends I have recommenced it to have come back and specifically mentioned that part as being hard to get past.
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Stephenson starts slow, really cranks it up, then ends abruptly.
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Loved the Baroque Cycle to death, but then I love big, picky books. Thomas Hardy is not my enemy....
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I think Stephenson does a great job creating interesting characters and worlds, and also does a good a job with setting up stories. What he struggles with is ending them - apart from the time he spent explaining the nuts and bolts of elementary crypto-theory what really jarred me was the way Cryptonomicon ended. Which was "abruptly" and "poorly".
I really enjoyed Snow Crash - which is something of guilty-pleasure pulp cyber-punk. I really really liked The Diamond Age - I think it his best book in some ways.
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I'm on my fourth reading of the Baroque cycle. It's a fantastic read if you're the kind of reader that can keep two dozen characters clear in your head.
He does get loquacious in the details but as a true geek he understands that the details are important.
I don't think Cryptonomicon's ending was bad, I think it was missing. "I sorry Neal, we're just going to stop adding paragraphs once the book hits 1000 pages."
Neal had said in interviews that there were supposed to be three interconnected storie lines, not
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I am one of those that liked Snow Crash and the Diamond Age (and Anathem). "Cryptonomicom" was the most boring book I ever seriously tried to read. I failed to find it anything except terribly boring and finally just threw it into the trash.
Re:An Odd Bird (Score:5, Interesting)
Authors improve with age? In my experience that's not true at all. There seems to be a range during which authors are at their optimum and even if the actual age range varies from person to person. The consistency is how the decline manifests itself.
Too many authors shift from storytelling to exposition in their later years. Instead of describing a compelling narrative into which thought provoking concepts are intertwined they get totally fixated on those themes. So you get a book full of exposition in which virtually nothing happens until the very end; it's a book full of people talking instead of doing. It seems exacerbated by sticking to the same universe but I've seen it happen with unrelated novels by the same author.
I always bring up Frank Herbert and the Dune series as a case study for this phenomenon. It's not that there aren't facets of the later books that aren't interesting, but as a novel those later novels are not as engaging as the first, even when they had the potential to be so much more. And it seems that first novel is usually the best.
Re:An Odd Bird (Score:5, Funny)
Authors improve with age?
Some do. For example, in many years time, Stephenie Meyer will be dead.
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See Dick, Philip K., Exegesis.
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And another utterly worthless comment from somebody that does not even have basic rationality. You argument is deeply, deeply (and obviously) flawed. You would require only people that cook to judge food, only politicians to vote and allow only movie-makers to have an opinion about movies. Obviously that is complete and utter nonsense.
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Not worth the effort. And unnecessary anyways. Some day your vastly overinflated ego will collide with reality.
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I liked Cryptonomicon (Score:2)
Stephenson's books have gotten worse and worse as he's gotten older. Usually authors improve as they age, not put out dreck like Cryptonomicon.
Sorry, but I liked Cryptonomicon. As I did REAMDE. Both pretty good books.
The Baroque Cycle was a bit of a drag, that I admit.
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REAMDE was a little hard to get through, but that's because he jump-cuts more abruptly and in a shorter fashion, with fewer details, than other books. Still a great story and the big cat near the end was utterly satisfying......
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I would enjoy Stephenson more if he listened to his editor. There was a five page section in Cryptonomicon where he talks about eating a bowl of Captain Crunch. Five damn pages! Then he spent another four pages on a wisdom tooth extraction... He does spin a good story though.
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5 pages and he didn't once mention a whistle.
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I loved the Captain Crunch bit. For me it was clear the Stephenson really understands that geek mentality. I think he a a great author and while the endings sometimes do fall a bit short, it is always a great ride to get there.
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Usually authors improve as they age
That does not correlate with my observations.
I would say that most authors get better for a few years, and then they decline. Much like musicians and other creative people.
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Anathem was pretty brilliant. The first 300 pages seemed really boring at the time, but later you realize that they have to be there.
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I agree. I did however find Cryptonomicon utterly boring and finally threw it into the trash. Maybe it is better if you do not understand cryptography and its history.
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Actually, quality varies. Cryptonomicon was the hight of tediousness and boredom. So was the The Baroque Cycle. But Anathem was actually pretty good and Reamde was somewhere in between.
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Or perhaps your ADHD is getting the better of you.
I found all of them absolutely riveting.
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If I had ADHD, I would notice with other authors. I don't. Stephenson just is not a consistently good writer and some people cannot judge quality and will read anything if the name on it is just "big" enough.
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Or maybe some people are just more on the same wavelength as mr. Stephenson, and 'get' him. For instance, I absolutely love the whole concept of Cryptonomicon and the numerous geeky technical asides. I could have done without the wanking system description, but nothing is ever perfect.
And I didn't find The Baroque Cycle tedious or plodding at all, I guess it just hit the right notes of mystery and alternate history for me.
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Stephenson's books have gotten worse and worse as he's gotten older. Usually authors improve as they age, not put out dreck like Cryptonomicon.
Dreck? Odd, I thought Cryptonomicon was quite good -- possibly his best, or at least in a close race with Snow Crash. Diamond Age was quite good too, though I wasn't crazy about the ending. Zodiac was very good as well.
Anathem, on the other hand... I was really excited for it to come out, as I'd read every other Stpehenson work at that point. It's literally one of the only books in my entire life that I started but did not finish. I got maybe 30% of the way through, and I just couldn't get into the stor
Dark And Stormy Night. (Score:5, Funny)
"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." sounds a lot like a sci-fi version of "It was a dark and stormy night."
Re:Dark And Stormy Night. (Score:5, Funny)
It was a dark and stormy night; the lead sulfide rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of ammonium wind which swept up the streets (for it is on Omicron Theta 1 that our story lies). In other words, a typical day on the dark side of a tidally locked planet.
Re:Dark And Stormy Night. (Score:5, Funny)
...
Go on.
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Well, later in the second paragraph there may be a homage: "He pulled out his phone and blogged the event, moving his stiff thumbs (for he was high on a mountain and the air was as cold as it was clear) as fast as he could to secure the claim to himself."
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"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." sounds a lot like a sci-fi version of "It was a dark and stormy night."
Sounds like a Disaster Area [wikipedia.org] song.
Its a hook (Score:3)
Part of the game with novels is to put something intriguing in the first paragraph, preferably the first sentence. Something that will make a browser at the airport bookstore want to read more, if just to figure out how that's even possible. Something like, "Being dead turned out to have its advantages".
I kind of make a game of reading novel first lines. IMHO, starting off with an exploding moon make this one of the better ones I've seen.
Linux inflator utility (Score:3, Funny)
We know the reason -- because Khloe wanted her ass to look like Kim's.
The moon blew up without warning (Score:2, Funny)
So what does Chairface Chippendale think of this turn of events?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_characters_in_The_Tick#Supervillains
I'm hooked (Score:3)
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Ugh, I'm a huge Stephenson fan but I could not stand Reamde.
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I quite liked REAMDE, personally. Well paced, fun. Opinions, right?
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Totally agree. He spends 200 pages constructing quite an ingenious plot then totally throws the baby out with the bathwater. I can see the last 800 pages of REAMDE appealing to Wacky Races fans though.
Remember REAMDE (Score:3)
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Re:Remember REAMDE (Score:4, Interesting)
REAMDE is why I will probably read his new book. There were several times (especially in the first hundred pages or so) when I was laughing my ass off. Neal Stephenson is a good writer. There, I said it. (Oooh, what a limb I'm going out on!)
He's less of a good story-maker, and I think people who complained 20 years ago about him not being able to end a story well, would probably say he hasn't improved. I'm not sure I was all that excited by the story of REAMDE either. So either fuck the story, or just enjoy whatever you can within it. But that aside, the guy has a wonderful way with words and throughout REAMDE I kept thinking "I've missed this guy," since I hadn't read him since Cryptonomicon. Just get him talking.
Final sentence (Score:4, Funny)
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You know, I hadn't noticed the title was a palindrome. Thanks!
See you (Score:1)
SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY...
I have to wait until MAY? (Score:2)
Neal, you tease.
Hooked too... (Score:3)
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Have to agree. The only problem with Anathem it takes about 300 pages to get started. I know a few people that put that put that book down. But once it gets started, Anathem is a very good book. Just could have used a bit of editing.
Editing seems to be the problem with Neal Stephenson's post-Crypto stuff. The Baroque Cycle often seemed more like Neal showing off his historical research than writing a book of fiction. If he wanted to write three volumes about 17th century technology and finance, non-fic
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Oh, the tangents are great. Crytonomicon had some of the best with Turing's bike, granny furniture, and shoes in the Philippines.
But I have trouble believing that SnowCrash, Crytonomicon, and Diamond Age weren't edited. It would have been way too easy for those books to jump the rails in a baroque way.
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beware of tangents (Score:2)
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The diversions and tangents are totally the best part.
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In many conversations the parts that cannot be directly discussed, and that may only be approached in tangents, are frequently the most interesting and informative.
I learned quite a lot about information systems from the long and tangential stories of a retired mathematician who had decided to work at the local DOT as a form of amusement. He had odd habits like programming off of the top of his head at the card punch machine, and a demonstrated ability to know the current price of any US 50 cent piece ever
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So a sudden and abrupt start (Score:1)
So a sudden and abrupt start rather than a sudden and abrupt ending? At least he's trying something new.
Neal has a lot to learn (Score:4, Funny)
That's not how you do online marketing. Try this:
The first 26 pages of Neal Stephenson's new bestseller were *leaked* to the internet!
That's work much better...
I'm sold - can't wait for the rest (Score:1)
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... fivevif and sixis?
I'm guessing he's referring to the English phrase "sixes and sevens" meaning everything is mixed up or FUBAR.
I first heard this in Gilbert And Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore":
"Fair moon, to thee I sing,
Bright regent of the heavens,
Say, why is everything
Either at sixes or at sevens?"
Probably archaic now...
Thanks for the info (Score:1)