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Stephenson's Quicksilver Slated For March 7th
Swampper writes: "New Neal Stephenson novel Quicksilver is available for pre-order from Amazon UK. It's due out on March 7th. There is also another Stephenson book on the horizon; Interface. It will arrive May 2nd." Actually, Interface was previously offered through the psuedonym "Stephen Bury" Note the discussion of this book and others on the Cryptonomicon site.
For anyone who has not read Neal Stephenson, In The Beginning Was The Command Line is an essay he wrote dealing with the evolution of the UI from the command line to windows based. It is a funny and interesting rant on how the graphical widgets we use today have softened us.
This a brief interview in which Stephenson talks about Quicksilver. "related -- loosely -- to "Cryptonomicon". I won't say it's part of a trilogy, but it's a somewhat related work. It's a historical novel, set farther back in time, about 300 years ago, and it deals with a lot of the same themes" http://www.onmagazine.com/on-mag/reviews/article/0 ,9985,46833-1954,00.html
I agree with a lot of what you say, but I think you may be asking a bit much.
All the truly valuable science fiction-- which I've heard referred to as the most interesting genre being used today, although I'm not sure I'd go that far-- deals with man's relationship with society and technology (which grew, on a side note, out of the western, which dealt with taming the frontier, or the big scary world; the next natural step was to ask where we go from there).
But you're right, there's nothing out there (with which I'm familiar) right now that's utterly breathtaking. A few reasons for this, in my mind:
1. Sci-fi has been disregarded in pop culture, despite the "rise of the geek," as fetishistic and childish. Because it's not respected, respectable people don't stick up for it.
2. The sci-fi we get is utterly commercial-- Star Trek, movies passing themselves off as sci-fi, etc.-- and so the money behind it doesn't want to tackle weightier issues.
But some things to ponder:
1. Stephenson's doing a pretty fine job. He's examining important ideas in a still-relevant medium, the novel, and he does so in a way that gets him at least a modicum of notice out in the real world. He'll be remembered down the line as one of the people that really gets it.
2. Sci-fi was pretty silly to start with, you know. The B-movies of the fifties-- giant bugs and such-- had the subtext of fears of communism and the dangers of atomic power, but they were still movies with GIANT BUGS AND SUCH. There are gems that we do get these days-- Stephenson, Spielberg's "A.I." (and sorry, folks, like it or not, it wasn't a BAD movie by any means, no matter how misdirected the ending)-- that are just as good, if not better, than anything from the bygone eras.
3. You can't expect a new "2001" every few years because there is nobody out there now operating at the level of Kubrick in 1968. He was, at his peak, probably the finest filmmaker in the world, and "2001" was his opportunity to indulge in his grandest delusions. If he wasn't such a genius, it would have been an atrocious movie. As it stands, it's the byproduct of one of the medium's greatest creators, and something like that's not going to come along every day.
There's talent out there capable of doing wonderful things. You've just got to sift through the rest.
> The implications of what we can reasonably assume we'll be able to do within a few decades are mind blowing. Surely there must be someone who can bring it to life, to put us there and make it feel real, without wimping out and turning it into just a big joke.
:)
In that case I'd recommend Greg Egan.
http://www.netspace.net.au/~gregegan/
As can be seen from his web site, he's a geek too
Pretty much any of his books rock, but I especially like Diaspora and Axiomatic. He puts
a lot of his short stories online so you can even try before you buy.
Of course, as with anything like this, it's up to personal taste, so YMMV.
- Muggins the Mad