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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 isn't familiar with stephenson, he is the popular author of novels such as Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash.
Cryptonomicon is great for any "security"-minded or interested person. It's a great read. Snow Crash I liked, but it was a bit confusing in the beginning. Once again, recommended for the typical slashdot reader.
I expect Quicksilver to be equally interesting
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
Amazon.co.uk has had Quicksilver in their data base for a year now. I'd want more info then just a pre-order from Amazon.
"We were half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold."
-- Hunter S. Tolkien
I already have Interface, but never saw the second Stephen Bury book for sale anywhere here (serves me right for not living in the US, I guess).
:)
Is that flagged to be re-issued as well? Given that copies of Zodiac have popped up again here recently, I'd imagine The Cobweb would be stocked more widely with the Stephenson name on the cover.
I'm looking forward to Quicksilver, of course -- all that detail combined with amusing narrative
deus does not exist but if he does
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.
I know it sounds like a Tabloid Headline...but it's true. _Interface_ was written by Stephenson and Dr George F. Jewsbury. It's accurate description of the physiological problems and experiences of a person who has undergone a stroke and that they may have potential blood clots clued me into something that happened to my mom just before I visited. Based upon what I had told my mom that she had probably experienced a minor stroke and should go to the hospital, and that the stiffness & hardness in her calf was probably a blood clot. She and my dad didn't think it was all that serious...Well, within 24 hours, she was in the hospital, and stayed in the hospital for nearly 3 months...she had all the major artories between her heart and her legs replaced because they were so clogged...probably from 30+ years of smoking. She hasn't smoked since she went into the hospital
I got to thank Mr Stephenson in person a couple of years ago at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2000 conference held in Toronto. I sort of made a fool of myself since I only briefly said thank you and explained why...then ran off since a few tears started, and having some claim to being a little bit macho, didn't want him to see me cry.
So thanx again Neal and George!
ttyl
Farrell
p.s. The two of them also wrote another novel called The Cobweb, which seems a little prescient considering Sept. 11!
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
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
FWIW- Here are the books that Neal Stepehnson has written:
* The Big U (1984)
* Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller (1988)
* Snow Crash (1992)
* The Diamond Age (1995)
* Cryptonomicon (1999)
* Quicksilver (2002)
He has also written two books under the psuedonym of Stephen Bury:
* Interface (1994)
* The Cobweb (1996)
-jjh o|
One of my first questions after finishing Cryptonomicon was whether Enoch Root was indeed human or wasn't some sort of angelic presence sent to meddle in human affairs. Since Cryptonomicon depicts Enoch as seeming to not age very fast, and this book is set almost 300 years ago, it will be interesting to see whether Enoch is still alive and the same age at that time.
For more about the Enoch Root, click here to read a little essay written by my colleague, e2 Glowing Fish.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
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.
You really think Neal Stephenson posts to Slashdot? He's a professional author: use your brain, for christs sake.
Or, better yet, have a look at his web site, where he explains why he doesn't answer email:
"All of my time and attention are spoken for--several times over. Please do not ask for them."
And I seriously doubt he means he's too busy posting to slashdot.
You can read a good essay by NS in Wired's archive.
> 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
I'd say he is the (objectively ;) best scifi writer currently active. Man... To come up with a novel like "Permutation City" - plain genius.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
Try Greg Bear's "Slant", "Queen of Angels", and "Moving Mars".
I enjoyed all those, but they didn't feel all that serious to me. Moving Mars, especially, flew off into comic-book level speculation at the end...
Bear's a good writer but he has an unfortunate tendency to the epic (IMHO).
deus does not exist but if he does
wen't
He is an absolutely terrible writer
Troll? Or just a terrible abuser of the apostrophe?
deus does not exist but if he does
For what it's worth, I've read all three of the above books, and Cryptonomicon is by far the best of the three. I agree that Snow Crash and Diamond Age were both comic-book-like, but I didn't think Cryptonomicon was at all. Give Cryptonomic a chance, you will be pleasantly surprised.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Hm, not an exact match for what you want, but still: try "The Collapsium" by Wil McCarthy if you haven't read it. It's a bit silly, too, in places, but not when it comes to the core ideas (programmable matter, matter made out of tiny black holes, and stuff). I enjoyed it.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
Imagine the fundraising potential of that hand-written manuscript on eBay... ;^)
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
I know many people who consider Neal Stephonson a visionary, but as far as authorship goes I wasn't too impressed with his work.
'Daimond Age' was required reading in a politcal science class here at the U, and I borrowed it from a friend who said it was good but confusing. I quickly arrived at the same conclusion. I loved the nanotech and the detail lavished on describing this technology. He had some great ideas on how it would work in our society--I especially liked the 'reactives' and the 'toner wars'. Oh, and I can't forget the ten terabyte nano hardrive. Can you imagine? 'Oops, I just dusted the entire library of congress off my left shoulder.'
Meanwhile, while much of the book was brilliantly creative, I have to say that I hated the splintered plot that only made sense in the last few pages. There were many aspects of the story that I'm still unsure about. For instance, 'Cryptnet' sounded like a great plot idea that simply died off unexploited. Likewise for the 'drummers'.
At any rate, if you haven't read any Neal Stephenson, please do! Especially if you like visionary works of dark futures, or are especially fascinated by nanomachine technology. I hope is later books will be a bit more cohesive, but I'm sure they'll still be good reads.
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
I just had re-read his books recently (except Zodiac and Cryptonomicon, but I read Cryptonomiocon recently enough to remember it well) and I have to say that (in reply to the "what a waste" post among others) that N.S and William Gibson's and actually many other really good SF writers main concerns have never really been about the technology itself. It is true that whats gets them noticed is the exciting imagery that the describe new possibilities of tech but really what I have noticed and what keeps peopoe coming back is they are really concenred with the effect of all this tech, and they are concerned with it in a surprisingly humanistic way (which makes it very surprising to me that they are held in great regard by geeks as elite 'tech' type writers)
:)
I'll stick with Neal S. for now, but having read his most all his book, you can detect even way back in Snow Crash that Neal believes that what technology is really doing is making it clear that what really makes people different is not race (remember, the Protangonist, "Hiro" is a black/asian) not race, or genetics, but the culture that they acquire (the software that is written into the bio-Hardware, if you will).
In a A lady's Illus. primer I was surprised that this book really was a modern versioin of many philosophical tracts that were popular in the 18/19th centuries. IN A.L's.I.P, N.S. is really concerned with what is key about education, what is key about a culture that makes it successful. While his grip on his understanding culture seems to be (from reading) kind of unsophisticated, I have to give them man extreme props for even trying to tackle what seems to be the most contentious issue of our times. He directly attacks "cultureal relativity", "the dumbing down of society", "The real reason for poverty", and in both A.L's.I.P and in "..The Command line" Essay, he tries to describe what is about cultures and even sub-groups of the cultures (Hacker, vs, End_user, for example).
What I am trying to say that Neal is using tech as a way to strip away the mere happenstance that makes people a certain way and is trying to understand fundamentally what is going on with culture and where it is heading.
I look forward to his new book, and will not be surprised if I see these same themes play out, once again.
I would appreciate hearing you comments on what you guys think Neal's real themes are ( and no they arent about what new tech thing is coming up, btw
Thanks for reading
Sigs are dangerous coy things
Kevin Bacon MADE that role. Let's hope the book is a good as the flick!
I have been rereading Interface.
It is an enjoyable book. It is not one that you read for the plot, however. it is one that you read for Stephenson's screeds on opinion polsters, politics and the like. It does have some interesting things to say, as well as some very interesting and satisfying momments. The end it telegraphed way in advance, but the writing is enjoyable enough that you don't really care.
It is one I recommend.
I have not read "The Cobweb". The description did not interest me that much. Maybe I do need to go back and read it.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
The big Sell Outs:
Amazon.com (book) (tape)
Amazon.co.uk(book)
I'm a bit miffed that something as interesting to many /. readers isn't news but Stephenson is. Ok, it's subjective, the choices, but they did run articles earlier about the works possibly being recovered from his Adams' computer and eventually seeing print. Seemed natural to run the article, but I wonder if /. has an exclusive contract with fatbrain and won't run articles without links to them, so once fatbrain confirms they'll have the books then /. will run the story? That would certainly be a sell out.
That there is actually cover art and a look at Harmony Books bears this up, it's coming out, one year after his death.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I agree that early Stephenson was intentionally absurd, or "comic book"-like as you say. However, Cryptonomicon isn't like those at all, nor do I expect Quicksilver to be. However, if your definition of "science fiction" must deal with the future, then perhaps you won't like it. It's science fiction in the sense of fiction about science -- Cryptonomicon had two ongoing stories one about WWII codebreakers, and one about modern dot-commers setting up a data haven. Cryptography plays a major role in the book and unlike most fiction about the subject, it is clear that Stephenson actually has done some background research.
Quicksilver is going to be about the author of a Renaissance treatise about cryptography -- a sort of fictionalized version of Johann Trithemius.
He doesn't know how to end his books. He has great fun with a running narrative, but eventually he tends to drop everything and the plot goes splat. (Diamond Age was a pretty good example of this phenomenon, but his other books share it to some extent.)
:)
However, this is improving -- Cryptonomicon showed evidence of writing *towards* a definite ending, which is more than you can say of most of his work. (Interface was quite tight in that sense as well -- maybe that was his uncle's influence?
Neal's a great writer, and I don't want to begrudge him not being perfect because what he has given us has been so good. There aren't many writers who can give that much detail without it sounding like a travelogue/instruction manual/training video -- he communicates massive amounts of information in a readable and very entertaining fashion. I thought Cryptonomicon was the best thing he'd done so far, so I have high hopes for his future works...
deus does not exist but if he does
I have him beat by a year or two. But his novel has the advantage of having been published, while mine is collecting dust on a shelf. :-(
He's more than a Geek, he's a published physicist
and as you can see from the web site with stories
like the plank dive, is not a afraid to put really
heavy physics in to his hard sci-fi stories.
Speculative fiction, that is. Thomas Pynchon writes about the 18th British scientists Mason and Dixon, who eventually became famous for a massive work of surveying -- laying out the Mason-Dixon line that defines the southern border of Pennsylvania, and separates the northern US from the southern US.
/. would as well.
He turns it into a stunningly brilliant, witty, profound "buddy" story. It's written in an amazing pseudo-18th century English, a mix of high class diction and lower class slang, that is actually quite readable and entertaining. The two guys (one a surveyor, one an astronomer) are first teamed up by the Royal Society in London, to go to South Africa and observe a transit of Venus (this really did happen). Eventually they get the commission to survey the famous Line in America.
Along the way there is much detail about astronomical history -- the discovery of Uranus, the struggle to figure out how to use the stars to determine latitude from on board a ship, and how astronomy and land surveying complement each other -- and also stuff about the intense rivalries among the most prominent (real) 18th century British scientists. There is also a lot of humor, some of it based on wordplay and anachronisms, some of it based on a kind of "magic realist" approach (there is a funny Talking Dog character, and an old astronomer/alchemist who shows his students how to levitate and fly around the country along "ley lines").
Oh, don't let me forget the Chinese feng shui master who somehow ends up in North America, accompanying the surveying expedition (and introducing them to the Asian sauce called k'tsiap, which evolves into a condiment we all know well today), and the crazed French chef, pursued by a vengeful robotic duck built in Paris years before. It sounds nuts, but it all works beautifully. And in places the book is profoundly moving, as Mason and Dixon's friendship deepens, and they deal with their own tragedies -- the early death of Mason's beloved wife, Dixon's separation from his father.
I think a comparison to Neal Stephenson is valid and interesting. Stephenson's broad imagination, and tendency to mix serious, satirical and highly technical/speculative ideas into one big collage make him similar to Pynchon. Personally, I think Pynchon is more talented -- after all, he's been writing brilliant novels since the 1960s. But I enjoy both writers, and I imagine many on
Oh, I should briefly mention Pynchon's most famous work: Gravity's Rainbow. It's a staggering, challenging, amazingly huge novel published in the 70s, about the German V2 project during WW2 (and, since it's Pynchon, about many other things too).
Gibson has some good stories but really he is not much of a visionary. He admits to a dislike for most technology and I don't think he really understands it.
Stephenson does large amounts of research for his books and they are based largely in fact with a little artistic license to make the stories interesting. Snow Crash foretold the Net and the rise of Multi-player VR enviroments, P2P file sharing, etc. The Diamond Age is a good look at how nanotechnology will effect our society. Of course it keeps within bounds of the near future because nanotech will change us to such a degree that the average person can't even comprehend it. My only complaint is the silly idea that we'll figure out to hack everything in the world but won't be able to generate speech that sounds like a real person.
You might read some of Bruce Sterlings books too. Books like Distraction are good peeks at the possible future. It deals somewhat with genetics and neural hacks but more importantly addresses how society might evolve once everyone can be self-sufficent but can't find work.
If you could take Distraction and The Diamond Age and merge them into a single book and jump 20 years in the future you'd have an excellent story that would sell to nobody but geeks because only geeks could understand it.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.