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Neal Stephenson's The Confusion Released
Jon Lasser writes "Neal Stephenson's 'The Confusion', second volume of his Baroque Cycle is released today. I received an advance copy and have a book review up here. The hypertext site for the trilogy is here. The short review: if you liked 'Quicksilver', this one is better; if you didn't, don't bother."
I loved Cryptonomicon. It was a page turner all the way through. I got bored with Quicksilver half way thru. I liked the parts that involved Newton and other real scientists, but when the fictional characters went off on their own it got complicated and boring. I never finished it.
thats probably just me.
Slashdot has a lot of interesting readers who, because they aren't tied up in the mostly non-functional reviewing world, can contribute interesting takes on whatever's come out. Online and off, most of the book reviews are either LCD "here is a book about stuff neither of us understand", or unmitigated love-ins where authors review each other in a mutual backscratch.
I would hate to see people stop writing reviews for first post on slashdot, and I would hate to see slashdot stop supporting its own review culture.
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
The boy is in need of a good editor. His 1000 page books are more like 500 page books with lots of flab.
And the endings... they're usually so awful that I can almost feel the author cringing as he types. Its like he runs out of steam and then can't figure out an ending, so he says "oh, the diesel fuel burns and melts the gold". Its a total surrender to laziness.
Maybe if he cut out the description of dive tables he could muster up the energy for a good ending.
You're being completely disingenuous. It's a complete myth that everything in a novel needs to play a part in the 'story'. One could just as easily ask the question "why are you mentioning homosexuality when the books contain all sorts of othe rmaterial that aren't crucial to the story?". But that's an easy one to answer, you have a homophobia problem.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Writers are *supposed* to do this. Adding character traits (or, in this case, talking about real ones for real people) makes characters more "human", and more accessible. If your characters are nothing but foils for the plot, you end up with something like "Atlas Shrugged." Whatever you may think of the politics in Atlas Shrugged, the characters are painfully two-dimensional, and a beautiful example of how *not* to do character development. The point of adding extra details (like Randy's cereal-eating habits, or Turing's homosexuality) about a character is to make them closer to a living being.
Snowcrash, IMO, was one of the great works of our time. The same can not be said of Cryptonomicon or Quicksilver. Cryptonomicon suffered from endless diversions from the story, and the end was like the end of Monty Python & the Holy Grail or Matrix: Revolutions or so many other stories where the author did not have a start-to-finish vision of how the story would unfold. That is, the story just ended, with little meat or satisfaction for the reader.
:(
Quicksilver, honestly, was a burden to read. The story had its moments, but when you're 700 pages into a book and have little or no idea where it's going and little or no motivation to keep reading, I submit that the author has basically failed. I frequently felt like the author was writing just to "hear himself type." I'll probably read The Confusion just because I hate to leave thing unfinished, but if it's similarly burdensome, I think I'll just have to give up on Stephenson altogether.
To the commenter who asked why Stephenson features gay characters and their homosexuality so prominently, all I can tell you is that Turing was, in fact, gay, and it was a major issue for him and for the people who worked around him. It's not surprising to me that any story on cryptography would feature Turing and his homosexuality. I can't say as much about Newton simply because I'm only familiar with the history of his work rather than the history of the man.
Who ever said Stephenson needs an editor is right on. Quicksilver is a 300 or 400 page story told in 900 pages. Keeping the length down would do a great service towards making the thing more interesting and readable. But somehow I suspect that neither of these issues are high on Stephenson's list.
I read Snowcrash as my first Neal Stephenson book. So I expected all his books to be like that. Wrong! Snowcrash is good but I hate everything else he writes. It is mind bogglingly boring and I don't think he has any insight whatsoever into relationships.
:)
Why do people like stuff like Cryptonomicon? I've read a hundred pages or so and I just couldn't take it. What's so exciting about Shaftoe? Who cares about riding on a ship? War? There is no action, no insight, no perspective, no intrigue, nothing. I mean, it's like pages and pages of nothing and nothing and nothing. Nothing happens. Characters are boring, average, shallow and do not do anything interesting. I mean, why don't I just put a web cam on a bus stop? Because it would be about as insightful and as exciting as any of Stephenson's books. I don't understand.
What is exciting about these books? Is there some depth that I don't see? It's no Dune, that's for sure. Stephenson has no spiritual insight. So what is it?
Even reading highly modded up posts here just blows me away!! Some guy read 300 pages that he thought were mediocre in order to get to the good parts!?!? You guys are crazy? Are you sure you're not reading the book because "Neal is cool" in the nerd culture? How can anyone stomach 300 pages of mundane mediocrity to get to the "good parts" later? I don't understand. I mean, even Neal's fans think he sucks. It's in plain sight here on Slashdot.
I don't get it.
and then his male protagonist tries to talk to a woman. And that is where his novels fall apart. His dialog does not ring true. Every conversation sounds contrived.
;-)
Well, he writes geeks talking to hot girls...of COURSE the conversations sound contrived!
You can't take the sky from me...
Snow Crash was a damn fine book, but as far as I'm concerned, Cryptonomicon is hands down Stephenson's best. 've never understood the complaints about Stephenson's endings, though. When the story's over, the book ends. That's the way it should be. I hate spending the last 50 pages of a book building up to some "satisfying" conclusion where everything gets tied up neatly into a perfect little Hollywood package.
As for the length, if an editor had cut 300 pages from Cryptonomicon, it would have completely castrated the story. Quicksilver's about twice as long as it needs to be, but if forcing myself through 900 pages of Quicksilver is the price I have to pay for an intact Cryptonomicon, then so be it.
Newton was not a homosexual, I agree.
By the same token -- the careful consideration of historical evidence -- I must *disagree* with your statement about Shakespeare. William Shakespeare was almost certainly bisexual with a strong preference toward women. Consider that several of his sonnets are dedicated to a "Mr. W.H." and that his plays are rife with suggestive comments that, even if they give no information about the playwrite's sexuality, certainly suggest a familiarity with, and acceptance of, the idea of affection and sex between two males.
You and I agree that the homosexual lobby tends to paint history pink, using great strokes of its broad brush to imply that everyone from Alexander the Great to J. Edgar Hoover was a mincing namby-pamby. You and I agree that they often arrive at incorrect conclusions -- the simple fact is that most people always have been and always will be straight, irrespective of how "politically correct" that notion is.
As much as I agree with you, I still take exception to your post because you sound like an ignorant homophobe. You seem fixated on the belief that incorrectly identifying a historical figure as homosexual somehow is some sort of smear on his reputation. To me, that suggests some very narrow thinking on your part.
I am white, with Aryan features. If someone walked up to me on the street and called me a nigger, I would certainly laugh due to their making an obvious factual error -- but I would not be ashamed. My reputation would not be destroyed. For me, there is no shame associated with being gay or black or Communist or vegetarian. If you think differently, then I suggest you reevaluate your thinking.
There's a common thread running through all Stephenson's books, a fascination with the history of information and how processing it has affected the development of human society and culture, from prehistory to the imaginable future. This is why he appeals so much to many geeks. Since Snowcrash, his breakthrough novel, he's been piecing together a remarkable perpective on the very essence of what makes humans special. The extent to which it is sometimes hard going just reflects what a difficult task it is, but the exploration is far-reaching and important. To those who couldn't hack Quicksilver, I say keep at it and instead of thinking of it as an entertainment, use it as a bunch of bookmarks to stuff that you should really know about.
I've mentioned this offhandedly before, but the reason I think that Neal Stephenson is amazing is because of what he is currently doing. He's gone from a 'eco-terrorist' to a cyberpunk writer. Then he took it a step further and became a New York Times Bestselling Author writing straight fiction.
He's made a transition from scifi to fiction, but carried the tech along with it. 50 years from now, there's only going to be a few authors from this genre (scifi) that will still be read, and I believe that Stephenson will be one of those. He can tell a story, when he gets down to it. Why do people still read Phillip K. Dick? Why are there now movies being made from his stories? Because he can tell a story, in the end. Why is Stephenson still being posted here? Because his stories are good. He might get a bit bogged down in the details, but he's a great storyteller and that's why I'll start 'The Confusion' tomorrow and I can't wait for the 3rd part of trilogy. He's had some time to develop his skill, I'm guessing that the entire trilogy and 'Cryptonomicon' taken as a whole, will tell an entirely diffent story, taken altogether.
Just my thoughts...