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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'm confused, usually there's some long review of a book, followed by the FP! and GNAA posts, along with the 'cheaper at Amazon' links. This thread is different, at least for the time being.
CVsb
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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.
Easy way to make cash if you're Cowboy Neal:
- Write a book titled "Stephenson".
- The book cover should say in big letters:
Cowboy
Neal
Stephenson
- Cash in on people who think this is "Cowboy" from Neal Stephenson.
I took Quicksilver on a 12-hour flight, and at hour 4 I was fervently praying for it to alchemize into a different book.
One the way back I bought three Terry Pratchetts in the airport instead.
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.
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Well, i guess since it's a trilogy, this will actually give stephenson an excuse for a book to not have an ending.
Steven V.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
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.
Stephenson makes great use of speculative history. He postulates some great "what if" scenarios arising from past events and uses them to weave an alternative present. He always succeeds in grabbing my attention. And then -- 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. I think it's supposed to be banter, but it's just stilted. Is it any wonder he chose the name "Eliza" for the female protagonist in Quicksilver?
That more people didn't like Quicksilver. I thought it was excellent and am really looking forward to reading the Confusion. Since I don't know much about European history, the history itself made the book very interesting.
I've seen a number of posters commenting on the weightiness of Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver (which I have yet to read).
If you are not familiar with Stephenson and want a brief introduction, I recommend Zodiac. It's a quick, entertaining page-turner that can be read in one sitting but still gives you a pretty good feel for his writing.
Sort of like Neal Stephenson Lite
The Dalai Llama
... absolutely loved Interface and didn't find out Stephenson wrote it until a month ago on /. ...
My sig could be your sig!
I'm assuming you mean you don't know who Neal Stephenson is, and/or why his work should be interesting to /. readers. His famous Snow Crash is a novel with about half its storyline taking place in a higher-tech cyberspace. Various other NS works and activities put him on /. readership radar, including his non-fiction "In The Beginning Was The Command-line..." (in which he espouses Linux with the memorable analogy with the Hole Hawg) and his novels dealing with the favorite post-cyberpunk theme of The Impact of Technology on Society (tm). I'm a fan, have read most of the novels, and even got all the way through QuickSilver. If any of this interests you, I'd recommend starting with Snow Crash for the fiction, and I think you can find some of his non-fiction on the Web. Btw, his Cryptonomicon was "echt geek", with a pretty good story and another memorable character (Bobby Shaftoe).
A somewhat more focused website than the link provided above (which essentially just recreates the wikipedia with references to the events of Stephenson's books).
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.
If that isn't a creepy tragedy that inspires sympathy (and also a fascinating story), I don't know what is. Scientist saves country, is slightly off-beat, is forced into suicidal depression by same government because of said off-beatness.
Meanwhile, if you want to watch persecuted Christian characters, why not go with the other fifty million people and watch Mel Gibson's film?
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I frequently felt like the author was writing just to "hear himself type."
Actually, Quicksilver was written with a pen and paper.
Maybe it's an ink company conspiracy.
Given that Daniel Waterhouse's Puritan upbringing and steadfast devoutness in the face of his peers' all-but-secularism is one of the defining aspects of his personality, I would say that Stephenson does a rather fair job of doting on Christianity.
Compared to speculations about Newton's sexuality (which are limited to a few vague hints scattered throughout the book), Waterhouse's faith virtually drives the plot. His mentor is a bishop who believes that the established church is heresy -- that one should be free to worship as he sees fit, unhampered by politics. Many of Waterhouse's misadventures are due to his similar beliefs. Most characters in Quicksilver are devout Christians, even some of the homosexuals (viz Leibniz).
If you read Stephenson's earlier work, you'll see a repeated theme of tolerant, unperturbed spirituality in his stronger characters. Juanita from Snow Crash is a devout Catholic -- she shuns organized religion because she believes most of it is politicized claptrap designed to control the masses -- but she is Christian nonetheless. She and her unswerving faith ultimately play a principal role in the book.
If Stephenson goes out of his way to illustrate Turing's homosexuality, or Newton's probable bisexuality, it is merely to shed more light on areas of human experience that have been ignored by history.
For 2,000 years, Christians have had a rich mythology that teaches them valuable lessons on life and gives them a slew of inspiring role-models. For 1,500 years, Christianity has been the accepted "normal" religion throughout most of the developed world; often it is even sanctioned as the state religion. Until very recently, Christians have been constantly reinforced by unanimous, positive feedback from the community, the state and the church that yes, they are good and right and are going to Heaven.
In the same time period, homosexuals have had little or no public acknowledgement of their existence: no role models, and certainly no acceptance from society. In several places and times during the past thousand years, homosexuals have been tormented, imprisoned, tortured and murdered merely for being who they are. Christians had to endure this suffering at first, but by the time of the Spanish Inquisition it was Christians doing the burning and torturing.
I live in southern California, in a city whose populace largely identify themselves as liberals. Just the same, not 18 months ago, a gay man in my neighborhood was doused in gasoline burned alive as he slept by a Catholic man who had befriended my neighbor before discovering his sexuality. Bigotry, hate and intolerance toward homosexuals are very much alive today, and much of it comes from people who call themselves "good" Christians.
In summary: if Stephenson chooses to showcase homosexuality slightly more than Christianity, perhaps he's merely acknowledging the fact that Christianity has already been showcased enough.
Why, exactly, do you care if a character in a novel is portrayed as a homosexual? Does it offend your sensibilities to know that such people exist? Why? I think you are reading your bible a little too selectively; try to find that part about "judge not, lest ye be judged", and "do unto others...".
To say that Stephenson "advertises" for homosexuality is a gross mischaracterization. Turing was, in fact, a homosexual, a fact which turned the life of this brilliant man (the man who contributed more to the defeat of the Nazis than any other individual), into a sorrowful tragedy for which the British government ought to be eternally ashamed of itself. Alan Turing was a Hero. He was also gay.
And since you say that Stephenson doesn't pay similar attention to Christian characters, I guess you didn't actually *read* Quicksilver, did you? If you had, you would of course know that the central character (Daniel Waterhouse) was not only a Christian, his religion (and that of his family) plays a central role in the events of the book. Not that an author has any obligation to you or anyone else to maintain some kind of ridiculous "equal time" balance in the sociopolitical aspects of its characters.
And what does being liberal or conservative have to do with one's ability to accept a homosexual character in a novel? I doubt that all conservatives are as ignorant and intolerant as you are. I find it totally absurd that you regard the presence of a homosexual character as a "political" statement.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
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.
And I totally agree on how his books overdo the sexuality politics. I mean do you know how much effort was wasted pushing the heterosexual agenda in Cryptonomicon? Page after page of "Randy" getting worked up over some chick in a wetsuit. And that WAY too descriptive het-sex in the car scene. Imperial Pint?!? YUCK! Too much information!
I sure as hell don't want to have to think too hard about why they do stuff. Just hurry up and get to the good parts where they wire routers and blow stuff up.
What about eliza made you feel supposed to be banter?
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Didn't see it mentioned so, The Metaweb is Stephenson's wiki about Quicksilver (presumably information on the rest of the trilogy will be added). It's very interesting, has all kinds of information on the people and ideas in the book. Especially the annotations, add a lot of interesting background and details.
I've read both of these books and (nominally) enjoyed them as far as the story was concerned, but on the whole, both of them left a bad taste in my mouth because of Stephenson's inability to tell a story without injecting his own political viewpoint into it. Take for example heterosexuality. Both books feature sympathetic and heroic characters (Jack Shaftoe and Bobby Shaftoe) that are heterosexuals. However, their heterosexuality has nothing to do with the story. Why mention it at all? I mean, Bobby sleeps with two different women in the book! Stephenson is obviously hitting out over the head with his pro-heterosexual agenda. Why can't we just have good old fashion books about upstanding Christians of undisclosed sexuality?