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Salon Interviews Neal Stephenson
edibleplastic writes "Salon has a great interview with Neal Stephenson, author of such science fiction favorites as Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and Quicksilver. He discusses his views on the scientific community (both past and present), the world of science fiction, and writing in general. "I think there are common threads between writing and programming... All I'm saying is that the thing you're making -- the novel or the computer program -- has got a very complicated and finely wrought hierarchical structure to it. The structure has to work right or the whole thing fails. But the only way you can work on it is by hitting one character at a time...""
What do people think about Quicksilver? I am just finishing it and am very disappointed. I loved cryptonomicon but am struggling thru quicksilver. Why bring back waterhouse and the shaftoes, can't we think of new characters? And the story is dragging by. Long passages on life in feudal europe, the french, the english, the dutch, it's dull. What do other people think though?
Does anyone know if Neil is planning any near future works besides the Baroque Cycle? I loved The Cryptonomicon, but I've heard to many dissapointing things about his last two novels to invest that much time reading them. I want a sequal to Snow Crash! BTW, has anyone else noticed the between Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash and Gibson's Virtual Light? They were published at nearly the same time and I found alot of similarities in the characters and stories.
800 pages of politics set in the 17th century sounds kind of interesting to me.
but that may just be because i'm burned out on microsoft-weilding zaibatsu's building and using technology which a) yes, of course is feasible, but b) ain't here yet. god, do we need -another- 'advanced' computing metaphor story here people? i don't freakin' think so. booo-oring.
give me the dissentry of the 17th century over snowcrashin' in the 21st century, any day.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Uhm, writing != programming?
How would YOU know? Have you done both?
Stephenson has. Not many people know this as he doesn't really advertise it, but Neal Stephenson is a key contributor to the Linux kernel. He is also responsible for adding Chuck Cranor's UVM to NetBSD.
The Light of Other Days = Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
I'd recommend Baxter too, especially the Manifold... series. And EARLY James Hogan (Voyage From Yesteryear, Inherit the Stars, Thrice Upon a Time)
----
WWJD...For a Klondike Bar?
Fiction propels fact in the barrent wasteland that is Mans' inspirational landscape.
If it weren't for the sci-fi authors of the 30's, 40's and 50's, we wouldn't nearly be as motivated a technological culture as we currently are.
I'm amazed that you are unable to see this connection, honestly. Maybe you don't know what the word 'inspiration' means?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I don't like Stephenson. I tried Cryptonomicon, and found midway through the beginning that even if I was going to eventually get into the story, I would never be able to get over the way he writes almost everything in superlatives.
I mean, the guy was describing the sound of a pipe organ for two pages. And this heightened sensitivity to emotional states caused his characters to quickly became charicatures of themselves. It's the literary equivalent of a nerdy kid who won't shut up about how smart he is. Look at this metaphor! Isn't it clever! Look how the sound of the pipe organ drives my savant character into mathematics! Look, the churl doesn't even understand homosexuality!
We get it, man! Calm down and write your book.
Maybe I'm too much of an English major, here, but symbolism only works if it's organic and adjectives shouldn't be applied with a brick. How about a little subtlty -- shit, even Gibson treats his flashy, negative future with a more gentle hand.
Of course, maybe I just didn't like it.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I have to agree with you there. His books are great except for the last page or two. I won't let two pages ruin a book though. I may cringe at the endings, which are so very very short and wrapped up so fast compared to the rest of the book, but the books are still worthy of reading in the end.
this is the most important sig ever! In your face 446154!
The reality of the book publishing industry (which gets reflected in libraries) is that genre is as much about marketing as it is about content.
These books are considered science fiction by bookstores and libraries because they are published by a scince fiction imprint and marketted as science fiction books. The publisher probably chose to do that because they thought there would be more of a financial reward promoting the books to Stephenson's existing fan base (which looks at the science fiction racks) then seeking a new fan base (which may look elsewhere in the store/library).
Similarly, you tend to see the science fiction of established "literary" authors (such as Margaret Atwood) is not marketted as science fiction.
If you pay attention to these things you may notice that there are a number of books that are marketted to different genres, either simulaneously or sequentially. One of the more famous examples of this was the "adult" (trade paperback sized) version of _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_, with the photograph of the steam engine on the cover, which came out at the same time as the children's edition (but with a significantly higher price). A number of books and series have been marketted sometimes as "fantasy" and at other times as "children's" or "young adults".
Respectfully, David Tallan
Cryptonomicon really was a struggle for the first 400 page. It was strange, though, that after slogging through that first half, I couldn't put it down. It really got interesting.
He just needs a good editor. I mean, the two or three pages he spent describing how to eat the perfect bowl of Captain Crunch really wasn't necessary and didn't add much.
I loved Snow Crash though.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Finished reading "Con-Fusion" yesterday; great read.
More in a similar vein:
"The Days of Rice and Salt" by Kim Stanley Robinson
"Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus" by Orson Scott Card (the last decent book he wrote)
Less speculative, but historical and rollicking good fun: "The Aubury-Maurtin Series" by Patrick O'Brian, starting with "Master and Commander"
Pure history: "The Invasion of Canada" by Pierre Burton
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Neal Stephenson gave a talk similar to this interview as a keynote last June at Usenix 2004 in San Antonio. Turns out he's also a rocket geek, so I got to chat with him briefly: very nice guy.
He does that. It just looks like }}}}}}}}.
what he said. this is really the best (and shortestest) characterisation of NS's 'plot-crashing' I can think of.
yep, the concept of a human 'machine language' is cool. but, in a cyberpunk (not, faery or whatnot) setting, shouldn't at least an attempt be made to be neurologically credible? just evoking sumerian is lame. if you study only a little bit of sumerian, you will see that it is just another human language people write their everyday stuff in. for my taste, the conspiracy would have had to be slightly more involved to be palatable; apart from being totally foreign to the rest of the concepts -- come on, this is like Darth Vader hunting for the Holy Grail!
Then there are the various drug based ones -- "Flow My Tears The Policeman Said" and "The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch" for example -- are SF social criticism (even if the latter is somewhat incomprehensible).
As to Star Wars -- the spaceships *are* what the story is about. The damn thing ends with a big battle between spaceships to blow up another spaceship. There's little characterisation to write home about, but watching the spaceships fight is fun.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Well, there may be hope. Not all of his books are in the SF section. "The Big U" is almost always found in the "literature" section (whatever that means) or the plain old fiction section.
Granted, this is prolly his least populare book (i acutally enjoyed it) and it was his first. So he hadn't really been pigeonholed by marketers yet. But at least there is a precidence for him not having all of his book in SF. So perhaps this book will end up keeping the lonely "the big U" company on the fiction shelves.
anti-erudite phase of American history
d -then-being-unable-to-present-the-information-in-a -subtle-and-engaging-manner-without-acting-like-it -is-the-most-important-shit-ever-and-then-never-br inging-it-up-again. But I suppose that comes from being an essay buff. If you want to research an intriguing topic and present an insightful view of it, go write for the Utne Reader.
I am insulted, and bit shamed, that you feel I was being anti-erudite. I'm not. Two of my favorite authors are Carl Sagan and Carl Hiassen, fer crying out loud! If I'm anti-anything, I'm anti spending-a-lot-of-effort-researching-something-an
You may be right about the research, though. So I'd like to see what Stephenson could do with Terry Pratchett, who has amazing insight and a bit more humility. That, and Good Omens proved Pratchett could make a cohesive collaborative entity.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Little does he know that we only want to know where we can download his ebooks for free.
I know you're trolling, but I think my experience regarding this is interesting.
I like Neal Stephenson's writing, if for no other reason than that I thought that Snow Crash was an absolute blast (if you like Gibson, you're probably going to like Snow Crash).
I own three copies of Snow Crash.
I was mucking about on kast, one of the more interesting (if unlikely to take the world by storm) P2P systems out there, and took a look at the ebook broadcast channel, and there was Snow Crash. Well, I've never had an electronic copy of SC, so I grabbed it. I figured I'd give SC another re-read...but it just plain was too much of a pain in the ass to sit in front of the computer and read the thing. Really, I want to be able to read my books in the bathroom, while sitting on the couch with some chips, while walking somewhere or waiting for someone outside...ebook readers just aren't nice and cheap enough to compete with books yet. The medium itself is an effective piracy deterrent, kinda like CD-ROM games in the days before broadband.
The main reason that I'd like to use ebooks is that I find it incredibly frusterating that physical books go through "printings" -- you have to grab a physical book when it comes out, or you can't have it. Screw that. I want to be able to buy a book I liked ten years from now if I want. Having just spent a while obtaining an out-of-print hardcover book that I wanted, I know how expensive and how much of a pain in the ass it can be to get something even a few years after the printing date. I'm accustomed to the digital world, where one doesn't have to put up with this kind of stuff.
As another aside -- I would pay for an ebook, if I could get a nice, inexpensive, copy in an open format (nothing that requires a reader that isn't going to be produced in three years). I wouldn't pay a lot, but...
Here's an example. I remember the Sampson the Church Cat picture book series from my childhood. The books are wonderfully done -- they have perfectly serious text, and beautifully detailed watercolor illustrations. The text is quite serious, but can be interpreted in a humerous manner by seeing the illustrations. The books are, however, long out of print. I would love to obtain ebook copies at $2 each or so from an automated website, but I can't.
May we never see th
What is it about SF-heads and Slashdotters that makes the group so damned exclusionary? It seems like every time an author is discussed here, and the article or a poster refers to that person as an SF author, a huge argument ensues over whether that person or a given work is "really" SF. Please.
When I first got into SF many decades ago, the two main attractions for me were cool conceptualizations of space stuff and described universes where diversity of species was honored and worked towards. Not all the captains of ships looked like Bill Shatner, and most crews were integrated in some fashion. Societies had moved on from the foolishness which embroiled us at the time, and people were trying to solve great problems.
I suppose it was naive of me, but I thought that the SF reader community would reflect those kinds of values and perspectives. Maybe not so naive: the gang of nerds and ex-hippies that hung out around the Recycle Bookstore, and talked about SF for hours, was like that.
I hate sounding like Rodney King, but can't we all just get along? I'm not intending to trash the parent poster; the isn't-SF thread appears is many other responses. I'm just asking this community: Do we have to expend energy arguing about whether authors are fit to claim The One True SF Path? Can't we appreciate those who stretch the genre, who bring in other knowledge and disciplines, who invite us to think in different ways and consider new perspectives?
That's my wistful, wishful thinking...
I was at my local library the other day, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that they had completely eliminated the artificial category segregation. Adult Fiction was one long zigzag, alphabetical by author. Hyperion, Ileum, Joe Kurtz, etc were sandwiched between novels from two other Simmonses. Definitely the way a library should operate -- better for the readers, easier for the staff. You might want to suggest this to your librarians.