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Locus Interviews Neal Stephenson
Embedded Geek writes "Locus, the trade magazine of Science Fiction, has an interview with Neal Stephenson in their August issue. Excerpts can be found here. A teaser: 'The world of the 'Baroque Cycle' happens to be 99% factual history, or as close as I can come to it, but what readers of this kind of fiction are looking for is the ability to become immersed in a different world. That's why there is a big crossover between historical fiction and SF.' An interesting read for his long time fans or anyone just wondering what all the fuss is about." So this is a teaser for a teaser, but this makes me want to shell out the $8.
At a guess the interview is overlong, never really gets anywhere, and has no real substance.
Is that why the Sci-Fi Channel shows Braveheart?
I've really enjoyed Neal's previous books, but I find the Baroque Cycle books to be a little too long-winded and exposition-heavy. It's almost like he suffered through all this research to write the books, so now he's going to make the reader suffer through it too. I just didn't find the first one to move very well under the weight of all that explaining.
I still consider Snow Crash to be a classic, though, precisely for how light on it's proverbial feet it is.
For those who, like me, hadn't heard of this guy, a quick Googling turned this, this book page and this interview up. Also, an author profile.
I think I'd read anything by a guy that is able to make a mathematical plot out of the main character's labido.
What we really need is a ten day waiting period and a background check before you can buy a congressman.
Spam is another thing kind of like the electric guitar, though it's much darker, less palatable. Clearly the people who originated the technology never in their wildest dreams could have imagined that everyone on Earth who has e-mail would get 30 penis enlargement advertisements a day!
30? Everyone? Hah! I don't get nearly that much spam to my brand-new gmail account, spellraiser@gmail.com ...
...
Oh crap!
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
From my HA profile here
great stuff..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I'm seeing more and more of this in SF - three and four part stories, each part longer than a novel used to be. Huge world-building sure. But do we really need to know about the characters every bowel movement? Move it along people!
I blame the book shops in part for this: they make more money off trilogies than standalone novels. But I fear that it is destroying the art of good storytelling. Snow Crash (a single novel) was intense. Quicksilver was glacial.
Neal Stephenson grew up in Iowa and graduated from Boston University in 1981 majoring in geography with a minor in physics. His first published novel The Big U, a college thriller with SF elements, appeared in 1984, followed by Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller (1988). Snow Crash (1992), a cyberpunk classic, made him a star in the SF field. He wrote two thrillers in collaboration with his uncle, George Jewsbury, under the name "Stephen Bury": Interface (1994) and Cobweb (1996), and published solo novel The Diamond Age, winner of the Hugo and Locus Awards, in 1995. Cryptonomicon followed in 1999; also a Locus Award winner, this massive, Pynchonesque novel of history and cryptography proved tremendously popular with SF fans. Later that year he
Photo by Charles N. Brown
www.nealstephenson.com published In the Beginning...Was the Command Line, a non-fiction commentary on computers and culture. The past seven years were spent on the vast three-volume "Baroque Cycle", beginning with Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Quicksilver (2003) and followed by The Confusion (2004) and The System of the World (2004). These books, set in the 17th century and featuring historical characters like Leibniz and Newton along with the ancestors of characters from Cryptonomicon, are Stephenson's latest attempt to push the boundaries of SF. Stephenson lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife (married 1985) and their two children.
I just finished the second installment and was left wanting more. It may be somewhat long winded but, for the history-loving geek in me, there is no better. This is the first time I ever pre-ordered a book before it's release. Now I'm gonna wait it out by playing Europa Universalis II :-P
i didn't enjoy "quicksilver" for the same reason, but i did finish it and went on to read "the confusion". the second volume is much, much more exciting than the first. in my opinion, the reward contained in "the confusion" is more than worth suffering through "quicksilver". hopefully "the system of the world" will continue on "the confusion's" success.
I think people feel a need to be either "a Stephenson fan" or "not a Stephenson fan," and those in the former group (try to) read his entire catalogue.
Quicksilver and Confusion are very, very different books to Snow Crash and The Big U. Rather than assuming that if you liked Snow Crash, you should like this, and if not there's something wrong with it, some people would be better off realising that regardless of authorship Quicksilver simply isn't to their taste, and they should just not pay it any attention.
Wow, I had to read that like 5 times before I understood it; Are you sure you haven't read Quicksilver?
Neal Stephenson is a lot of fun to read, but greatest living writer? I think even Neal (no, not Cowboy) would take issue with that statement.
- Bachelorhood is the father of necessity.
Publishers hand out dozens of Advance Reader Copies or ARCs to industry insiders, other authors who might be willing to write a blurb, booksellers who have to decide if a book is worth stocking and in what numbers, and finally, perhaps most importantly, to book reviewers. Reviewers need to publish a review on or near the date of release so publishers will give them an advance copy.
So, any one of the aforementioned parties can put an ARC on ebay for a tidy profit.
Geez dude, how' bout not blowing a damn spoiler on people like that huh?
You can't take the sky from me...
Its not like he didn't warn you.
If the fact that it was a 900+ page "volume one of three" was clue one.
Naming the trilogy "baroque" was clue 2.
It was really long.
Instead of complaining that it is very long, you should not buy very long books. I complain that it was a bit drawn out too, but I finished it, and the second one, and I'm waiting for the third one. I feel I'm getting my mony's worth, personally.
: )
You can't take the sky from me...
...was the Command Line has got to be one of the best informative essays I have read. Nominally he's talking about operating systems, but he manages to throw in Batmobiles, Disney World, quake-proofing San Fran, and the venerable Hole Hawg drill. Quite entertaining even if you've already got the knowledge.
See? Now I'm reading it again instead of sleeping.
Your brain is not a computer.
Eliza was a totally one dimensional PerfectFemale.
I disagree.
She was also totally portrayed like a modern American Woman
She is neither fat nor ignorant of world matters.
very far from the reality at the time.
He repeatedly describes the reality of women in those times. Eliza is an extraordinary person who manages to navigate this society to her advantage despite it all.
I am normally the first to compain about one-dimentional "girl power" strong women stereotyped characters. She isn't one.
And one dimensional?
She has at least 2 dimensions: Buisness woman and slavery abolitionist.
Oh, and double agent spy... and socialite...etc.
Eighteenth century my arse!
Most of it was in the 17th century, actually.
You can't take the sky from me...
I've always thought of The Baroque Cycle as Stephenson's masterpiece. Much like other masterpieces, it's long, inscrutable, and not meant to be read by mere mortals (insofar as a mass-market novel can be). It's long-winded, but if you can slow down and relax enough to read it, it's rewarding. However, readers of Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon have reflexes of lightning (as do Slashdotters), which is why they don't tend to like it.
As some sort of thought experiment, I gave Quicksilver to one of my friends, with the intention of giving her Cryptonomicon later (since most people have read them the other way around). She got bored and gave up on it.
I found Quicksilver to be long and tedious, but The Confusion lifted things; Stephenson even wrote a half-decent ending! So here's hoping that The System of the World is as good or better.
I find it quite common that people that really liked Snow Crash dislike his current work, especially the Baroque Cycle.
Conversely, from someone who doesn't read much Sci-Fi, I found Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle much more interesting than Snow Crash which seems such a bit of Cyberpunk fluff.
While he still has technology and its role in history and human lives as a pervading theme, he's pretty much stopped writing Sci-Fi in the narrowest definition.
Though it's a tough transition - Sci-Fi fans dislike his current work, and yet he still has to shed that pulpy Sci-Fi stigma that would keep his books from reaching a larger audience - i.e. in most bookstores he's still in the Sci-Fi section...
I keep thinking there's an amazing parallel between Neal Stephenson and Thomas Pynchon. Both wrote a couple of fairly easy to read, shorter humorous novels (OK, Stephenson's are much easier to read than Pynchon's, but you get the point...)Then, they both wrote long but excellent novels involving math, sex, World War II and a million other things; obviously, Cryptonomicon was influenced by Gravity's Rainbow.
But then, they both started writing long, excessively cute historical/science fiction about the Enlightenment. Pynchon had Mason&Dixon, which, for those who haven't read it, featured Vladimir&Estragon versions of the surveyors, in addition to every historical figure from that era, some anachronisms and other weirdness (a talking dog, a Feng Shui master...) a "Reverend Cherrycoke" and some other not-so-funny jokes like that.
Similarly, Quicksilver, which I could not even begin to penetrate, makes the mistake of being too cute, yet simultaneously dry, with all the Harvard/MIT references and every possible plot from the era (Leibniz/Newton, pirates, Ben Franklin, puritanism, etc.) I think I might have been able to finish it if it weren't for all those references to the "Massachusetts Institute of Technickal Arts."
I guess I'm not entirely satisfied with the 'know it if you see it' argument
If Quicksilver can be described as SciFi, it's definitely an outlier in the category. It is obviously fiction, of a historical bent, and it has a lot of science in it, but one could imagine writing imaginary conversations between Newton and Liebnitz, for example, without it being considered Science Fiction.
For inspiration I think of Walter Murphey's 1976 disco classic 'A Fifth of Beethoven'. This reworking of an historical classic is disco for recognizable reasons: the beat, the instrumentation, the structural changes, its length, etc. Similarly, Quicksilver can be seen as a SciFi riff on a historical material for recognizable reasons. Later in the article, he articulates one of those reasons:
So, science fiction could perhaps be described as speculative writing in which science/technology plays a central role, and in which characters in the story turn the science to their own ends.bild, www.categoryweb.com
Do yourself a favor and wait at least 6 months between finishing Snow Crash and reading Cryptonomicon.
Crypto is an amazing, incredible classic book that will blow your mind. You will feel smarter for having read it.
However it is as different from Snow Crash as one can get. So much so that if you are freshly done with Snow Crash you probably won't like Cryptonomicon.
This isn't a put down of either book.
But rather a compliment to the author. That he can write 2 distinctly different books that are both legendary among there fans yet are so different as to spoil a person.
Where the hell did he say his work is 100% fiction? It's called Historical Fiction for a reason, dude. (And if you think his work is 100% accurate, you're off your nut)
Cryptonomicon was fantastic, but I couldn't get halfway through Quicksilver. The characters are inconsistent and incoherent, particularly the protagonist - who only remembers his religious views when it's convenient for the plot, but otherwise is just a random dude meeting famous peoplem having deep conversations with them and never expresses his own opinions. The view of european history presented is also a caricature, extremely americanised and at times very silly. In addition, alhtough interesting, Stephenson's descriptions present London from the viewpoint of a modern tourist who wants to understand where it all came from. It feels like reading the Lonely Planet guide. And he clearly does not understand Cambridge. Although he talks a lot about Trinity. I doubt he's ever even visited it. 99% crap. Big disappointment.
As someone who's just finished reading Quicksilver (and thoroughly enjoyed it BTW) I'm intrigued by some of your criticisms. I know a fair bit about the Smoke (and been living here for a while) and I thought he got the London bits down very well, especially for a non-native and a foreigner, but I don't know that much about Cambridge (neither Cantab. or Mass.) - could you give a bit more detail on how he got Cambridge/Trinity wrong IYO?
Also which bits of the history were especially Americanised or silly? I'm by no means well read in the period, so I'd like a better idea of where you think he went off the rails there.
Regards
Luke
#include witty_one_liner.h
Eliza was a totally one dimensional PerfectFemale.
But why do you think Eliza is a totally one dimensional female?
Because she's too perfect
Does that make you feel threatened?
Well, no. Well, maybe. Somewhat.
Interesting. Do you think this has anything to do with your parents?
Of course, the notion of Eliza as a long winded character all depends on what you ask her in the first place.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."