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.

Comments

Interview with Neil

[Anonymous Coward]

At a guess the interview is overlong, never really gets anywhere, and has no real substance.

Re:Interview with Neil

[sideshow]

And has sex scenes that are by far the most uncomfortable to read. Sounds like Stephenson to me all right.

Baroque Cycle

[JTWYO]

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.

If you said, "Who?"

[zaxios]

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.

Re:If you said, "Who?"

[damiangerous]

For those who, like me, hadn't heard of this guy

Hey, welcome to your first day at Slashdot!

Good author

[bgackle]

I think I'd read anything by a guy that is able to make a mathematical plot out of the main character's labido.

Re:Good author

[Anonymous Coward]

the main character's labido

Is that a Freudian mix of labia and libido?

Re:Good author

[freshmkr]

I think I'd read anything by a guy that is able to make a mathematical plot out of the main character's labido. (sic.)

Something Thomas Pynchon also did in Gravity's Rainbow. (Scroll to "Poisson Distribution"). Also google for "slothrop poisson" (no quotes). Pynchon is worthwhile reading, IMHO, though a little bit harder to get through than anything Stevenson wrote...

--Tom

Spam spam spam!

[spellraiser]

Says Mr. Stephenson:

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!

That is a great article..

[joeldg]

I think my favorite part of that article was this:

The analogy (which I've used a lot before) is to the electric guitar. Thomas Edison made electricity into a consumer product and developed the light bulb, probably anticipated washing machines and stuff, but he sure didn't anticipate the electric guitar! That was far too weird of an idea. No one could have predicted that the descendants of slaves could have adopted this and come up with what would become the dominant form of popular music in the whole world. That's the kind of thing real societies do with real technology. One of the things Gibson has achieved is that he put some of that into his world. We've got information technology. How is it going to be used, not just by engineers who design products but by regular people who pick this stuff up and turn it to their own weird ends? 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!

From my HA profile here

great stuff..

SF needs to relearn brevity

[rhysweatherley]

I loved Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, but the Baroque Cycle ... got 2/3rds into Quicksilver and put it away. I liked the story in the abstract and where he was going with it, but it was *way* too long at getting to the point.

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.

Heres a Copy (albeit a bad one)

[matz62]

August 2004

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.

Excerpts from the interview:

"One of the defining characteristics of SF is that it's about worlds. You create a world first, and then you tell one or more stories in that world. That's why so frequently in SF, people will go back again and again to the same world and tell additional tales. That's kind of what's going on here. 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. For me, the world-building process is part and parcel of writing. It's the only way I really know how to play this game. I guess that's why I feel so firmly that I'm in the SF camp, no matter where my work is set.

"I had been working on a future storyline connected to Cryptonomicon, but in attempting to write it I realized I needed to go back instead. So I did that, and it ended up taking seven years! The 'Baroque Cycle' project was never envisioned to be as big and long as it turned out to be. There's a line from Tolkien where he says, 'This tale grew in the telling.' I'm reluctant to quote that directly because it sounds like I'm copping an attitude, but that's what happened with this: it started out smaller and got bigger. I never slogged. I enjoyed every minute of writing it. Of course, I badly wanted to get to the end, but when I did, I was sad it was over. At various points along the line, I tried various superstitious tactics; at one point I said, 'I'm not gonna cut my hair until this thing is done.' I finally wound up on Christmas Eve 2003. A couple of weeks later I felt this overpowering need to have short hair again, so I just kept whacking until there was nothing left. And I plan to keep it that way."

*

"People keep asking me why I think of the 'Cycle' as science fiction. When I was a kid I used to read these huge anthologies of science fiction stories, and there would always be some oddball stories that were set during the Crusades, or with cave men, or what have you. They weren't overtly science fiction, but there didn't seem to be any doubt in anyone's mind that they belonged. I ma

Add one pre-order

[Karellen !-P]

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

Re:A defence of apparent karma whoring (-1, offtop

[Bullet-Dodger]

Wow, I had to read that like 5 times before I understood it; Are you sure you haven't read Quicksilver?

The meaning of "baroque"

[Scrameustache]

I loved Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, but the Baroque Cycle ... got 2/3rds into Quicksilver and put it away. I liked the story in the abstract and where he was going with it, but it was *way* too long at getting to the point.

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.

Main Entry: 1baroque
Pronunciation: b&-'rOk, ba-, -'räk, -'rok
Function: adjective
Usage: often capitalized
Etymology: French, from Middle French barroque irregularly shaped (of a pearl), from Portuguese barroco irregularly shaped pearl
1 : of, relating to, or having the characteristics of a style of artistic expression prevalent especially in the 17th century that is marked generally by use of complex forms, bold ornamentation, and the juxtaposition of contrasting elements often conveying a sense of drama, movement, and tension
2 : characterized by grotesqueness, extravagance, complexity, or flamboyance

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.
: )

In the Beginning...

[FiloEleven]

...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.

Stephenson and Pynchon

[stevemm81]

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."

Re:stick with it

[Jerf]

I am a very patient reader.

But I don't think it is too much to ask that by page 500, something happen.

I'm not referring specifically to Neal here, though I will refer specifically to the Cryptonomicon. (Please don't try to "correct" me; up to that point in the Cryptonomicon, as far as I'm concerned all that had occured was a belabored explanation of several concepts I had learned about in more detail several years ago in school and that opinion of mine isn't about to change.)

But there is an opportunity cost here; 500 pages is several hours and if you're still building up, I have to ask myself whether my time is better spent on something that may pay off a little faster. Books are not a scarce resource, and while I don't demand wham-bang-boom by page 3, how much do you expect me to wade through?

My point here, I guess, is that I can't really find it in myself to care whether "The Confusion" is any good, if I have to wade through an entire bloated dull book to get there. I don't want to say everybody should feel that way (unfortunately I can think of no clear way in English to express this; it is the nature of a declatory sentence to sound like, well, a declaration of fact), but it is a viewpoint I think authors should consider. If you're going too slow for me, who considers a 600 page, densely printed book like "A Deepness in the Sky" to be "a bit on the short side", you really need to consider getting your ass into gear and letting the editor do a bit more cutting.

A Conversation with Eliza

[Embedded Geek]

I can see it now:

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.