Slashdot Mirror
Neal Stephenson Returns with "Anathem"
Lev Grossman writes to tell us that Neal Stephenson, author of greats like Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, has another novel due for release in September. The catalogue copy gives us a small glimpse at what may be in store: "Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians--sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable 'saecular' world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown."
I really enjoy his books. The strengths far outweigh the shortcomings for me. I usually feel smarter after reading his stuff, at least for a little while. He has a knack for weaving little interesting facts into his stories and that really appeals to me.
"Hilarity ensues as the naive monks wander into an Orange County mall and are adopted by a gaggle of teenage girls."
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I think it's possible that Neal himself has been sealed in a Monastary for 3,400 years, actually. I don't know how else he could have written the Baroque Cycle, along with the works mentioned, and still have had time to come up for air and produce something new, too. Looking forward to it. Are you watching, George Martin? See? Wriiiite... publish!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Has he gone back to writing enjoyable books or are they still self-indulgent treatises that he's too important to allow editing of? (Judging from ScuttleMonkey's "...author of greats like Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon...", the latter seems more likely.)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
No this has nothing to do with making music from corporate spreadsheets.
I've actually noticed how the people who are or at least consider themselves the 'intellectual elite', (And yes, this includes slashdotters, for the most part) tend to insulate themselves away from the more mundane world, even while sometimes bemoaning their own insulation.
I'd never thought of putting it into an actual story with a more structured actual separation.
Should be a good read. He can be rather better at predicting how people react to changes in technology rather than how most people think we'd react. (I.E. Relationship role changes and the way we interact fundamentally changed rather than just slightly bent.)
That book was great the first time I read it, when it was called A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I gotta say, I really grooved on the historical aspects of the last four and was kind of looking for that to continue but it's not like I'm not going to read it hot off the press.
And, anyway, who knows what it's really going to be about. It's not like you can judge a book by it's publisher's blurb!
Dcobbler.
The Monks will be appearing tonight at 7pm in our "Monks Unplugged" special of our "Disaster averted" series with special guests Bono and U2
Stephenson's books have been expanding pretty much exponentially. How long will this one be?
(I like them anyway.)
After hearing about Stephenson for years (mainly on this site) I finally picked up a copy of Quicksilver during an airport layover. What a mistake. I trudged through it for about a week, thinking I might eventually stumble upon something more like a plot, you know, that would make you mildly curious about what comes next. Gave up about three quarters of the way through.
Oh, and right away he barrages you with the laughable similes. Just check out the first page of the novel: "her head forces [the noose] open like an infant's dilating the birth canal." - what in the heck???? It gets worse from there. What a joke. He's my new favorite author to hate.
So, I read The Diamond Age. Will this book also be great for the first two thirds and then suddenly turn bafflingly stupid for its ending?
You mean they stock his books at the Holliday Inn all those adverts were about?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm really happy to hear there's another book on the way.
For the guys who hate anything since Snow Crash, well this will probably not be for you. Neal's obviously grown and changed as a writer, and his newer stuff is unlikely to engage you.
According to something I read somewhere, the idea for Baroque Cyclecame about as an idea for a science fiction novel set in the historical past. A long, luxuriously, wonderfully rich read.
For the rest of us, this is like christmas. The man is a gifted storyteller, no doubt about it. Kudos.
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
by not thinking of good character names. "Raz"? It sounds like what people thought the future would be like in 1980.
HW
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Sounds like a Hari Seldon moment happened to Stephenson. The Second Foundation all over again.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It will likely be 1600 pages of brilliant prose with no bloody ending. He's like the long-form Carver or something...
Now if only he'd return with an ending.
The couple I read didn't have one.
Yes, he's a self-indulgent geek. And damnit, I love that. So am I.
Reading his books, you can't help but feel that he's constantly nudging and winking at you, sharing the joke and deligt of writing as it were. I can see why some people would hate that, or not have the patience to wade through it, but I can't get enough of it.
In that, he reminds me of Roger Zelazny. Lately, though, I find Charles Stross to feel rather similar.
Would you like a slice of toast?
why is that they set up the hero as having cohorts, armies, minions all the time ? its growing rather old.
the forced need of self gratification by grandeur. too unrealistic when repeated that often and in every context.
Read radical news here
Christ on a kitten huffing bender, man, what are you on about? I can't even figure out whether you are right-loony, left-loony, libertarian-loony, or just an Ayn Rand fetishist based on this post. How you managed to read ANY of that into this preview of Stephenson's new book, I'll never know.
;)
Look, this is the Internets, you have to be more specific in your insults and more obvious in your humor.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Lev, I just read Codex and hated the ending, like the rest of humanity.
His earlier books were great, but somewhere in Cryptonomicon he seems to have lost the plot, literally. I had a lot of trouble actually caring about the characters in Cryptonomicon... and I couldn't really care much about the background or plot either... it all seemed to be an excuse for him to write about the places he'd been as a hacker tourist and try and drum up geek cred... and he didn't seem to understand what bits of geek culture were things his allegedly competent protagonist should care about. The Baroque Cycle? I gave up halfway through the second one. It was like reading the "Swiss Family Robinson" version of the Renaissance. You know how "Swiss Family Robinson" was kind of like teenager's wish-fulfillment version of "Robinson Crusoe"? That's how I felt about Quicksilver... too many protagonists had too many convenient 20th century attitudes and too much 20th century understanding of biology and physics.
I don't get it. What makes this news? Some dude wrote a book. So what? It happens every day.
What am I missing? That's a genuine question.
He's Neal Stephenson. If you want an idea of why Slashdotters enjoy him, check out his (free to read) non-fiction piece In the Beginning was the Command Line.
And don't forget to read his highly entertaining Slashdot interview answers, especially number four.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
I was reading "The Baroque Cycle" for so long that when I finished it, there was a noticeable vacuum in my life. I struggled to remember a time when I *wasn't* reading "The Baroque Cycle" and searched in vain for something as dense, interesting and clever to fill my newly idle hours. I hope I speak for many others besides myself when I express hope that the new books compare favorably in both mass and density (and thus volume) to the old.
You forgot one: Ron Paul Supporter.
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
What am I missing?
+5 Funny.
May we live long and die out
If I recall correctly (been a year or two since I finished it) the third one actually had around 50 pages of resolution that wrapped up MOST of the story lines (there was definitely some "then why the hell did they bother with all that other stuff????") I found the ending of the Baroque cycle to be very satisfying -- so just in case you were holding off on them because you were afraid he'd let pretty much everything from the past 2000 pages drop and finish in a couple paragraphs, its definitely not the case.
No, it's in there:
right-loony, left-loony, libertarian-loony, or just an Ayn Rand fetishist
sic transit gloria mundi
Don't worry...he'll listen to Reason...
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Or a play on words...Anthem...Anathem...Anathema?
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Oh, sorry. I guess I need some sort of Venn diagram.
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
Ok, genuine answer here.
I strongly recommend Cryptonimicon as a good start. It's a big novel with two storylines from different historical points converging to a single dramatic and climatic end, with a subtle blend of emotions, tensions and strong, believable obligations. Woven throughout is an intensely technical drama concerning the power of cryptography and the people who had a life and death effect on the world around them because of their knowledge. Possibly the best insight into the ancestors of computing in the WWII era. Hugely scientific, well-drawn characters, mathematical, and a truly gripping read. Dangerously engaging in the way that only a truly great novel can affect your sleep cycles. This book, good sir or madam, is for the geek, and a new novel from him is profoundly Stuff That Matters.
I will be hanging out for the new book, and he's got at least one guaranteed customer.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
If well Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are good, i enjoyed much more the reading of Diamond Age (the best educative toy story after mimsy were the borogoves, and maybe even inspiration for the OLPC). Why those 2 are "the" books of Stephenson all over the story?
Also check out Mother Earth, Mother Board, which is a fast-moving, gripping, action packed, 42000 word essay on... the history and practice of submarine cable laying. Really. It's awesome. Read it. (He used bits of it for the background in Cryptonomicon, so if you've read that you may find it a little familiar.)
Are you talking about reason the magazine or reason the magnetic gattling gun?
You can also read the first chapter of Snow Crash here. The first few chapters are Awesome with a capital A. The rest of the book is good too but the first 50 pages are astounding.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
You missed the part where Republicans eat babies and drink the blood of innocent longhairs that they harvest from hippie reservations.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
Shit, so Republicans are the Wraith now? Does that mean we can use a retroviral treatment to turn them into real human beings?
Many scifi writers have been riffing on Herman Nesse's Glass Bead Game since he published it in the 1940s. See also: Iain Banks' Player of Games (I asked Banks about this directly and he confirmed that GBG was one of his favourite future history books).
Da Blog
Sure, just need to find the interface port so i can upload this virus from a 3.5" disk on my Macbook..
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
At the risk of my pending crucifixion, Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" was the first and only rather expensive hardbook book I've ever tossed in the trash. And at only about 30 pages in. Gah, what awful stuff. It was like drinking urine: Something you don't do twice unless you're not right in the head.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Sounds awesome.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Modding me down to zero is an excellent way of disagreeing with me.
And commenting?
i believe you'll find that's what the system is for.
Hermann Hesse's Magister Ludi aka The Glass Bead Game. Without the saving the world bit.
Neal Stephenson's books seem to often have the trope of a mundane activity elevated to ridiculous levels. "Snow Crash" had pizza delivery. "Cryptonomicon" had eating cereal.
I wonder if there's going to be a similar moment in his new book?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I checked out the demo video for the Kindle on Amazon today. About 15 seconds into it, they zoom into the Kindle to show the text on the screen. It's a page from Stephenson's Diamond Age (A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer). Now, Amazon sells many different books, and they could have zoomed in on a page from any one of them, many of which are better books, better known, or better sellers. But they chose Stephenson's, quite possibly because they are trying to associate the Kindle with the Primer from the story.
Gah, what awful stuff. It was like drinking urine
Hush, don't give Neal any ideas for even more revolting sex/romance scenes.
That's the one thing about his novels, the sex/romance scenes will make a normal person want to toss their cookies, or maybe contemplate joining an order with chastity vows. A list of gems and highlights might include sex orgy with pivot gangbang girl reduced to ashes and eaten to get result of computation, or description of guy deprived of sex or masturbation so long everything from his knees to his nipples becomes (in protagonist's mind) a giant sex organ and then he finally relieves himself when his virgin girlfriend impales herself onto his pole with a single extremely painful leap and he immediately ejaculates "a Canadian imperial gallon" (sic) into her, or the King of France getting his hemorrhoids cut off sans anaesthetic while a woman feigns moaning in orgasm so those outside won't know the king is having surgery, or where a guy with syphilis and a half-burned off penis gets his load blown with the kind help of a sympathetic women who wraps bung around her finger and jabs him in the prostate via the anus (at least we can be spared Neal's idea of foreplay).
I could go on about Stephenson sex/romance but I think the point has been made. Stephenson sex is pain. My apologies to those of you of a more sensitive nature who read this and don't have your therapist on speed-dial.
Speaking of Rand, anyone else getting a flashback to Anthem from the premise/title?
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Hmmph. Sounds almost like a rip from the pages of Ted Dekker's Circle Trilogy.
Cryptonomicon was OK but I had to hold my nose and slog through places. Quicksilver I had to force myself to finish. But you're right about the shortage of really good SF writers. My shortlist is getting pretty short... here's the names that come to mind right now: Charlie Stross, David Langford, Greg Egan, Vernor Vinge, Iain M Banks, and Linda Nagata.
If your favorite cool SF writer isn't in this list, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! It's off the top of my head.
Glad I'm not the only one who read Anathem as Anthem.
I wonder what Stephenson will do with the premise. For many people, the assumption is that the people in the monastery are the people with the answers. But will it be so? Oftentimes the dumbest people are the most educated. Sometimes they become so knowledgable in their narrow interest that they start to imagine that they know more than they do in other fields. Or they become disdainful of the common man that they divorce themselves from reality. Most universities are overflowing with these two types.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
This sound awfully close to The Glass Bead Game.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I read Snowcrash on recommendation from /. Big mistake.
All the characters were one-dimensional sock puppets and the main character's
name was Hiro Protagonist. Seriously. Almost Wodehouse-esque only I'm not laughing
with Stephenson.
Libertarians are destroying Sci-fi. Also game writing.
I read the title as "Neal Stephenson Returns with "Anthem"" and thought, "Ah, he's finally gotten around to just copying Ayn Rand." Since so many of his books are fundamentally nihilistic masturbatory "we (computer/art/whatever) geeks are so much smarter than everyone else" screeds.
Lord Dunsany is the most original author to be mentioned in this thread.
Thank you for this! Somehow I'd missed it.
Also, just a comment: while I found answer four to be very entertaining, I was thrilled with his analysis of consumer/commercial writers (what he calls 'Beowulf' writers) vs. academic/literary writers (termed 'Dante' writers by him), because it's one of the most consistent and matter-of-fact analysis of the two broad types of authors out there that I've ever had the pleasure of reading.
Not after I mentioned Robbe-Grillet, he wasn't.
So I've always wondered... is there any way to force a snow crash nowadays? I mean a true, totally F'd up snow crash on a system monitor. My instincts and common sense would tell me no, at least not in the classical meaning of the term snow crash, but we've got a lot of smart people on this board who might know if it's actually possible. Ever since I read Snow Crash a couple years ago, I've wondered.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
well-drawn characters
You have to be kidding...
Neal Stephenson writes "pop" crap for clueless tech wannabes. Cryptonomicon is a (bad) Tom Clancy novel with some "technical terms" sprinkled here and there to make the readers think the author knows more than they do.
There are more references to sperm and masturbation than information about any actual cryptology. And the little there is consists of Stephenson paraphrasing Bruce Schneier (and making several mistakes in the process). For anyone with a clue about cryptanalysis the book is a (bad) attempt at nonsense humor.
Not only that, but the style is repetitive and full of clichés, the rythm is painfully slow (entire chapters where nothing happens) and the ending is predictable, boring and "rushed" (though it'll take you 1200 pages to get there!).
If that's his "masterpiece", then I shudder to think how bad the rest must be.
Not to mention the hilarious NYTimes Star Wars essay Stephenson wrote when Episode 3 came out.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
Thank you for the heads up on Neal's Star Wars essay. A great little read for first thing in the morning!
Sig, we don't need no stinking Sig!
Stephenson's books just sort of stop.
Best Slashdot Co
OK, I get it, this year's joke is the ads. I usually have a blind spot for the ads.
...right?
On the articles, 2 times out of 3 I get ads for "Anastasia International.com", Quality Russian Dating Service.
Haha.
that's the joke, right?
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
I strongly recommend Cryptonimicon as a good start. It's a big novel with two storylines from different historical points converging to a single dramatic and climatic end
You must be joking... the build up in Cryptonomicon is huge, most certainly. And the weaving of the two plots is well executed. But the ending? Jebus, it might as well have just ended with "and, blah blah blah, they lived happily ever after".
I wonder if I'm the only one who's a bit put off by the mentions of supernatural beings in a sci-fi novel. well, probably not, but I guess I'll read the book anyway, if only to have an informed opinion. it's been a popular theme lately that the world is driven or almost driven to collapse by the irreligious, with the implication that believers would've done differently. bioshock and I am legend come to mind immediately, but there's more, I just can't remember them. the seeming supernaturalism (or just bullshit) of "cell" also prevented me from getting to the end, because I seem to be sensitive against that kind of thing in certain environments (but not others, rushdi's supernatural realism is fine), like sci-fi. in any case, I hope I'll find anathem enjoyable
Deus est fatalis
I notice that this book is 928 pages, same as the hardcover of Cryptonomicon. This means that I probably won't be reading it.
It's not that I object to long books, but I still haven't made it through Cryptonomicon, and don't feel much like going back to it. Somewhere in there, I'm quite certain, is a really good story struggling to break free--and that story is probably around 300 pages. The man needs an editor with a wooden ruler to smack his knuckles now and then.
I'd like to finish one of his "amazing" books, but life is too short, and at this point there are too many other things that I'd rather read first.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
That was a great interview, but it just sort of ended abruptly. I was left wondering "what happened to the author". And the reader, I mean, here he was, just wasting time at work and then he stops reading... did he ever go to lunch?
My personally favourite aspect of Cryptonomicon is the WWII information warfare bit. It's all about the question how the hell they can make use of the information gained from cracking the German codes without letting the Germans know their codes are cracked. The solution is a special group of soldiers that gets to perform some totally weird missions just to give the allies a cover or excuse to make use of the information they already had.
Also, it's one of the few novels that gets away with using a methematical formula, and it explains lots of mathematical concepts really well in extremely inventive and original ways without boring the reader. It is in my humble opinion The Ultimate Nerd Novel.
I read so many comments on being unable to read through the Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver that I'm a bit baffled. I mean, WTF, we're talking of about a thousand pages that have a lot of information, nicely written, challenging, fun, etc. (well, I also have a hard time reading his sex scenes, but I think he writes them this way on purpose...). I haven't seen anywhere anything like the talk between Newton and Leibniz on the free will, for example...
:) ) and not really challenging. Also, I bet a lot of people have gone through bigger textbooks which are far harder to digest... So I don't get the whining.
:) )
A lot of people here probably like J.R.R.Martin's stuff - which is also big and not-so-interesting. It's also the same size, just not that full of facts (if any
(you want something bigger - go for Erikson's "Malazan Book of the Fallen". He still hasn't gotten boring (on book 7/10), has a humongous world and so many stories that connect in some way that for most people it's hard to keep track of even half of them
I wish it had ended with words to that effect. Instead, he stopped just before the "they lived happily ever after". It ends with the prince kissing the sleeping beauty. You turn the page, and discover that was the last sentence. No waking up, marrying or living happily ever after at all.
It's still a brilliant book, though. Hell, his previous books ended with the prince cutting through the thorn bushes, so this is a huge improvement.
If you are 'buying into' an author you've never read before this is going to put more possible stumbling blocks in the way. Both Snowcrash and Diamond Age have cracking stories that I think would be a bit more accessible to Stephenson novices first time out. You're going to want to read all three (and the others) anyway so I'd start out simpler. Alternatively grab anything by him you fancy - I can't help with your Bad Impulse Control.
I really enjoyed Cryptonomicon, (though I thought the ending was a little weak). --Also, I don't really understand why people complain about the lack of well-studied female characters; it's a geek novel for goodness sake, and it seemed quite accurate when compared to my experiences with women; they generally don't appreciate a good story about D&D and packet routing. So what? I don't ask for well-studied male characters in romance novels. You want well-balanced and truly insightful humanist story-telling? Don't read a book dedicated to geeks and geek technology.
OTOH I couldn't stand Snowcrash because it felt like MTV wrote it, and while I don't exactly know how to quantify this, it also felt like he a Mac-user at the time.
And J.R.R.Martin? Ugh. That fellow is just another cult-of-science-cum-writer who lives his life convinced that "Bad Things Happen To Good People", and he made an endless effort to illustrate this dreary philosophy in his Game of Thrones stuff, proving of course nothing at all since being the god of his world makes his representation of reality on paper rather biased. I think he could benefit from learning how to live with a little grace before inflicting his words upon the world, but that's just my humble opinion. --Which can't be worth much since his stuff seems to ring a sympathetic chord with enough readers, --the biggest fans of which also happen to be enormously miserable sob-story people. (Which may be a coincidence or simply the result of a limited sample. I don't know for sure, but I certainly know which I'd bet on.) --I will admit that he knows how to tell an otherwise snappy page-turner, although I found his obsession with pre-pubescent girls tiresome. So no-thanks. And Martin, tell your publicist to stop insisting on including those two Rs in your name when it comes time to do cover design. That's just gaudy and cheep and all by itself should prevent you from sleeping at night. Ever.
But whatever makes your soul marketable, I guess.
-FL
Good for him. The more people who make fun of Rand and her insane ideas, the better the world becomes.
Neither. "Reason" was a nuclear powered automatic cannon, if I recall correctly. Remember, he had to hang the heat sink into the ocean to keep it from melting down...
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
And not to forget the utterly amazing and interesting Mother Earth, Mother Board
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Sigh. It's a joke, son. Stephenson though it was really witty to a have a character piously remark "Don't worry, they'll listen to Reason"—as they were being chased by mother-stabbing, father-raping pirates. The other passengers aboard look at him like he's lost his mind. Then he produces Reason from a medium sized briefcase, and blows the entire pirate flotilla to hell. The subtext is, I suppose, that this sort of "reason" is the only kind that mother-stabbing, father-raping pirates are likely to listen to. I thought the "Reason" episode was screamingly funny. I have no idea how one would build an atomic-powered automatic cannon...and it's rather pointless to pursue the question, don't you think?
Perhaps you wouldn't like Snow Crash. Just a guess, mind you.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
It was a joke, small male child.
I've no idea what you're talking about now. Using the word Reason in the context of this discussion and replying to what appears to be a libertarian, the word could have three meanings. Reason as in reason, reason as in the atomic powered gattling gun and finally reason the libertarian magazine. I chose the latter two when attempting a joke. It obviously failed. You responded by implying that reason is not a magnetic gattling gun but an atomic powered automatic cannon. I disputed that it was an automatic cannon due to the barrel count and stood by my claim that it works by electromagnetism. I never implied that it didn't use nuclear power.
How would I know that Reason has six barrels and fires metal slugs (depleted uranium AFAICR)if I hadn't read the book or at least knew that Reason is the name of a fictional weapon?