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First 26 Pages of Neal Stephenson's New Novel "Seveneves" Online
An anonymous reader writes Neal Stephenson has just released a teaser comprising the first 26 pages of his new novel Seveneves. The first words? "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason."
That's no moon. It's a space station!
You can't handle the truth.
So, just like Robert A. Heinlein then?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." sounds a lot like a sci-fi version of "It was a dark and stormy night."
We know the reason -- because Khloe wanted her ass to look like Kim's.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
So what does Chairface Chippendale think of this turn of events?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_characters_in_The_Tick#Supervillains
The stories i mostly enjoyed, but his sex scenes would bring the human race to an end if young people read them
Is Cryptonomicon popularly viewed as not being very good? I enjoyed it, not as much as Snow Crash, but what the hell can compare with that?
Neil's works are hit and miss for me. I loved Cryptonomicon and Reamde was pretty good. I'm not into fantasy, so some of his books don't appeal at all to me. I'll get this one on Audible.
After that shitfest you can't pay me to read anything by Stephenson ever again.
yeah, what was it, "an imperial pint"?
(shudder)
Most people I know who finished it enjoyed it, but I also know plenty of people who couldn't finish it (which I understand-- the pages describing the broken tooth on Turing's bicycle as a metaphor for a substitution cypher were torturous. And tortuous.).
I mean, it's not high literature that scholars will be analyzing to death two hundred years from now, but Stephenson's books are generally creative and fun, and I enjoy them. OP's mom was probably at least half troll.
Authors improve with age? In my experience that's not true at all. There seems to be a range during which authors are at their optimum and even if the actual age range varies from person to person. The consistency is how the decline manifests itself.
Too many authors shift from storytelling to exposition in their later years. Instead of describing a compelling narrative into which thought provoking concepts are intertwined they get totally fixated on those themes. So you get a book full of exposition in which virtually nothing happens until the very end; it's a book full of people talking instead of doing. It seems exacerbated by sticking to the same universe but I've seen it happen with unrelated novels by the same author.
I always bring up Frank Herbert and the Dune series as a case study for this phenomenon. It's not that there aren't facets of the later books that aren't interesting, but as a novel those later novels are not as engaging as the first, even when they had the potential to be so much more. And it seems that first novel is usually the best.
Authors improve with age?
Some do. For example, in many years time, Stephenie Meyer will be dead.
SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY...
I'm in the middle of it at the moment. It's not high art or anything but it is a terrifically exciting read. It's the kind of page turner Dan Brown might write were he both technically and narratively competent.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
yeah, what was it, "an imperial pint"?
(shudder)
TWENTY OUNCES!
ba-da-bing!
Neal, you tease.
What have YOU written that was any good at all, let alone worthy of being published and marketed at major brick-and-mortar booksellers? You speak boldly for someone who isn't even willing to sign their own name to a shitpost they're making on Slashdot. I stand utterly amazed that you can even use correct capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and sentence structure, while at the same time finding nothing of relevance or value in your ill-considered 'opinion'. Perhaps his works are just beyond your comprehension? Maybe Dr. Seuss would be more your speed. No, I take that back; probably still too sophisticated for you. The slogans on coasters at your local dive bar are probably more appealing to you, as are the graffitti on the mens' room wall. But please, continue to grace us with your wisdom.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Loved Snow Crash, liked Crypto and Reamde, but the Baroque Cycle was a bit too dense for me, and I bought Anathema without ever opening it. I hadn't planned on getting into Seveneves unless the reviews were glowing, but the first 26 pages were a quick and compelling tease, enough to sell me. I'll get this on Audible, too. Smart move, making the first hit free, Neal!
I would recommend waiting for an abridged version. Otherwise most people will pull aloud WTF! and close the book for good while slogging through one of (_many_) extremely boring and only marginally related to the main story tangents.
the pages describing the broken tooth on Turing's bicycle as a metaphor for a substitution cypher were torturous. And tortuous.
I loved those parts when he goes off on a long nerdy tangent like that.
I've been listening to anathem on audible during my commute. I'm about halfway through and so far I'd put it up there with Snow Crash and Diamond Age (though I don't recommend it if you're not the sort of person who can intuitively guess the approximate meaning of a new word).
So a sudden and abrupt start rather than a sudden and abrupt ending? At least he's trying something new.
That's not how you do online marketing. Try this:
The first 26 pages of Neal Stephenson's new bestseller were *leaked* to the internet!
That's work much better...
Stephenson's books have gotten worse and worse as he's gotten older. Usually authors improve as they age, not put out dreck like Cryptonomicon.
Sorry, but I liked Cryptonomicon. As I did REAMDE. Both pretty good books.
The Baroque Cycle was a bit of a drag, that I admit.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I would enjoy Stephenson more if he listened to his editor. There was a five page section in Cryptonomicon where he talks about eating a bowl of Captain Crunch. Five damn pages! Then he spent another four pages on a wisdom tooth extraction... He does spin a good story though.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Why does popular opinion matter? I've enjoyed all of his work to date. Certainly Snow Crash is a stand-out. I found the depth in the Baroque Cycle quite engaging.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
I think Stephenson does a great job creating interesting characters and worlds, and also does a good a job with setting up stories. What he struggles with is ending them - apart from the time he spent explaining the nuts and bolts of elementary crypto-theory what really jarred me was the way Cryptonomicon ended. Which was "abruptly" and "poorly".
I really enjoyed Snow Crash - which is something of guilty-pleasure pulp cyber-punk. I really really liked The Diamond Age - I think it his best book in some ways.
After Cryptonomicon I haven't been able to bring myself to start the Baroque Cycle even though they've been on my bookshelves for nearly a decade now. :(
Usually authors improve as they age
That does not correlate with my observations.
I would say that most authors get better for a few years, and then they decline. Much like musicians and other creative people.
I'm on my fourth reading of the Baroque cycle. It's a fantastic read if you're the kind of reader that can keep two dozen characters clear in your head.
He does get loquacious in the details but as a true geek he understands that the details are important.
I don't think Cryptonomicon's ending was bad, I think it was missing. "I sorry Neal, we're just going to stop adding paragraphs once the book hits 1000 pages."
Neal had said in interviews that there were supposed to be three interconnected storie lines, not the two that made it. The third stoyline was to be in the future dealing with the effects of the first two, that's where the ending would have been.
Anathem was pretty brilliant. The first 300 pages seemed really boring at the time, but later you realize that they have to be there.
Oh, come on, we all know that you need to get ice cold milk to touch the Captain Crunch nuggets right as they hit to spoon and go into the mouth, or more ideally have both enter the mouth at the same time from separate sources, such as they mix perfectly at that time.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
5 pages and he didn't once mention a whistle.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
See Dick, Philip K., Exegesis.
Part of the game with novels is to put something intriguing in the first paragraph, preferably the first sentence. Something that will make a browser at the airport bookstore want to read more, if just to figure out how that's even possible. Something like, "Being dead turned out to have its advantages".
I kind of make a game of reading novel first lines. IMHO, starting off with an exploding moon make this one of the better ones I've seen.
That was actually one of my favorite parts of the book, but friends I have recommenced it to have come back and specifically mentioned that part as being hard to get past.
I'm an audiobook addict. Snow Crash and Diamond Age are awesome books read by two of the very best narrators around. I've listened to both multiple times.
Anathem isn't half as good as either of those, and I was initially put off by the reader, but for some inexplicable reason, it is also the book I've listened to the most -- six or seven times through at least. There is something slow and comfortable about the way that Anathem develops that I find highly comforting during periods where my life is in high anxiety mode.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I really liked Cryptonomicon, but like others here, I bought Anathem, and just couldn't get into it. I hope they make a movie based on it, but it would be brutal. I think even Peter Jackson said it would be too long. Seveneves looks like it might be a fun read.
I did get a Heinlein-ish feel from the first part of the preview, mostly from the Delilah and the Space Rigger era of Heinlein's work.
The thing that Stephenson does, which Heinlein never really tried to do, is set a bunch of smaller stories reeling about and, like a pile of icbms, cruise missiles and long range bombers, bring them all together at the final targeted story point
Maybe I am a pathetic doofus, but I really do enjoy Stephenson's work
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Stephenson starts slow, really cranks it up, then ends abruptly.
I've read Anathem several times and have enjoyed it a lot, the internal contradictions notwithstanding. The lack of explanation of the interaction between the cloistered and common worlds rang a bit false - I'd like to have seen some more concrete stuff - but it's a great space opera. And the last hundred and fifty pages are just plain fun.....
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
Loved the Baroque Cycle to death, but then I love big, picky books. Thomas Hardy is not my enemy....
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
Actually, quality varies. Cryptonomicon was the hight of tediousness and boredom. So was the The Baroque Cycle. But Anathem was actually pretty good and Reamde was somewhere in between.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I am one of those that liked Snow Crash and the Diamond Age (and Anathem). "Cryptonomicom" was the most boring book I ever seriously tried to read. I failed to find it anything except terribly boring and finally just threw it into the trash.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I agree. I did however find Cryptonomicon utterly boring and finally threw it into the trash. Maybe it is better if you do not understand cryptography and its history.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Stephenson's books have gotten worse and worse as he's gotten older. Usually authors improve as they age, not put out dreck like Cryptonomicon.
Dreck? Odd, I thought Cryptonomicon was quite good -- possibly his best, or at least in a close race with Snow Crash. Diamond Age was quite good too, though I wasn't crazy about the ending. Zodiac was very good as well.
Anathem, on the other hand... I was really excited for it to come out, as I'd read every other Stpehenson work at that point. It's literally one of the only books in my entire life that I started but did not finish. I got maybe 30% of the way through, and I just couldn't get into the story at all. The characters didn't give me any reason to be interested in them, at least not enough to slog through the last 4 inches of that monster tome.
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I was initially put off by the reader
I was as well, to the point I nearly shut it off and started looking for how to return it. I think it's a combination of the weird voice for the character talking, strange terms, and lack of context as to what's going on. Once I got a feel for what was actually happening it improved by several orders of magnitude. (I think the narrator toned down his voice acting a bit by then as well).
The lack of explanation of the interaction between the cloistered and common worlds rang a bit false
I haven't finished it yet, but so far it makes sense to me. They're basically the logical extrapolation if you take monks out of the middle ages and point their enthusiasm at knowledge instead of religion. Presumably it remained because of tradition and also wanting to only attract smart people who were serious about the pursuit of knowledge for knowledges sake without getting caught up in the specifics of implementation.
A system like that would also have a stabilizing influence on the planet. Remove the smart and curious from the general population (and genepool) and let them pursue knowledge in a way that won't take a destructive outlet (e.g. designing weapons for an unstable dictator). Leave the sheeple who are content to take soma and maintain the status quo as long as they're entertained.
Oh yeah? On the other hand it's easy for anyone to criticize anything that anyone else does, now isn't it, and since when does someone's personal tastes in literature qualify them to be a 'critic'? Fucking bite me.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Not worth the effort. And unnecessary anyways. Some day your vastly overinflated ego will collide with reality.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I enjoyed that segue. LOL, I did. Tastes vary.
... fivevif and sixis?
I'm guessing he's referring to the English phrase "sixes and sevens" meaning everything is mixed up or FUBAR.
I first heard this in Gilbert And Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore":
"Fair moon, to thee I sing,
Bright regent of the heavens,
Say, why is everything
Either at sixes or at sevens?"
Probably archaic now...
Thanks, have a nice day :)
http://www.educa.net/entrenado...
Or perhaps your ADHD is getting the better of you.
I found all of them absolutely riveting.
Eat the rich.
I loved the Captain Crunch bit. For me it was clear the Stephenson really understands that geek mentality. I think he a a great author and while the endings sometimes do fall a bit short, it is always a great ride to get there.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
If I had ADHD, I would notice with other authors. I don't. Stephenson just is not a consistently good writer and some people cannot judge quality and will read anything if the name on it is just "big" enough.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Besides, we know it's really 10 cc. (Not really.)
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Go collide with a concrete abutment at high speed.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Rosy Palm as a wife and her three daughters Thumb, Index and Birdie don't count
Or maybe some people are just more on the same wavelength as mr. Stephenson, and 'get' him. For instance, I absolutely love the whole concept of Cryptonomicon and the numerous geeky technical asides. I could have done without the wanking system description, but nothing is ever perfect.
And I didn't find The Baroque Cycle tedious or plodding at all, I guess it just hit the right notes of mystery and alternate history for me.
Eat the rich.