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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.
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?
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.
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
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...
REAMDE is why I will probably read his new book. There were several times (especially in the first hundred pages or so) when I was laughing my ass off. Neal Stephenson is a good writer. There, I said it. (Oooh, what a limb I'm going out on!)
He's less of a good story-maker, and I think people who complained 20 years ago about him not being able to end a story well, would probably say he hasn't improved. I'm not sure I was all that excited by the story of REAMDE either. So either fuck the story, or just enjoy whatever you can within it. But that aside, the guy has a wonderful way with words and throughout REAMDE I kept thinking "I've missed this guy," since I hadn't read him since Cryptonomicon. Just get him talking.
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