Slashdot Mirror
Snow Crash
The Rundown.
Snow Crash is a well-crafted, tongue-in-cheek romp through a near-future America so familar, one expects to see its characters chasing each other down the street.
Set mostly in geographic California with arterial highways delivering consumers to the fast food, faster shopping, and even small country franchises, a very modern, ancient Sumerian virus is turning hackers and non-hackers alike into tongue-speaking refugees.
Throw in the Metaverse, Stephenson's version of the global information structure. A three-dimensional audio and visual hallucination built around the mystical powers-of-two, cartoon physics rule the day. Rent a cheap avatar for a stroll down the main street. Ride your motorcycle at 300 km/h and bounce harmlessly off of a 20-mile square building. Just don't read the scroll held by the Bland Angel of Judgment.
Further complicating matters is a slew of divergent and entertaining characters. Your guide through this journey is the unlikely Hiro Protagonist (no, really!), a once and future hacker wonderboy who took off before the IPO and now delivers pizza for the Mafia (thirty minutes or less or you're fired). Joining him is the ever resourceful Y.T., a teenaged Kourier skateboarding her way through traffic by harpooning cars.
Want more? How about the surprisingly boyish Uncle Enzo, head of aformentioned Mafia, or L. Bob Rife, fantastically wealthy crank, founding funder of Rife Bible College and current owner of the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. Perhaps you'd like to meet Mr. Lee, proprietor of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong Franchise, or stop to pet Rat Thing, a supersonic isotope-powered cybernetic pit bull. Pushing forward the plot is a Metaverse librarian and Raven, a one-man killing machine and nuclear power.
Sounds serious? Perhaps. Complicated? Enjoyably so.
What's good? The writing is crystal clear and very descriptive. Stephenson never gets lost in the details, and is as comfortable relating various myths about Babel as technical descriptions of the Graveyard Daemons cleaning up unfortunate Metaverse corpses. They fit together into an interesting, if complicated puzzle. He's also highly creative and well-researched, much like Neil Gaiman. It would take a serious student of a particular field to spot an error in his work (except for the strange 'Built-In Operating System' acronym).
What's not so good? There's one piece of the backstory (concerning the parentage of a couple of characters) which is a little too convenient... it makes the story more effective, but it was an obvious dramatic advice. The ending might leave some readers a cold. Frankly, it's quick. Very quick. All of the pieces had been in place for a hundred pages (no MacGuffin here), but it's still a surprise. Stephenson is better at creating a believable yet outrageous world and populating it with appropriate characters than he is at telling an airtight story. Don't be fooled -- he's no slouch in the story department, but the draw of "Snow Crash" is Stephenson's fertile imagination. All things considered, these are very small nitpicks.
What's to think about when you finish? This is a story about dualities. There's a reason for the 'powers of two' lecture early on. The obvious schism is the organized technocracy of the Metaverse contrasted with the hyperinflationary franchised real world.
Pit Hiro against Raven. One reluctantly saves the world he helped create, the other seeks to destroy the world that created him. How about Uncle Enzo versus Rife? Ng and Rat Thing? YT and ... well, everybody else.
The Conclusion. Given the quality and density of Snow Crash, it's easy to recommend this work as a defining piece of SF. If you consider yourself a serious cyberpunk fan, hacker, or geek, you ought to feel guilty until you read it.
Note: as with most cyberpunk pieces, Snow Crash contains quite a bit of harsh language, some violence, and one sexual encounter. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Thanks to Chilli for additional insights during this review.
Pick this book at Amazon.
Life from the eyes of a man with no human prejudice ();
This should read ( Stranger ); I must have missed a matching set of tags. stranger things have happened...
Scudder
anon because I'm posting from home and don't remember my password and am too lazy to go through the whole |get slashdot to email-log in to email-log back in to slashdot| routine just to comment on one stupid mistake.
Niel can't write sex scenes to save his life. Snow Crash had one of the most unerotic ones that I had ever read.
Actually, if you look at the structure of the two trilogies Gibson has now completed, they're very similar in some ways. Minor charcters link all three, a major character/event from novel I is mentioned briefly in II, the major characters of II are seperate from I, a major character from I returns as major in III with major from II secondary. Admittedly, I've only read the cover notes for All Tomorrow's Parties, but I think you can see who I'm talking about
I bought it after reading In the Beginning was the Command Line... linked to from /. I appear to be having difficulty logging in.
Didn't you find the Titan series (Titan, Wizard, and Demon) waaaay out there? I felt like Varley was exploring his sexuality in this series.
Another book to recommend is Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton.
Neuromancer came out in 83 i think. :)
Gibson was in his day a true innovator. Like the tech he described in his books was things people has tried to mimic in VR-labs since then. Hmm... where did the term "cyberspace" come from
Stephenson just extrapolated from the tech we had in 93/94 when he created his "Metaverse". However, the Metaverse is a great analogy to todays internet (something nice created by geeks -> something mainly used for play and worthless entertainment (girls eating scorpions anyone?)), Stephenson should have kudos for it.
A place where people can make lists of their favorite books, music and movies along with comments. Simply search for "Sci-fi" and you'll have plenty to keep you going for a while.
Check out www.baen.com for a peak.
The UK Paperback edition of Cryptonomicon is out. I got mine last Friday (Oct 16th) (Really must log on sometime.. Fed up of being AC)
I just have to add these to the pile: Roger Zelazny Don't forget this guy, please! Whatever time you give him will be richly rewarded. Some of my favourites: - Doorways In The Sand - Creatures of Light and Darkness - Chronicles of Amber (the first 5) - Any of his short story anthologies (I kid you not) Larry Niven I saw Ringworld and its sequel mentioned, but I really enjoyed some of the other Known Space stories, most notably: - A Gift From Earth - Protector - World of Ptavvs Glen Cook I find that much of the fantasy out there today feels like it came off of an assembly line. The Black Company series by Cook doesn't have that problem. The man is a genius at portraying villains. The series wanders a bit towards the end, but the first 6 books or so are wickedly good.
Neal can see the ultimate outcome. It's not that people are following his work, it's just that he can predict the future. A few years ago I was waiting for a time when ever commercial contained a url. At first there were none. Then one would appear. I used to check to see how many contiguous url's I could see. Then EVERY commerical had a url. Now, there aren't even products, just ads for websites. How soon will it be before there are no product ads. Just urls. Beyond that, look at the convergence of internetwork technology and telephony. Look at the convergence of palm pilots and cell phones. What is going to be the end result of this? Fully wired cyborgs? Yes. Definitly. I predict within 10 years (maybe sooner) you will see completly immersed people (all visual and audio filtered through a machine through headfones and goggles.) Scientists have already managed to make a neural interface to a cats visual system. How soon will it be before YOUR visual system is tapped? If vision can be tapped, why not thoughts? Mind-over-IP? The ultimate end would be a convergence of mind and machine to the point where both are the same. Our society is already fairly comfortable with body modification. The real question is not if, but when.
I didn't like Snow Crash either. Too much description of the world for me. Anyplace the characters went he'd do two pages on the franchises that were there and what ethnic group ran that particular franchise, etc. Finally I was thinking: "Enough! I get the picture Neal! It's a sleazy futuristic world. Now get on with the story!". And so I started skipping paragraphs when he seemed to sink into that. Overall it left me annoyed. I purchased Diamond Age at the same time and haven't bothered to open it. Maybe I'll take it on a plane with me sometime and force myself through it.
I am a huge fan of the Gibson Sprawl books, so when a friend compared Snow Crash favorably to these, I rushed right out and bought it. However I found myself sorely disappointed. The characters are two dimensional and unbelievable. From the Pizza Deliverer slash Uberhacker slash Master Swordsman main character to the Lobo-esque bad guy complete with nuclear bomb on his motorcycle rigged to blow if he is killed, the whole cast of the novel would be more at home in a Saturday morning cartoon. Although the book had a couple of interesting concepts, notably the virtual reality world and the franchised city states, I found this to be a very "soft" Sci-Fi novel. I found especially unbelievable the concept of a computer virus that could also infect human minds. I thought the whole explanation with the Sumerian language and the Tower of Babel was completely absurd. Many people seem to love this book, but I couldn't get past the cartoonish tone of the story. I was so turned off by this book, that I have avoided Stephensen's newer books which have been raved about so much on this site. In my mind Gibson is a far superior writer.
At least he had the decency to apologize for not tying up the threads in his last book (infinitys shore? well the third book in the last uplift trilogy at least) which truly sucked on all levels.
:)
Bujold though is the only sf-author I've read that's managed to keep a universe fresh for more than 3 books. And she manages to be funny as well. Universes with all-gay-men planets and empires controlled by genetically engineered uber-chicks is funny, torturing of main characters is also funny.
Does anyone know if Mark gets tortured some more in the newest book. That would be great
While I read the book and enjoyed it very much, I can't give it more than a 9. The story line itself was very enjoyable and solidly written. You could tell that there was alot of reasearch was done and presented well. The descriptions of the metaverse was pleasantly suprising and well thought out. The ending left something to be desired. I felt like I had eaten an excellent surf and turf dinner with all the trimmings and delightful wine, but the desert was a small bowl of lemon-lime jello.
No, not that I wouldn't *love* to see an interview. He's an engaging, intelligent, and interesting man in many aspects, and he has an integrity and a blatant honesty that really allows you a chance to see how much of a hacker he really is.
So let's put that in perspective-- when you're working on a nice piece of code, do you want to put down everything you're doing to answer a bunch of questions that you've been asked before (albeit insightful ones). Neal Stephenson has said that he prefers to simply work for long, uninterrupted periods of time. Interruptions, be they as trivial as e-mail, or as major as that huge book tour this past summer, only make it tougher for him to write. A Slashdot interview, while flattering (I'm sure), would be more or less an interruption.
Let Mr. Stephenson have some time. Maybe when he's finished with his next book (which is supposed to be the next in the series that Cryptonomicon started), he'll have some time before he starts again. But until then, let him work-- I guarantee you, his results are worth it!
Just my $0.02
Sorry but I think I'm the only person I know who didn't like Snow Crash. I just couldn't get into it at all. Frankly, I thought it was boring, and confusing. THe new terminology and concepts he brought it were too distracting to the story.
Wow what timing. I just finished Snow Crash hours before this review was posted. Excellent book.
Neil Stephenson doesn't do interviews. He says he is too busy. Oh well, at least he's a BeOS fan.
No, you're not the only one. Even though I've only read snowcrash, I guess I'm not really a fan of his work. Maybe cryptonomicon is better, maybe it's not, I'm just not anxious enough to find out. I found the style of the novel so contrived to think that maybe it was all a big joke. It's as if he wrote the book to see how many people would rant and rave about it, only he's snickering in derision behind their backs at the same time. In short, the novel was nothing more than a testosterone laden hollywood action movie script waiting to happen. Even if the scientific background of the story is excellent, it's buried in a sludge pile of writing so peurile I have difficulty feeling awed by it. I guess it was intended to be a graphic novel, and in that context, I can understand where it got it's setting, theme, and mood from, not to mention the crappy writing. He should've continued with the graphic portion as that would have been a better vehicle for this sort of thing. I would like to recommend Tad Williams' "Otherland: City of Golden Shadow" to those looking for a slightly more literary novel, even if it's concepts aren't as innovative. It has better pacing, more mystery, better, more realistic characters, and excellent writing. But that's just MHO, of course. :-)
I found the style of the novel so contrived to think that maybe it was all a big joke. It's as if he wrote the book to see how many people would rant and rave about it, only he's snickering in derision behind their backs at the same time. In short, the novel was nothing more than a testosterone laden hollywood action movie script waiting to happen.
Even if the scientific background of the story is excellent, it's buried in a sludge pile of writing so peurile I have difficulty feeling awed by it. I guess it was intended to be a graphic novel, and in that context, I can understand where it got it's setting, theme, and mood from, not to mention the crappy writing. He should've continued with the graphic portion as that would have been a better vehicle for this sort of thing.
I would like to recommend Tad Williams' "Otherland: City of Golden Shadow" to those looking for a slightly more literary novel, even if it's concepts aren't as innovative. It has better pacing, more mystery, better, more realistic characters, and excellent writing. But that's just MHO, of course. :-)
The translated title is "Le samouraï virtuel", and it's definetly worth a read ...
I'm just glad that I hadn't read the book when I was a pizza driver. It would have made a very bad impression.
I'm pretty sure that daHut wouldn't have approved of swords. They probably wouldn't have approved of my actual or Hiro inspired driving either, but that's water under the bridge.
Check out Iain M. Banks. A truly original sci-fi writer
Seconded - also worth checking out are the books of Banks' friend Ken Macleod. I only discovered these recently, but plowed through all four in a row. They're more overtly political than Banks' stuff, but they're a good read and although they're all in the same universe and tied together, each of the four has a very different feel.
Probably most of interest to the stereotypical Slashdot reader is The Star Fraction - near-future cyberpunk with a political slant, plenty of cool technology and some neat in jokes (i.e. the use of the phrase "serdar argic" as slang, as in "what a complete load of serdar argic") but I found them all enjoyable.
Oh, and the only one out in the US so far (The Cassini Division, the third in the sequence) even has a sly nod to Banks' ship naming conventions, in the form of A Necessary Evil But Still Cool.
I am sure there are some very intelligent people out there right now trying to make the "Metaverse" spoken about in Snow Crash, a reality.
Every entertainment medium is a "metaverse", from your average book to multi-million dollar movies. While books have usually much more detailed stories and characters, movies have better graphics and more visual stimulation, the obvious progression is to have a detailed world that is also a visual world.
Everyone in any form of entertainment buisness that has half a brain cell wants something like the Snow Crash's metaverse.
Your comment regarding "post stranger" I can almost go along with. The earlier stuff is almost by a different guy - one I love dearly. A large part of my adult personality was forged be my reading and thinking about and reacting to:
Need I go on? A lot of us of a certain age would not be who we are without these books. If you have not read them - find and read them. Read them with the mind of a 10 year old. they kick ass.
Okay, every Heinlein after Stranger can be summarised in one line:
Supergenius scientist fucks his daughter, saves the world.
1/10th correct
Yes, all his characters are geniuses. Just the way he wrote. One of the basic RAH postulates is "geniuses make their own rules". Agree/disagree doesn't matter - postulates are
that way. His characters must decide on their
own what is right/wrong immoral/moral. Over time
I will agree that this sort of ossified into a
world view that was not very realistic (pity in some respects), but the journey was interesting.
There really is not that much daughter fucking in his body of work. I can only think of one example in the entire corpus and he was pretty much losing touch with reality at that point. I don't count here "twin redheaded teenage sister fucking".
I mean, the endless, sordid, kinky sex through which the same tired plot drags through...oy, and the characterization! I mean, he's as bad as Niven. Not that I'm agin kinky sex, but trying to pass off this glorified stroke book for pervs as great literature ain't gonna fly.
Maybe we can agree to disagree here. I may not have the negative connotations to "endless sordid kinky sex" that you have (hey, beats watching Letterman), but if that's all you get from these books (some at least you seems to have read) I can only surmise that you are not reading very well.
Heinlein was a hateful, misanthropic crank who wrote his best books early (Harsh Mistress is amont the more decent ones, and it's still laughable in parts).
simply,no. Hateful? The only thing I can recall him being hatefull towards is the Soviets (based on Bad Hotel Experiences). Crank? well... OK maybe, probably. Misanthrope? I can't accept that. Totally clueless about women? Oh, yeah. Heinlein and women reminds me of the line from M Butterfly where the americano asks why women's dramatic parts are always played by men. "Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to be". He envisions women as he thinks they "ought" to be - basically how they would be if you transplanted a man's brain into the body of a beautiful woman (yes, I'll agree that's were he started to lose it). It Don't Work Dat Way, but it's an interesting idea.
Every woman I've ever met who's read 'Friday' despises it (oh, yes, women *love* being felt up and raped, and often *want* to marry their rapists).
No, he just imagines his characters reacting to these situations the way he would imagine himself reacting to them. So, he's wrong - he didn't invent that.
garyrich
posting as AC because my moderation of Brother Scudder's post must stand.
I didn't like Snow Crash... just a bit (a lot, actually) too much silly nonsense covering up for lack of plot or character development. Stephenson has interesting ideas, and can write well. All he lacks is the ability to come up with a plausible story. I tend to prefer science fiction that has hard (or at least consistent) science, and an intelligent, causal storyline. Except for a few plusses for coolness, I thought Snow Crash was no better than the Wing Commander movie.
Is someone working on it ? he asked ..
I haven't seen anyone mention Douglas Coupland's books. Microserfs first and formost, but the other ones :)
of his I've read, Girlfriend in a Coma and shampoo
planet are both excellent. Life without God was differnt, and not my cup of tea.
DC's books are great. Microserfs was incrediably well written and it was quite a shock to me that it was not
a true story. The detail and attitude of the coders who are the main characters was just perfect. The
other 2 mentioned both follow along the same lines a bit, and are basically about people who are searching
for a way to improve themselves, or to (to steal a
phrase) become version 1.0.
Girlfriend in a coma is humourous and dark, all about well... stuff, I won't spoil it for you. Shampoo
planet is and more funny look at the world that society has become today, or could be, given a
little stretch.
Like the review said, go read 'em
...to those who haven't read the book (it looked to me like an attack on its realism when I first saw it). Having read the book since, I consider Reason's introduction to be among the best lines of the book.
They'll listen to Reason.
Ohh, yes, they will... .
I've read just about everything by both these guys. I think Sterling still rates as my favorite, thanks to books like Schismatrix (short story collection), and Islands in the Net but his last two novels, Holy Fire and Distraction, just didn't have the head-kick density of previous stuff. Distraction, which has to do with near-future politics, owes a debt to Stephenson's Interface (co-written under the pseudonym Stephen Bury). And Cryptonomicon was a great way for Stephenson to make up for the flaws of The Diamond Age.
Sterling still a lot of fight in him, as demonstrated in the "Deep Eddy" short stories. If more people knew about 'spex, maybe more people would like Sterling.
Aw, why choose? I like them both.
I guess Stephenson is better known by the Slashdot crowd because of Snow Crash and more specifically the Metaverse. Gibson made cyberspace but Sterling has never really taken up the jacking-in thing, he's kept it meaty.
Sure, Sterling wrote Hacker Crackdown and gave it away but I don't think any of the books in that genre were truly popular and at this point it's old news. It mostly takes place when? 1990? '91? I'm guessing most /.ers didn't even have pubes then. It was a good book about that time but law enforcement has gotten a lot better at this stuff which is both good and bad. The worse problems have moved up the government food chain, especially the legislative branch.
I'd also recommend some Heinlein. Preferably some of his earlier works, before he got too preachy. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was quite good. Stranger in a Strange Land and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls would also be good choices.
--Phil (Maybe some E.E. Smith? Or is he too dated now?)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
--Phil (Much like the Doom marine hidden in Duke Nukem.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
Heinlein had some interesting beliefs. What I objected to mostly is that his later books became more vessels for describing his ideas than pure tales. As such, I felt that the plots grew fairly tired (and, in several cases, inconsistent) as they were made subservient to the memetic dissemination. I don't object to the inclusion of the concepts, just that Heinlein deemed them to be more important than the story, and the work as a whole suffered.
Time Enough For Love is a good example. It's good, although I wouldn't deem it a classic, but the last third or so of the book just seemes to drag on solely for the sake of Heinlein (through Lazarus) expounding on his worldview. For a specific example, I didn't see how Lazarus having sex with his clones added anything to the story, other than allowing Heinlein to tell us that our incest taboos are going to be outmoded with the advent of genetic understanding.
--Phil (Unrelatedly, L.E. Modesitt, Jr. has some really good books that make you think without preaching to you too much.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
Yes, exactly the same way I got snow crash. :)
I was about 12 or so when I first read it, but
the lack of age didn't hold me back from
enjoying the book to it's fullest. Very, very
good. Also, as a side note, specture VR kina
sucked, but Was worth getting snow crash for.
Since then, I have had to replace my copy about 7
times, and shown about 50 people the light...
(or let them read the book
Hmm, never used lynx to post on slashdot before, kina wierd...
http://www.xpurple.com
Actually, the biological sciences in Bujold does
seem pretty hard to me, much harder than most
SF writers' computer science. But then again,
with the exception of a lucky few, that's not
saying much.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
This book is one that everyone should read (IMHO =) ). It has the greatest beginning of any book I have ever read. The score of 9.5 is a little strange to me. Didn't Cryptonomicon get 10? Personally I think Snow Crash is better than Cryptonomicon. Don't get me wrong, I think that it is a great book too. My favourite Stephenson book is The Diamond Age.
What I really like with the book reviews are all the great reading suggestions people make. Thank you all! I will be looking into Lois McMaster Bujold's books next time I'm in a bookstore. I'd like to add more suggestions to the list: the Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (I bought this after a suggestion in a previous book review) and Interface by Stephen Bury (which is Neal Stephenson and his uncle).
According to the intro to my copy, Snow Crash was originally intended as a graphic novel. In many ways it shows. The action is kind of jerky, we jump from one thing to the next without really developing the story. The imagery is great, but the characterisations leave a lot to be desired. That kind of glossing is necessary in a comic book, but in a novel it doesn't really work.
The political subtext is intruiging too - anti-free trade, anti-corporate, more than a little anti-government and certainly disenchanted with libertarian utopianism. Having lived in a few strip mall towns, certainly I can see the apocalyptic vision of a franchised world all too easily. Stephenson gets full credit for making that vision work without turning it into some "woe is me" end of civilisation sort of story.
Snow Crash treats computing and virtual reality a little more realistically than most, but that too is to be expected nowadays. The linguistics in Snow Crash is pretty bad. My advice to the author: read less Julian Jaynes, more William Calvin. I have yet to see any science fiction author do a really good job of linguistics, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
But, in the end, Snow Crash lacks any consistent statement. It's a fun book, but no more than that. I had hopes that the Diamond Age or Cryptonomicon would be more substantial, but DIamond Age is poorly plotted, and Cryptonomicon just stank. No, his best novel remains, IMHO unfortunately, Zodiac.
I was just in Eddie Bauer today buying a new belt, and the lady there had to break out her 3-ring binder to tell me what 'XL' means in terms of measurements. Of course, I thought of this book :-)
(Yes, I was an XL... damn programming job...)
....and pick Snow Crash up. You will not be disappointed. I agree that there is a lot of fluff out there to wade through, but this book is a classic in my opinion.
Ummm, if I'm not mistaken, the largest pizza delivery chain in the world isn't a mafia extension where the owners apologize to you in person for late arrivals. A personal nuclear weapon and atomic dog would probably also be illegal.
It's a book, man; if you're willing to suspend your disbelief a little bit, you've got to be willing to go all the way.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Snow crash was a fun book, a light read, with an absolutely silly ending. I gave my copy away when I finished with it... Other people seem to enjoy the book a lot more than I did.
You're not the only one who dislikes Stephenson's writing.
Actually from what I've heard was that he was the inspiration for the character of Flynn. Not too hard, IIRC, his wife wrote the screenplay.
Not the worst retelling of the Jesus story I've seen. And on that note, has anyone here seen Tron?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I heard the title alone (mentioned very favorably) years ago, got a mental picture of some antarctic rescue story, was completely disinterested, and forgot about it.
Last summer, one of my most hackerish friends at work told me it was one of the best books he'd ever read. I picked it up from there, as did my girlfriend, three or four friends at school, my dad... It's the Stephenson nam-shub. I'm through Diamond Age & Zodiac too now, and waiting for Cryptonomicon to hit paperback anxiously...
All of Koja's books have the same basic story-line, but I'm certain this was done for an effect. Koja's main strength is her descriptive pose. Very quotable.
Bad Brains - IMHO her best
Skin - Disturbing.
P.S. Any misspellings or faults of grammar you think you detect are mearly transmition errors, and probably your fault a
On the opposite end of the spectrum, try Stanislaw Lem. He's a bit hard to find, and he is weird. Try The Cyberiad and The Futurological Congress . Lem should get more props - he's really important, but people tend to shy away from translated work.
/. crowd: Solaris
You mention Lem, but you fail to mention his most relevant work to the
A planet covered with a living Ocean, that does really confusing things and may or may not be trying to communicate and no ever figures out what is all about.
(there is a Russian movie of it, but its Weirder than the book, and spends at lest 15 minutes showing Russian Traffic)
This Signature does Not Exist !! FNORD
agreed... perhaps missing:
As wonderful as this book is in so many ways, the idea of the USS Enterprise becoming private property is, to put it mildly, a bit of a stretch. The USN Dept of Naval Reactors doesn't like to let anybody but the "made guys" see any of the workings of their steamkettles; likewise, other parts of the powertrain and elsewhere in the ship (arresting gear, comm stuff) is not for public consumption and can't be removed from the ship without a *major* overhaul that essentially turns it inside out. I don't think the DoD and the Navy would agree to risking a security breach like that when it's a more time-honored custom to turn a marginally-performing hull into razor blades.
Best to ya, Neal.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
I bought Snow Crash as a trade paperback, back in 93. I guess I'm one of the original purveyors of the "you gotta read this" school.
Gotta say, Stephenson is one of the best SF writers still typing. His work is hard to compare to anyones, it's just to eclectic and good to really slap into categories. Yes, it's science fiction, yes it's 'post cyberpunk' but that's about it. You could also call it humor, but that doesn't quite fit. I think he deserves his own category, maybe the School of Neal?
Quick word/virus note: the "language as virus" meme is central to William S Burroughs' work. All of the cyberpunks were huge WSB, and I'm assuming Stephenson is, too. This is where that idea is coming from.
Ride music beam back to base.
J05H
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Thanks so much. I've read this book. I'm sure it's hard as hell to find, but it's great... a total mind bender. He presents it in this realistic tone, as if everything really happened, and you come away from it wondering if maybe it really did. Excellent book, stole it from my mom's collection and kept it hidden. The other book I did that with was *drumroll*... _Snow Crash_. :)
You should definitely pick it up. There isn't a book by Neal Stephenson that even remotely sucks.
--
Everything I know in life I learnt from
Hard fiction rocks.
--
Everything I know in life I learnt from
This review is well-timed, as I just finished "Snow Crash" last night. It was an act of will to do so and had I not ponied up six-ninety-nine and tax for the book, I would likely not have read past the halfway point or so.
Stephenson's Metaverse is a pretty keen idea, but I've never been a big fan of VR-world writing. If (for example) the computing power required to render Mr. Ng's smoke rings is so immense that it bears mentioning, then the odds that Hiro can code up SnowSearch and graveyard daemons and an invisible avatar in an afternoon (and get them written bug-free, no less) are awful damn slim. Further, the Big Chase Scene at the end: given that Hiro can go through stuff by poking it with his katana (as per his entry into Rife's cube), then why the hell doesn't he just mount the damn thing on the front of his bike and run Raven down? Why the "Oh, I might run into something and stop and then I'll lose him and oh, the humanity!"?
This isn't a counter-review by any means; I just found myself reading accolade after accolade and had to ask "Didn't anyone else see that the emperor has no clothes?"
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Even the best minds only know a fraction of what it could know.
--
I think you are right that Stephenson gets an advantage here because he is interested in coding and computer related stuff, but I really think you are selling him a little short
Personally, I think Sterling's recent obsession with the environment is probably right on the money. Our future is a drowned planet, full of weeds and rats, and almost empty of all the little creatures that used to live on it. And that is pretty bleak, and Sterling is right to write about it.
I just think, having read a few of his books (Distraction most recently) that he just isn't as gifted a writer as Gibson or even Stephenson.
Gibson, as I intimated previously, is without a doubt one of the most talented prose stylists in the SF genre. Though people here seem to resent him for thinking independently about the future of the net, he almost certainly helped create the web just with the power of his imagination.
Stephenson is clever and insightful and funny. And although Cryptonomicon kind of turned me off by throwing in a lot of math that was not really necessary to advance the plot, it had a couple of rather interesting ideas about the effects e-commerce is going to have on civilization. And a really interesting examination of information warfare, past and present.
\
Good Omens is a great book!
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
hormones
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
Yes, Pyramid printed the first chapter of Snow Crash in one of its issues back when it was still a paper publication. They also had a short intro about the 'Snow Crash Virus' in there, how quickly it had run through the Steve Jackson Games offices. When I get home, I could look up the issue, I've got it there.
-- Bryan Feir
(I hate N-I-S. I hate N-I-S. But only when it stops. (To the tune of the traffic lights song.))
fool! find one place and you see a thousand other places.
I finished reading this book a couple of weeks ago and very much enjoyed it (I'm into the Diamond Age now). The virus stuff was a bit of a stretch I thought. Though there was plenty of excellent history that took you from Eden forward (it was obvious that this was the central theme that the novel was crafted around), the crisis the characters deal with in the book seemed loosely tacked on to this solid core idea. There seemed to be a couple of different (related?) viruses going on, plus some sort of meta-virus. While Neil really blows you out of the water with his interpretations of the future and his often amusing style, I thought he could have sewn together the storyline a bit better. My feeling at the end was that of
Left shift 1 for e-mail...
try "the practice effect" which is a
standalone novel, or "startide rising"
which belongs to the "uplift"-storyline.
i would recommend "the practice effect".
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
Actually, the ending makes perfect sense. All of the loose ends are tied up with regard to Thor, whatshername, and Odin and those ghastly people, and regarding the very last sentence: just think of what big improbable event has recently happened (involving a blue Mercedes) and at whose house it happened -- this would be front-page news, right? Think of what Dirk wants to do when he gets out of the hospital... and then he turns to the "front page" to see if there's any "interesting news"... it cracks me up everytime. I don't want to hear how loud he screams when he reads the story...
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
Zodiac: [Eco]
There's a lot of good chemistry in this book. Oh, some bad chemistry too. Set circa 1990, most of what happens in this book is delightfully (or chillingly) fealible. Protagonist is about the same caliber as the one in Snow Crash. Lots of chasing around. Doesn't end abruptly.
You forgot to mention the 'Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' undercurrent that runs through this novel, a very interesting play on a very ineresting (if possibly slightly wacky-sounding) theory. It's a much more subtle take on it than was found in The Big U.
[btw -- if NS reads this: The Big U. wasn't a bad book at all. Cheel, Winstohn.]
Also, I think Stephenson does a better job of evoking the feel of ``cyberspace'' than Gibson ever did. Not that I think Gibson sucks, but I think in this particular aspect, Stephenson is more on-the-ball.
Just to throw some random stuff in here, I think Shirow did a better job than Gibson at that whole 'what does it mean to be human' thing.
-k. ^-^ ^D
If you go to a real world brick'n'mortar store instead of one of the online shops, then go ahead and read the first few pages. At that point, any doubts will disappear and you'll know you have to get it. Be warned, though: once you start the book, you might try reading it in the car on the way home, and that's a very bad idea if you're driving.
Especially if you have a pizza in the car with you.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Thank you, DrRobin. I am a graduate student in molecular endocrinology with all hacker-friends who insisted I read the book. Like you, I was underwhelmed to the point of annoyance with the weakness of the biology Stephenson presented, and I'm sad to say it severely impacted my enjoyment of the book as well. The subject matter of biology is so ripe for science fiction (one of my favorites in recent years is GATTACA, for example), and it's a shame that a writer as goddmaned smart as Stephenson doesn't take better advantage. FWIW, though, I liked Cryptonomicon fine, and Diamond Age is probably my favorite of his books--biology is important to the plot in neither.
:)
I guess this is a "me too" but I haven't read the book in ages. For the sake of conversation, I'll also say I have the same problem with the X-Files, but there I amuse myself (and annoy my friends) by imagining what changes they have to make to make their story lines plausible.
But... but... it sounds so Star Trekky
(frantically racking brains) I can think of nothing trekonic about it. Honest. You know all those bits of frantic improvisation in The Warrior's Apprentice? Well, imagine the same sort of thing where everything goes wrong...
The Practise Effect is the nearest Brin has come to a comedic novel; it is quite funny. Generally, though, I suggest Glory Road, The Uplift War or The Postman (great book, shite, shite film).
Good ol' Neal seems to be flavour of the month around here; this is -- what? -- the third review in recent times?
Not that that's a bad thing; back in my previous existence as an SF bookseller, Snow Crash was one I consistently recommended as the coolest of the cool (third only to David Brin and Lois McMaster Bujold).
Just a resounding agreement: Snow Crash is cool. In fact, it's still my favourit Stephenson book.
where's the central repository for "Stuff to read" for your typical net.geek
That's handy; a chance to plug my page.
I'm working on such a thing at the moment. It gets added to every time I think of a cool book, and reviews of some/all will follow when I can be sufficiently arsed.
For the moment, check out this.
I first starting reading snow crash on a business flight 3 years ago. My roomate at the time handed me his worn copy and suggested I read it. I almost missed getting off my plane that day. I was so wrapped up in the book. The amazing thing is how any of Stephenson's descriptions are becoming reality. I don't know if it fits to call him visionary but you can see the ZDTV Big Thinkers interview with him here One of the high points of that show on zdtv IMHO.
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
At least a pizza guy who could carry a big ass sword around ;)
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
ahhh come on..the matrix wasn't that bad.
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Don't forget Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and Long Dark Teatime of the soul. Both are great reads in his same vien of humor. "Character discovers there is indeed a horse in the washroom and decides it might be best to have that spot of brandy afterall" To paraphrase.
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
If I remember correctly, this book coined the term "avatar" as used in a virtual world.
The word Avatar is a lot older than that. It somes from, IIRC, Sanskrit, and was the term used for the bodies that the gods used when they wanted to walk around and interact with mere mortals.
Even within VR, the word avatar is older than Snow Crash. It was in use in MUDs long before.
My favorite story from burning chrome has to be "Dogfight". Although "Burning Chrome" is a close second.
I've always hated movies based on Stephen King books since the endings were always so terrible. I sat through the entire mini-series of "The Stand" for one of the worst letdowns of my life.
I think Neal's endings are even worse.
The all time worst was "The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul". I've read that Douglas Adams finished it in a taxi on the way to the airport for a vacation. Apparently he was waay overdue with it...
Well, Lois McMaster Bujold never CLAIMED to be a techie: she's admitted that most of her science is wave-of-the-hand for plot devices. She seems to have a better background in the life sciences, but still mostly at the informed layman level. .and if he didn't, his clone-brother Mark WOULD. . . .
Still, I think Miles Vorkosigan would read Slashdot. .
But... but... it sounds so Star Trekky ... *shudder* (at least in the reviews)
Hmmm... am I the only 'geek' who thought Ringworld was a piece of crap?
As far as fantasy stuff goes (series that I've enjoyed include the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Rift War books, the first ~4 of the Wheel of Time books, and the Lovecraft stuff), I had fun, but I'm starting to think it's a bit silly. None of it even slightly compares to the amount of vision and talent that went into the Lord of the Rings (definitely a geek must-read), and I'm beginning to wonder if looking ahead to the future (in the grand old SF tradition) is just a fundamentally more interesting premise than the swords-and-sorcery thing.
In addition to most of what you listed, I recommend (some of) the work by Vernor Vinge, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Orson Scott Card, and Kim Stanley Robinson.
Tell you what. I promise I'll never, ever, ever make you use it. Surely you don't have a problem with those of us who think it's a good idea contributing to this resource, do you? You are free to take whatever umbrage you wish, but a lot of Slashdot readers have similar (though not congruent) taste in books, and a site like the one proposed could make for more enjoyable reading for everyone. For instance, if I'd read a review of Shadow Moon by George Lucas by somebody who had similar tastes to mine, I'd have avoided that TERRIBLE book like plague. On the other hand, my Sterling/Gibson/Stevenson/Rucker cyberpunk binge is running out of fuel, so I very much like the thought of somewhere I can find more grist for the mill. As for going to the bookstore, I'd much rather be sold on a book by somebody who's actually willing to write their opinion on the thing, rather than some reviewer who's paid to say "It's great!" or shiny pictures on the front cover.
You make this out to be some sort of "book police", where no information can be read without being vetted by this body. That has nothing whatsoever to do with what's being discussed here.
I guess, in summation, what I'm trying to say is: "Lighten up!"
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Neal does explain that this was intentional in the acknowledgements at the end of the book.
Actually The Sky Road isn't in the same universe as The Cassini Division and most of The Stone Canal - the futures diverge in the 2080s part of Sky Road. Very highly recommended. Great value for money too; since they're all connected in convoluted ways, you have to read all of them at least twice to get the references from the other books
what more could you ask for? Follow the link (white rabbit) below to read more
Reason.
I'd heartily recommend anything
by Michael Marshall Smith.
Stephenson is quite funny, but
Smith is really insightful and also
very cutting at the same time.
"Only Forward" and "One of Us" are excellent
"Spares" is currently being made into
a film.
Not sure if they are very available
in the US though. Amazon.com looked like
it was having trouble getting them out in
the US anyway. Amazon.co.uk has plenty.
I'd recommend 'Luminous' by Greg Egan
if anyone wants some new, _hard_ sci-fi
too. Again, probably hard to find in the
US.
Gordon
The other thing that I really like about Stephenson is that he has really great cultural insights. While they tend not to be overly blatent, he weaves them in and they greatly enhance the quality of the book. Take for example his mini-discussion of beards in Crypt or his comments on relative morality in The Diamond Age (The only thing you can accuse anybody of is hypocracy). Even in Zodiac the environmental issues weren't really the focus of the book, but a stage upon which he had the characters work out his play.
Just my $.02
- Mike
If I remember correctly, this book coined the term "avatar" as used in a virtual world. Yet another example of why we should all bow down and worship Neal Stephanson... ;)
Actually, IIRC, my copy of Snow Crash has an author's note where Stephenson credits some on-line world (the name of which I don't recall) for coining the term avatar.
--
Dream well...
Dream well...
Curgoth
Now, if only Stephenson could learn to end a novel properly, without having to resort to the #&$^ showdown between the forces of Good and Evil...
It`s not the showdown so much as the fact that he doesn`t seem to want to deal with aftermath. Most stories have a climax, and then let you down gently before opening the door and letting you out into the real world. It1`s not a matter of tying up loose ends - I tend to like some to be left hanging so that you can imagine what happened next - but a matter of winding down after the climax. Yes, it`s very hackneyed: almost all films and books do it. But there`s a reason for that, and that`s that it`s structurally required in order for it to feel finished. Perhaps the lack of it here ss related to the fact that it was originally conceived as a graphical novel, where the rules are to some extent different.
I find it interesting that Sterling doesn't seem to have much of a following on Slashdot. His interview can be partially blamed on the lack of good questions.
I've read Stephenson's Zodiac, SnowCrash, and The Diamond Age, and they were all great fun, but I don't think any of them have the kind of insight that Sterling's work has.
Is the interest in Stephenson because he has a background in programming? Or has Sterling turned people off with his recent focus on environmental issues?
Orson Scott Card & Dan Simmons are good, yes - I didn't know "The Rise of Endymion" was out - thanks. All these series are hard to keep track of. I usually resort to polling the bookstore shelves, but interrupt-driven works well when there are enough people around with like interests like here.
Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson is great and/although strange.
Rudy Rucker has some zany books with great ideas. Some good ones were : Software Wetware, Freeware. Fast reads, enjoyable reading and out there. AI with forced evolution.
"The Difference Engine" by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling was excellent. What would have happened if Charles Babbage's difference engine was actually built and the information age hit us 150 years early?
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
I confess to owning over twenty Terry Prachett novels, mostly in the Discworld series. I even went to the trouble of ordering several of them from the UK.
I also have Good Omens which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman. I've also read a couple of Gaiman's books, which were quite good.
Another author I would highly recommend is Matt Ruff. So far he has only written two books: "Fool on the Hill", and "Sewer, Gas & Electric : The Public Works Trilogy", but they're among my favorites. If you like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, you'll probably like Matt Ruff.
--
There is a fine line between stupidity and insanity. I should know, I'm standing on it.
Aha! THANK YOU. I've wondered about that because although in my mind it's one of the finest "scene-setters" I've ever read, it's so obviously distinct from the actual plot of the book.
For those who haven't read this book yet (RUN, do not walk, to Amazon now), the background, premise and pacing of this first chapter is a superb piece of writing. To me it's slightly better written than the rest of the book, although that's hardly a criticism. With a fairly silly, throwaway little sub-plot (pizza delivery for the Cyberpunk age), Neal manages to cram in - seamlessly - an enormous amount of background information on the way *his* universe is working (with a fairly subtle sense of humour, too). Before leading into the book proper, if you will.
I've read an awful lot of S.F this year, across a fairly good cross-section of the genre, and "Snow Crash" is probably the best of the bunch for me.
If only they'd release "Cryptonomicon" on this side of the pond a little sooner... Lucky my wife is going to Florida in 2 weeks :-)
henley
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
It's an excellent book, I'd certainly recommend to any sci-fi fan. It's also especially geared towards hackers - it's rare to see a popular work that is actually accurate about technical subjects.
His piece in which he waxes lyrical about the various powers of 2 (really!) will certainly strike a chord with hackers.
As far as "books which all geeks should read" goes, I spose the Hitch-Hiker's Guide would have to be no. 1. If not that, then the obvious choices like stuff by William Gibson and Isaac Asimov.
--
I'd still recommend some Niven, but not Ringworld; check out the Flatlander and Crashlander anthologies (about Gil the Arm and Beowulf Shaeffer, respectively), and if you can find them, his Teleportation series (a classic exploration of the social effects of technological change, and one of these stories described what we now know as The Slashdot Effect) and his time travel series (The Flight of the Horse).
And since you discussed fantasy, note that Niven's Warlock series (The Magic Goes Away) is fantasy written to appeal to SF readers, with a logical reason for why magic used to work but doesn't anymore.
Oh, and most important of all: Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.
Similarly, I'd recommend some Spider Robinson, but not Stardance; start with the "Callahan's Bar" series, and also Deathkiller (which combines Mindkiller and Time Pressure).
Glad to see the Snow Crash review. I was thinking of writing one myself but this allows me to make the basic point more briefly.
[Stephenson and I are just about the same vintage and with similar computing experience but in Real Life (TM), I am a physician and medical researcher on the molecular biology of HIV.]
When Stephenson is on the razzle, he is a hoot to read, throwing off cute quips and wild ideas at warp speed. Sadly, like a lot of glib, witty people, he seems to fall in love with his own patter (the curse of the Raconteur )and often loses any sense of when he doesn't know what he is talking about.
His political ideas are his own opinions and his computing ideas are fine as far as I can tell as a non-expert (in distinction to William Gibson, who got the feel of the cypberpunk world dead on while remaining clueless about the technology itself). His takes on ancient history are also more than a little idiosyncratic but again this is not my territory. What is annoying to me is that he makes a big deal about some biomedical topics with a very poor understanding of the underlying science. In particular, the biological basis of the wetare crash is highly implausible and his speculations on the evolution of viruses are just dumb.
It's worse than that because the underlying ideas are quite interesting -though hardly original- and would make great story fodder for someone willing to learn the material. It's fine not to become expert in subjects that are peripheral to one's work and it's fine to throw out implausible ideas in order to play with their implausibility (a la Douglas Adams) but Stephenson seems to lack a sense of when he's out of his depth and ends up mangling what could be very good and important ideas (for example regarding the co-evolution of sexual behavior and sexually transmitted diseases).
It doesn't have to be this way. At the risk of starting a runaway tangent, I have to mention that David Brin, no where near as good a prose stylist as Stephenson, consistently goes the extra mile and really gets the biology right in his stories; this despite being a physics PhD, a malady that frequently causes delusions of omniscience about other branches of science. An somewhat ironic example is the reproductive biology in Brin's "Glory Season", absolutely first rate for when it was written but since then superseded by unexpected rapid advances in cloning technology.
I confess, bad science at the core of good stories is a long-running pet peeve of mine (another good tangent for another time); it's like a great orchestra with the first violin playing flat. Note to Neal: you can do better -knowing what you don't know is essential to real learning and a crucial element in the literature of ideas. Note to slashdotters: have fun with this guy's stories but keep in mind that it's not just the plots that are fiction here.
It is easy to forget, swimming in the simplified toy worlds of computer models, but it is essential to remember that biological systems are vastly deeper and more complex than are our ideas about them. As Bruce Alberts (now head of the NSF) told us long ago back in grad school, "Never forget, the cell is smarter than you are!" That stance of humility before nature has served me well in medicine and science and I think it makes for better stories as well.
For a cyberphilosophy class that I took last year I had to do a book report and I did it on Snow Crash. If you want a much more in depth (and useful) analysis of the book from a philosophical point of view you should check it out. NOTE: There is a little bit of spoiler in the paper.
I was one of those un-warned folks who picked it up on a fluke whilst in the bookstore. Walked out, caught my bus home (an hour-long ride) and started reading. Ten minutes later people are asking me if I need assistance: I'm laughing so hard I can't breathe!
The Deliverator and Y.T. gave me one of the best laughs of my life, but I do wish it weren't on the bus in front of all those people. *blush*
I don't read Stephenson on the bus anymore.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Hey, I like Built-In Operating System. It's a heck of a lot catchier than Basic I/O System.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Still a great boook nonetheless: I just wish that he'd think the entire novel, including the ending, through before writing.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Didn't Carmack say in his interview specifically that once all his first person shooting days are over, he'd like to do a Snow Crash world based on the Quake 3 engine? With the power of video cards today, it could easily be done in an Ultima Online (only in today's world) format.
Other folks have suggested Heinlein, but I'd like to specifically suggest one of his lesser-known books, Job: A Comedy of Justice. It's funny in an intelligent fashion, and an interesting take on alternate worlds to boot.
And speaking of the Illuminati and the Illuminatus! trilogy, you WILL locate and read the Principia Discordia. You'll laugh at some bits, be enlightened by others, and be amazed at the sheer STUPIDITY of yet other bits.
It's on the web, but I haven't seen a web version that quite gives the impact of the paper.
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
Along the lines of "how did you hear about it", was anyone else introduced to NS through Pyramid magazine? This Steve Jackson periodical printed the 1st chapter of Snow Crash in one of their issues. (I think. I swear that they did. Someone please confirm that I'm not insane.) It's (possibly) the reason I bought the book in the first place.
Neither was "Much Ado About Nothing"
Of course, he had a small part...
OTOH, I found the novelization of TRON in a used bookstore the other day for $1.50. It was incredibly good, I liked the book adaption a whole lot better than the movie!
Hmm, I'll have to go home and check it out. It had a colour insert from the movie. The reason that I picked it up (mostly) was that it was a UK paperback...hey, send me an e (gonzocanuck@hotmail.com) and maybe I can lend it to you if you like.
I liked Neuromancer, Burning Chrome (the best, I think!) and Mona Lisa Overdrive, but I really, really hated Idoru. It got a lot of good press, but when I read it (I skipped to the ending after more than halfway through) it seemed so *incredibly boring*. I could see how eventually the two characters were going to meet up in alternating chapters, but it was so long and drawn out. Possibly the best part was the Japanese sex hotel :-) Was I missing something? It seemed like such a drag after reading the three above.
Did anyone else think it was strange how YT (mmmm...) and Raven paired up? I mean, she didn't recognize him as the ultraviolent guy she was trailing from the grunge concert? I thought that was stretching the credibility a fair bit, more so than the parentage thing and bits of the ending.
>I personally like the Sword of Shannara by Terry
>Brooks (I'm still pissed at how he sold out to
>George Lucas).
"Hi, I have no original ideas, so I think I'll re-write the Lord of the Rings. It would be even better if I do it really obviously, so that the reader can find every parallel between the two."
"Galdalf was probably a heavy-drinker. I'll rename him Alcoholics Anonymous (Allanon). Allanon will visit some country bumpkins in the more remote part of the landscape. He'll tell them that they are special and are the only ones who can defeat the Powerful Evil Creature Who Lives Behind a Mountain Range and Has Evil Orcs^W Minions. They will travel a lot. Allanon disappears, only to return later in the story after undergoing a mystical transformation.
..."
"Wow, the morons were so desperate for Tolkien-esque stories that they actually bought the last one. I'll do a search-and-replace on the old manuscript with different first names and rerelease it as a sequel. There's no need to change the plot in any way."
Not on my list of Essential books, by far.
Rick
IMHO Time Enough For Love is a must read classic.
Spencer Ogden
Oh yeah, I was sitting here trying to remember how I got this book. Someone else mentioned that no one actually bought the book. But I couldn't think of where I got it. I didn't read it for a while, then about four years ago I took of the shelf because there was nothing else to read, and loved it! Thanks for reminding me where th book came from.
Spencer Ogden
there are too many good ideas in that book to ignore, and i know im not the only one to think that. i've been gathering parts to build my own gargoyle suit (on a budget of nada) for four years now. i want my own librarian.
and so do you.
Okay, and in the SF vein, A Canticle of Leibowitz is a true classic, if you can find it.
It says so right up there in the review...
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I think Snow Crash is an excellent novel. The little touches - such as tattooing 'Poor Impulse Control' on the foreheads of violent criminals - are superb.
One thing that might interest those that have read it is that the opening of the book was originally a short story and quite a comic one at that (calling the main character Hiro Protagonist and making him a 'Pizza Deliverator', the mafia involvement, etc.) and to me there seems to me to be a tension between that opening and the eventual direction of the book (overall a serious novel).
It doesn't stop it being an excellent book but I thought I'd share as it made me go, "Oh, of course" when I heard it.
"Don't open the gates, who the hell needs a wooden horse that size?"
Borges is nigh-unto godliness. Windy at times, but that happens to most folks. "The Disc of Odin" is probably my second-fave after "The Book of Sand." Or possibly "The Library of Babel." Damn, they're all good.
Vonnegut? Really? I enjoyed _Sirens of Titan_, but there's such a strong vein of hatred and contempt for humanity that runs through all his works that I can't stomach him at all -- I guess I'm actually an optimist under the cynical, jaded exterior. But Vonnegut seems to really believe that all human endeavor is not only futile but base and contemptible, and that's just no fun to read.
Stephen R. Donaldson is highly recommended (but you can skip the second Thomas Covenant trilogy). The Gap cycle, on the other hand, is almost impossible to over-praise. Desperation, and the things people do when they're out of options, is a theme that runs through everything Donaldson has written, but in the Gap cycle this is brought to a bitter needle's point. Redemption from the ashes, lesser evils fighting greater evils, excellent characters, a sprawling, multi-layered plot, and a fast-paced, panting conclusion -- I re-read these 5 books every year. It rocks.
Also, if you're tired of goth weenies, read Stephen Brust's Agyar. Along with the painful-to-read (but not because it's badly done) To Reign in Hell, this is Brust's best work.
gomi
Okay, every Heinlein after Stranger can be summarised in one line:
Supergenius scientist fucks his daughter, saves the world.
I mean, the endless, sordid, kinky sex through which the same tired plot drags through...oy, and the characterization! I mean, he's as bad as Niven. Not that I'm agin kinky sex, but trying to pass off this glorified stroke book for pervs as great literature ain't gonna fly.
Heinlein was a hateful, misanthropic crank who wrote his best books early (Harsh Mistress is amont the more decent ones, and it's still laughable in parts). Every woman I've ever met who's read 'Friday' despises it (oh, yes, women *love* being felt up and raped, and often *want* to marry their rapists).
gomi
I don't know about the rest of the volk, but I'm desperate for recommendations because I've read everything good that I own twice already, and I'm out of authors that don't suck. Just today, I've finally gotten enough recommendations for Lois McMaster Bujold on this thread that I might finally get past the inane cover art/back blurbs and pick one up (but god, they make her books come off as cretinous when they design the covers).
It isn't so much 'tell me what to read' as 'what's good out there that i might have missed?'
Much, much science fiction and fantasy is utter garbage, and the ratios just get worse if you start insisting on craftsmanship -- details like plot and characterization and story-telling skill, rather than just pandering to techlust.
I mean, you can only read so many 'This Alien Shore' and 'Wizard's First Rule' type books before you give up in disgust and go back to the tried-and-true.
gomi
In addition to that, as a number of /. readers may know, In The Beginning There Was the Command Line, an essay of his that had an article on /. a while back, will be published in a book form November 9 according to amazon.
All in all, great review. I was very happy to see someone else associating Neal Stephenson and Neil Gaiman in some way.
-Ari
"I need a .sig quote that's better than this!"
A friend recommended it over a year before I read it. I brushed him off with a smile, because I was deeply engrossed in something else. This summer, surfing through amazon, I came across snow crash and ordered it.
Until I finished reading and began spreading the virus, I did not remember that this friend had ever mentioned. Now, I'm more than halfway through his copy of Cryptonomicon.
I can't get enough of Stephenson. I am scared that I'll go into withdrawal in a few months.
-Ari
A book which I don't think many people other than myself have read, but which is extremely geeky, is called The Planiverse, by A.K. Dewdney.
Dewdney, being a CS professor himself, does a good job of writing an entertaining story ala Flatland, interspersed with little tidbits on 2D physics, physiology, architecture, and the like.
Also, I'm a fan of the early Hunter S. Thompson stuff, Shakespeare (talk about wit), and man pages.
FYI, Stephenson has also written several books with his uncle (I believe) under the pseudonym Stephen Bury. Of these, a book of particular interest to /. readers is Interface, which is kind of a sci-fi version of The Manchurian Candidate.
The Johnny Mnemonic short story, which is a pre-cursor to Neuromancer, was excellent. The movie of course was horrible, as is anything Keannu touches. I actually preferred Johnny Mnemonic to Neuromancer.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
True, Stephenson did attempt to create the term, and possibly the concept, avatar, but he found that work was being done in this area while he was putting the novel together.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
We do need a (peer reviewed) list of 'essencial readings' that we are defined by. Perhaps a slashdot-like mechanism, where people can submit their items. Others can review what's there and concur or counter a'la moderation), so that a stable set of agreed upon 'must', 'should' and 'see also' items emerges.
While I place great trust in the opinions people close to me share, or even people that I work with who ostensibly would have a propensity to to have similar opinions, albeit on a narrower plane, I above all place greater trust in my own opinions.
I just take humbrage with the way certain people, in their zeal to become part of a group, adopt dogmatic views or cultural appendages without putting much thought into their actions.
In my high school days I thought it would be cool to grow dred locks so I did. One day while walking through the halls I was assailed by someone who thought it was sacreligious that I had appropiated something from the Rastafarian "religion" as though it were no more than a mere fad.
At first I was upset that this person had possessed the gall to intrude on my freedom of opinion. After much thought though, I realized the person was right. Out went the dred locks.
You have certainly provided some colorful prose to support the use for books. I concur with your assessment. I just disagree with the "need" for a peer reviewed list of essential readings. If you don't mind very much, I'll decide what's essential.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
Let's do an analogy: "Why do you pay attention to web sites chosen by Hemos & friends? Isn't that what your mind is for?"
Who says that I place greater emphasis on what Hemos & friends points to than my next door neighbor? I certainly don't think I do.
Instead, I choose a more selective tool: recommendations from people whose worldview is similar to my own. From what I saw -- D Adams, D Hofstadter, K Vonnegut, etc, and some others I haven't read yet aha!) -- this is a good choice for me.
We all do that. I certainly didn't mean to imply that I don't take into consideration the opinions of others. That would be a lie as well as ridiculous.
I merely posed my question because I hate to see someone limit themself, even if it is to a list put together by people who share your world view. I'm sure your friends have great taste in books but the fascinating thing about people is that we're individuals. What your friends love, you might find horrible. Reading is a form of self exploration. I have had often had the pleasure of picking up something totally out of my normal world view.
That's all I was trying to say. Take care !
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
I agree with your take on the Sumerian mythology. It was such an integral part of the story and was obviously well researched. The trick was getting the information to the reader in an interesting way and his utilization of the Librarian was a master stroke.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
I tend to agree. Most fantasy is esapist drivel. Sure, it captivated my limited attention span when I was 12 but I tend to look for something more substantive nowadays. It's weird how some of the "acknowledged" Sci-Fi masters of today are nothing more than glorified fantasy authors jumping on a bandwagon. Thankfully, Stephenson is the real deal.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
Snow Crash was the first hyped Sci-Fi cyberpunk novel that I felt actually merited such high acclaim. I anticipate reading more of Stephenson's works.
Someone posted an earlier comment indicating that the first part of the book that dwelled on the pizza delivery angle was originally released as a short story. That makes a lot of sense when I look back now. I don't recall laughing so hard while reading any of Gibson's works. It seems as though Stephenson's prose is not forced and does not take itself as seriously as Gibson's work does. Maybe that's why I prefer Stephenson.
I could go on for hours about this book but since I'm at work and I feel compelled to at least work for an hour today I will have to do so at another time. I would like to point you people out to the funniest line from the book though. It occurs at a beginning of a chapter around page 272 or so (sorry...didn't bring book to work). It occurs after Hiro has gotten his first sobering view of Raven. I will paraphrase (perhaps horribly):
Every man up until he is 25 harbors the illusion that given the right set of circumstances he very well could be the baddest motherfucker alive.
I laughed my ass off after reading that because it is so indicative of the male pyschology!
Hiro then goes on to say that Raven has thusly ruined that illusion for him. Now that I think about it, I've thoroughly mangled that line. Oh well. Pick up the book to get the correct treatment.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
Why do you need to be told what to read? Isn't that what your mind is there for?
/. forums are quite techy, but I would hope that most of you have interests in other things as well.
Take a chance. Peruse the bookstore (virtual or real) and pick up something that you think may be interesting. If it isn't, pick up something else.
I understand that most people who reside in the
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
no sig please, I'm agnostic
Bujold's books are very good space opera, but they don't really have anything in particular to do with tech stuff. It is all your basic spaceships and death-ray stuff. That's not a knock, they're great books, but they don't obviously fit into the "geeky" category the way Stephenson's books do.
The cake is a pie
A good question for "Ask Slashdot", perhaps...
Off the top of my head:
Everything by Vernor Vinge ("Across Realtime", "A Fire Upon the Deep", and A Deepness in the Sky").
Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos (at least the first two books, which are "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion", I also recommend the later pair which are "Endymion" and "The Rise of Endymion", but these are perhaps less obviously geeky).
All books by David Zindell ("Neverness", "The Broken God", "The Wild", and "War in Heaven").
Apart from "Ender's Game" and Neil Stephenson, these three authors are my top must-reads for anyone of an even remotely geeky temperament...
Hear, hear! I think Stephenson would be a great interview subject (the interviews are getting to be one of my favorite parts of /.).
--
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Lem is wonderful - virtually nobody knows who he is but he is one of the best. "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" would have to be my favorite of his. Terry Gilliam had to have read this book before the movie Brazil was made. The fruitless bureaucracy gone mad is very prominent in this book but it goes far beyond Brazil's.
Understand that the purpose of literature is to depict a characteristic of human nature, to 'define the human experience'. Contemporary authors such as Toni Morrison do this by analyzing the way people live, think, and treat each other today, or at unique times in the past; Alabama during the pre-civil rights era, for instance, or London during a WW2 air raid. They make projections, approximations to their concept of the myriad faces of humanity, based on snapshots of characters and actions. The best manage to create lasting impressions and characters who become in themselves metaphors for life, feelings, or personalities. Hamlet. John Wayne. Al Bundy. Nehemiah Scudder.
Science fiction is unique in that it not only tries to show what is, but what will be and what could be. Heinlein imho was the best at this, because his stories almost never dealt directly with technology; instead, they dealt with minor adjustments in the fabric of society, and then extrapolation to reveal fundamental truths about his estimation of the human experience based on what changes and what stays the same. Taking the partial derivatives of society with respect to its constituent elements, if you will. Like solving a PDE, exact solutions are sparse; authors are forced to make assumptions and invent initial and boundary conditions to achieve any results whatsoever. Living on imported air deep within an underground chamber, as in Mistress ; Life from the eyes of a man with no human prejudice (); delta-perspective in people who lived exceedingly long lives, versus the ephemerals who lived normal lives ( Methuselah, et al ). The way I view the world has changed 100% in the past 3 years; i have gone from being a Christian fundamentalist, quasi-authoritarian to an ardent libertarian, based on comparatively few life experiences. How can I even imagine what I would think with that kind of perspective? RAH tried. imho he did a pretty good job; iyho, he failed. Perspective again.
The protagonists were females in most of Heinlein's better books. Friday, which you mentioned, was one of these. These females were always: smart, beautiful, brave, strong, and passionate. They can shoot with both hands, cook almost as well as their husbands, usually fly aircraft and sometimes program computers. They can talk philosophy, enjoy sex and advanced mathematics as well as flaunting their sexuality, even to the extent of *gasp* bearing children. Mind you, these were mostly written in a day where women were depicted as frail, weak creatures wearing aprons and house slippers; many years before the popular acceptance of womens liberation. How does this make RAH a sexist? I will grant you that some women will feel threatened by this description of women as living goddesses. But RAH wasn't writing about them; remember, one of his wives was a voluptuous redheaded Olympic swimmer with an advanced degree in Aeronautical engineering. He was writing about her.
And also recognize that Friday killed most of the men who raped her (and many who didn't). Violently, brutally, tearing them to pieces with her polished fighting skills. She married one of them, years later; but in spite of, not because, he raped her. And marriage in that civilization was a fundamentally different concept than marriage in ours, so you can't really compare the two except to say that they are spelled the same and involve consensual sharing of life experiences among mature adults.
To get back on topic, Neal Stephenson did a tremendous job with Snow Crash by depicting what he thinks life in America would be like if us libertarian-anarchists have our way... I was actually forced to recognize that things could be worse in a free-er country. The organized crime aspect was very astute, and I literally rofl'd at the first mention of General Jim. The ending left me exceedingly empty as well; while probably more accurate than what I have become adjusted to in this era of conflict resolution, it wasn't exactly what I'd hoped for. I have a number of questions I would love to ask NS, btw. HINT HINT.
Nehemiah Scudder
First Prophet
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
What's with this 'he was the first guy to use it this context crapola?' That's exactly as impressive as saying, 'Bob here was the first guy in accounting to use cascading reports for our widget department.' Give people credit on things they've created not recycled.
Was learning that his private yacht, was the USS Enterprise.
HA!
Borges is often referred to as "the writers' writer" - if you think the translated works are wild, you should try the original Spanish. My wife is from Argentina and even she winds up reaching for the dictionary every now & then (as for me, I'm doomed - Spanish is not my mother tongue
If you like Borges, check out Sabatto and the author (whups, can't remember his name) of "Twelve Wandering Stories" (Doce cuentos peligrinos).
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
I read this years ago, not knowing much of anything at all about it. Not even sure where I heard of it. It just had to be read. His eclectecism reminds me of Tom Robbins. I wonder what Robbins would be like if he wrote cyberpunk.
Who else would have the guts to name their protagonist "Protagonist"?
Don't forget that the character's first name was Hiro (~Hero).
Some that are maybe less well known in the
US.
Greg Egan - Permutation City
Iain M Banks - The culture books, start
with Use of Weapons or The Player of Games.
I read Snowcrash a couple years ago, then Diamond Age more recently. And finally I broke down and bought Cryptonomicon (still in hardcover) which I just finished reading. I have Zodiac lying around somewhere but my head needs some rest after reading Crypto.
Anyway, just wanted compare his books that I've read:
Snow Crash: [Net]
It was fun, lots of interesting ideas about the Metaverse. The writing style was a little wierd -- IIRC Snow Crash was intended to be a work of interactive fiction but Neal ended up making it into a book instead. Thus a lot of writing in the present tense.
Diamond Age: [Nanotech]
This one was my favorite. I liked the idea of a book/nanotech computer created to teach as well invite change into the world. In a sense Diamond Age is the book [primer] in the book. Lots of fun and cool ideas. This one also seems to end too abruptly (as did Snowcrash.)
Cryptomonicon: [Crypto]
Not only was this one long, but it was some really heavy reading. Lots of math and stuff (even some Perl code in there--no sh*t.) I'll never figure out why he refers to Linux as "Finux" yet feels free to call Windows "Windows." I didn't find this one as much fun as the other two, but on the other hand it was very educational. Certainly a worthy read at any rate.
Unless you're really into the heavy stuff, I'd recommend reading Snowcrash and Diamond Age first. If I wasn't already "broken in" by reading those, I'm not sure I would've gotten as much out of Cryptomonicon.
numb
?syntax error
Once in a while, there are some people who just go out on a limb, and buy books just for the heck of it... influenced by the jacket art and the cover blurbs, or even just because the title strikes them in a certain way. I can't say it was the best book I've ever read, but neither was it the worst book I've ever read. And I've even been toying with the idea of picking up another of his works to get a better impression of Stephenson's work.
And besides, if "Nobody Buys SnowCrash By Themselves" who bought the first copy of it to hand around? ;->
I'm glad to see that Neil has been getting attention from the /. crowd since the Cryptonomicon release... I was wondering, since the new William Gibson book "All Tomorrow's Parties" is coming out this month, are we going to see some more in depth reviews of his work, too? He's got to be my all time favorite author, although I think his latest books aren't as sharp as the original Sprawl trilogy. Or, admittedly, some of Neil's. :)
I'd heard that this was good. I'd read a while back (In "Dealers of Lightening") that Alan Kay, who helped father small things like the GUI and Smalltalk at PARC, provided feedback for the screenplay (which was dumbed down Disney) and the novel. I'd be curious to pick it up for that reason alone, if it were still in print.
Brave New World is one of the greatest sci-fi/prediction of the future books that's currently out there... my favorite part is the guy that's in control of the elevator... I can still picture the scene... "Rooof!"
Along with that book, you have the movie Gattica (not bad).
I personally like the Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks (I'm still pissed at how he sold out to George Lucas) series because although it's swords and magic and all that jazz, there's a bit of modern day apocalypse thrown in there and a strange return to basic sciences.
I would also recommend Ken Follet for his historical fiction work, or Battlefield Earth by L.Ron Hubbard. Quite a fun read albeit fairly long-winded.
For true sci-fi, I would even recommend going back and re-reading books like "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "2000 Leagues Under the Sea"... great reads nomatter how much times have changed since.
years ago, i bought specture(sp) vr and a paperback copy of snow crash was inside. i'm glad it was bundled and i'm glad i read it. it's definetly a good book and is pretty humurous at times, especially in the beginning.
bottom line: if you're looking for a good book to read, this is it.
Sounds pretty good, perhaps I'll pick it up. There is so much junk in this genre it is really hard to know what to get.
-- Moondog
So what book did I just order and start reading last night. I also ordered The Diamond Age so I suppose I won't be disappointed there, either.
Really, the reason I ordered this book was a reference to it on an obscure web page. Rather than happen across pages like that, I would like to see a page that allows tech-types to review books. It's really hard to look at Amazon's® reviews and try to weed out the <WHINE>"Gee, this was too wierd for me."</WHINE> comments.
H0ek
Think you're smart? Prove you've got brains!
Despite later comments in this thread, why would he throw in the "chiseled spam" comment if they weren't the same person - or analogues in parallel universes?
But I second (or n+1nd) the motion for a Neal Stephenson interview. My question would be when "Spew", previewed years ago in Wired, hasn't come out yet...
Quite possibly the best first chapter in recent SF. Heck, make that the best first page ever! People complain about the ending, but I frankly can't even remember what the ending is... anybody who can write a first page like that can be forgiven any ending whatsoever.
And of course, the book practices what it preaches - the first page is a virus carrier for selling further copies of the book. I may have helped sell over 20 copies just by ordering people to "read this!" in a bookstore.
I enjoyed snow crash. I have noticed that how much I enjoy a particular book depends heavily on what is going on in my life. The happier I am, the less I tend to read. When I am less pleased with life, I tend to read a lot more--escapism I guess.
- about-nothing. So I stopped. I really didn't like the book at all.
So maybe life wasn't looking its best when I read snow crash, and that is why I liked it.
On the otherhand my life is going pretty well right now, and I tried to read cryptonomicon. I got about halfway through, and still felt like I was reading an introduction. When the hell is the story going to start, I kept thinking. The story went nowhere. I skipped to the end to see if it was worthwhile to keep reading... and saw more of the same mundane-go-nowhere-let's-see-how-much-I-can-write
I tried reading otherland, and things were going fine up until the "jack and the beanstalk" crap in the prologue. The words were great, the story was great, and then this damned beanstalk crap pops up. It totally ruined the moment for me and I quit reading it, and was quite pissed off.
Now I haven't given up on otherland just yet, after all I had only read something like 20 or 30 pages... I am just waiting for the right time to read it I guess.
It's always a gamble buying a book that you really don't know anything about, but sometimes that book is the greatest book in the world. I picked up Robert Jordan's "The Eye of the World" on a whim. It was a pretty good book... the strange thing about the wheel of time series is that I really didn't "get into" the story until about halfway through the third book. And that is pretty amazing and strange I think...but it was escapism at the time. Even though I didn't fully get into the story right away, it was something different from day to day life and I kept going.
The wheel of time books got better and better, but I felt they kind of faltered in the last two. Not enough goals were resolved, not enough happened. I blazed through his last book, and it was good, but I was amazed at the end of how little progress in the story had actually taken place.
Anyway,
cheese_wallet
A little-known but excellent book that should fit well into the geek category is "Sewer, Gas, and Electric" by Matt Ruff.
I bought it, but... I swear that it had been recommended to me by a friend. After I had finished it, I told the guy who(I thought)had recommened it to me that I'd finally read it, and he said "Huh? I've never read that book..". I have no idea who actually infected me, but I've been spreading it ever since.
If I were immortal, that would be a great idea. But with finite time & resources, I need some tools to narrow things down. The tool that you suggest (the bookstore) is much too broad, and is likely to thrust things at me like Harry Potter or Danielle Steel. Every bookstore has implicit biases -- shelf arrangement, employees, window dressing, etc.
Instead, I choose a more selective tool: recommendations from people whose worldview is similar to my own. From what I saw -- D Adams, D Hofstadter, K Vonnegut, etc, and some others I haven't read yet (aha!) -- this is a good choice for me.
Let's do an analogy: "Why do you pay attention to web sites chosen by Hemos & friends? Isn't that what your mind is for?"
On another note, it's interest that Stephanson chose cable as the medium for the metaverse. At the time of this writing--long before the average person knew about the 'net, and LONG before the cable companies were interested in it--he took the leap of faith the the cable infrastructure would be an appropriate medium for a virtual world. This is especially interesting considering the recent possibility that cable will come to dominate the net. Just a thought.
~=Keelor
Check out Iain M. Banks. A truly original sci-fi writer. A recent classic is "Excession." But "The Player of Games," and "Consider Phlebas," are both excellent. These novels are set in Bank's "Culture" universe. There are some great web dialogs written on the Culture and four or five of his books take place there. Everyone I know who has read Banks (and his popularity spread around the New York ISP where I work like Marburg virus) wishes they live in the Culture universe.
His work is hard space sci-fi. But his books are really amusing, with great characters, especially the "minds." He writes non sci-fi as Iain Banks.
Concerning Arthur C. Clarke. Check out the "The City and the Stars," "Earthlight," (a great space battle) and "A Fall of Moondust." These books are all out of print but can normally be found in second hand bookstores and rummage sales for just a few cents.
I have just finished reading Phillip K. Dicks "The Man in the High Castle," pretty weird and disturbing but it shows off his genius imagination.
A lot of the imagery in Snow Crash will really stick with you, because the analogies Stephenson uses are so bang-on accurate.
Oh, and I really, really want that car he starts off with. Oh, yah.
--
Mike Hoye
Bruce Bethke's _Headcrash_ is my vote for the best geek book you've never heard of. You'll laugh, you'll cry, nah, you'll just laugh.
One of the best written opening chapters I've ever read.
Didn't you get the Official Hacker Reading List along with your Cap'n Crunch decoder ring and the bandaid for your glasses ?
"Stuff to read" lists are an impossibly pompous notion. No worthwhile group would try to impose them, other than to reinforce some self-selecting clique of "People who read the right books / listen to the right music / wear the right clothes". Read Katz' Columbine High pieces for an indication of where that leads us.
Rather than studying a list, why not try to find some people of similar interests and read what they're reading ? When one of you finds a new author, spread the word.
Snow Crash is good, but I'm sure it's not a patch on a book to be published in the next couple of years by a writer none of us have yet heard of. Don't pick your reading from a static list, instead try and widen your catchment area. Thomas Moore was probably the last person who had the chance to read all the worthwhile books then available - these days we're all filter-feeders swimming through an ocean, catching a bare fraction of what's worth having. Work on this filter network and make it a communal effort. Maybe Slashdot is just the place to do it.
I have a friend who decided, around a decade ago, just what he wanted to read. He now owns more books than anyone else I know (and that's a lot) and is far less well read than most. Only things on his "list of interest" ever make it onto the shelves and nothing new ever changes there. It's like the library in "The Name of The Rose", only those texts by the ancient masters are deemed acceptable of study. He's even become an incredibly dull person to talk to, because every concept kicking around his head can be traced to a book on those shelves, and that's still only a small pool of what the world has to offer. This is a very bad way to choose your reading material.
OK, I give in. Most of the stuff the others have recommended, and Greg Egan for my personal pick.
Personally, neither Cryptonomicon or Snow Crash really changed my life.. Frankly, Snow Crash wasn't too applicable to the world at hand, and felt more like a bit of satire, especially at the beginning, where Stepheson explained the natural evolution of Franchises into governments. (Don't get me wrong.. I'm a sucker for social parody.)
I think his earlier book, Zodiac, had more impact on the way I live.. Especially since, for quite some time, I lived in Boston, and saw/smelled the Charles for myself. Now I try to pay a little closer attention to my impact on the world around me, and try not to waste my time on many of the more futile 'green' gestures. (Paper vs. Plastic, anyone? Paper plants dump far more toxic chemicals into our water table than plastic manufacturers.. And it takes less energy to recycle plastic.)
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Paraphrasing: There are only four things that Americans do better than anyone else: music, movies, microcode and high-speed pizza delivery.
There's nothing terribly secret about where the plot is heading, but it's not the kind of book where suspense is important. It's an enjoyable but quick read.
Listen to Reason, you ought to read it.
Automatic Sites, LLC
Are you insane, you never mentioned Peter F Hamilton and Vernor Vinge ( read by Carmack no less )
:-)
You're right, we need a central repository.
More must-reads in no particular order:
Naked Lunch
Asimov's (?) "before the golden age" collections if you can find them.
Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven, also his short stories
Hitchhikers series by Doug Adams
the Dangerous Visions anthologies
Titan, Wizard and Demon by John Varley
Philip K. Dick (especially Ubik and Valis)
Lovecraft (all of it if possible)
Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories (possibly the only _good_ fantasy ever written)
Godel Escher Bach
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
1984 and Animal Farm
as many Robert Sheckley stories as you can find
Groucho
Well, it's pretty new, and kind of obscure but I can't stop raving about the comic book "Thieves and Kings". I suggest it to people as strongly as I do Snow Crash, if that helps you judge how good it is (or I think it is).
Amazon sells the three tpbs that have currently been released.
(and there's also the anime series "Escaflowne" but for now let's stick with books)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I mean, I do like NS, but I've already read these. I'd love to hear about other authors that I might want to read!
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
I have very little interest in SF writing usually, but this book is very much an exception. I came across it by way of a media student living in my house years ago. He got sent the book as a review copy when it came out and recomended it to me - and the old line about not being able to put it down is certainly true in Snow Crash's case.
I've yet to read any of his more recent works, but this one gets a definite ten out of ten.
Chris Wareham
I read this book after everyone I knew and respected was giving it rave reviews and labelled it as "a must read". I recally reading the first few chapters and wondering what the big deal was. The writing is very pedestrian and not at all what I've come to expect from the "best-of-the-best" in any genre. I found the ideas presented in the first half of Snowcrash pretty tame and almost of a "this is cool and so I'm going to write about it just to be cool" variety. Much of what in the first half just seemed like the meanderings of a juvenile writer who thought that cyberpunk was hip and wanted to delve into it. Mind you, my previous escapades into the genre consisted of earlier Gibson, Sterling and their ilk and so I consider myself a little spoiled. Many of the starting ideas just seemed to be rehashed from "the godfathers of cyberpunk".
It wasn't until the book started to plummet into a world of linguistics and a seemingly well-researched and in-depth history of language that I started to become interested. I considered putting an end to my read until I reached this harder, more satisfying interior. While the first half insulted my intelligence and experience with the cyberpunk genre, the second half held my interest and challenged my mind.
If it wasn't for this new spark and introduction of "language as virus" as well as the relatively heavy linguistics, I probably would have passed off Stephenson as just another one of many mediocre cyberpunk writers. Instead, it is clear to me that Stephenson has some really good ideas, albeit a relatively mediocre writing style.
So would I recommend the book? Yes, but with a warning that the first half of the book might seem tripe for those who have lots of experience with cyberpunk but nevertheless well worth the wait to build up to the harder material in the last half.
ian
The book, *and* this review.
A *major* chunk of the story occurs in cyberspace...and *another* major chunk is mythological...and somehow, Our Reviewer seems to have glossed all of that over.
Stephenson's cyberspace is as impressive as Gibson's, and yet different; to some degree, one can see it as a progression from the current web, where Gibson's view is nowhere in sight.
On the other hand, I have *always* had a problem with Snowcrash, and one of these cons, I mean to tell Stephenson so: he com*pletely* blows the intellectual climax of the novel (don't worry, it doesn't affect the outcome of the "physical" end", so this isn't exactly a spoiler): since obviously, anyone reading it with anything less than the total immersion will see that the mythological queen/Goddess is the culture hero, for freeing the knowledge of self-hacking, rather than the mythological king/God, who tries to keep it hidden.
It *is* an excellent book, and deserved the Hugo it won. Of course, I just hope my son, in his quest for a job, doesn't wind up deliivering pizza for Domino's...I might have to give him some practice with swords, and then enroll him in a kendo class....
mark
You're right about me leaving out the mythological underpinnings... I must have moved that from the synopsis to the analysis and forgotten to paste it. To wit:
Let it be known that Hiro knowingly attempts to reenact the ancient Sumerian myth which is explained throughout the story. One might analyze 'Snow Crash' as the germ of a future hacker mythos, where the sorceror-priests are those who can reach into the guts of the [mind|machine] and rewire [consciousness|digital reality] as they see fit. Except that the advertising age necessitates a word from our sponsor... (Hiro's business card at the lightshow.)
Mea culpa. Sorry everyone!
As for cyberspace, I took that for part of the mythology. Did Hiro find it more real than reality?
--
QDMerge 0.4 just released!
how to invest, a novice's guide
Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. Galactic-scale action flavored with AI, Usenet, and gothic intrigue. A bit hard to believe in places, but the grand scale of the story makes suspense of disbelief easy.
Someone else mentioned Hofstadter's Godel, Escher Bach; I'd add his Metamagical Themas as well.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. Several metaphysical journeys woven into a wonderful story/extended essay. Also good background material for anyone having to suffer through Total Quality training.
Don't forget James Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. A spiritual ancestor of the cyberpunk style.
--JT
Would you also do away with public libraries, prefering that individuals keep their own, (relatively) small collections instead? As a cultural niche, we are defined by our attitudes, likes and dislikes. It would be an interesting project, to define the common ground.
/. Had I made my own Linux/Computing oriented site, I wouldn't have had the insight of others to broaden my horizons. Repositories are good.
Some of the most useful web resources came to my attention on
Few of us have the gift of synthesizing new knowledge from vacuum, and fewer still have the clairvoyance to know what sci-fi books they'll like, just be reading the cover.
It is true that someone could refer to such a (cultural) resource as a 'community list of suggested readings' in an effort to take on the characteristics of a geek (as cool as that that may sound for a fad-hound these days). So what of it? Maybe that's another convert. Maybe they would benefit from the new perspective. Maybe they would recognize in geekdom, a community that appreciates people for their talent and contribution, not their clothing, check-book or hair-style.
And a vast majority of geeks would certainly find something of value in there too. Nobody ever said 'required reading' in the compulsory sense. No one would excommunicate anyone for flatly refusing to read Neuromancer, or for not knowing the last verse of Jabberwocky - or why that poem is significant. No one is proposing that we cover a book in red leather, and devise a pledge of allegience.
It's just an idea for a place people like us can go to in order to find something new, that they are likely to enjoy. Sheesh!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Cultures are defined by (drum roll) their culture. And nothing serves as well as a library, to define a particular culture.
Books provide the cultural staples and social archetypes which we use to communicate, relate, and advance as a culture. They contain the semantic templates and roots for our language, jargon and style. They are our memetic petri-dish.
Considering English-speaking cultures, we are to a great extent defined by the English works of literature. Shakespeare comes to mind. Try conveying the sense of Hamlet or Romeo to a Zulu. To a cultural peer, all you have to say is "like Hamlet", and you're both on the same page.
Yes, one of the most interesting attributes of the geek culture is it's breadth of reference, but we share some common threads. We subscribe to certain ideals and values and concepts that are well exposed in various works of 'geek culture'.
We do need a (peer reviewed) list of 'essencial readings' that we are defined by. Perhaps a slashdot-like mechanism, where people can submit their items. Others can review what's there and concur or counter (a'la moderation), so that a stable set of agreed upon 'must', 'should' and 'see also' items emerges.
This way, someone interested in the geek community could skim the 'must' list and get the jist.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
While I agree that the real "meat" of the novel didn't start until about halfway through ...
If you could avoid busting a gut laughing at the Deliverator delivering pizza, I don't know what to day about your sense of humor. :^) The thing that carried me through until we got to the mythology and linguistics was that the characters were fun, the satire was on-target, and the whole thing is just screamingly funny.
Or maybe my sense of humor is just a little weird ...
This was a decent review, but it didn't mention one of the (to me) most powerful points of the book - the ties to mythology.
All the Sumerian mythology and pre-Biblical Jewish cult stuff, concisely explained by The Librarian, was a true delight. It was one of the things that set this book apart from merely adequate-and-entertaining cyberpunk (or post-cyberpunk if you prefer.) I mean, sure the descriptions of the virtual world and the near future's techno-toys are right on the mark, but any good cyberpunk tale can do that. This one does more. It makes the reader think. A lot.
There's a bit of that in Cryptonomicon too, though there it's primarily Greek, rather than Sumerian mythology that's discussed. Also, in Cyrptonomicon it was more of an aside, while in Snow Crash it's a vital part of the story, linked in with the viral mind-killer of the title and L. Bob Rife's quest for World Domination.
>I'd love to ask him about whether YT is Mrs Matheson
I saw Mr Stephenson on his book signing tour for Cryptonomicon and during the Q&A asked him exactly that - he said nope not the same person - further along that line of questioning it turns
out according to Neal, Diamond Age and Snow Crash are not in the same universe at all. He stated further that any similarity is just due to the coincidence of the both novels having the same author.
This is really the book that killed cyberpunk, I think. I haven't been able to read an old school "cyberpunk" book since without finding it wanting. I remember reading Mona Lisa Overdrive (I think that was it) shortly after reading this, and finding it to be a great disappointment, not because it was any worse then any other Gibson books, but because Stephenson had just stamped the perfect statement on my brain. (It didn't help that the Gibson book had a courier character much like YT.)
The satire in Snow Crash is just utterly brilliant. The private jails. The mafia pizza delivery service. The "Central Information Service". The nuclear bomb in the sidecar.
Stephenson also has more guts then any other writer I've ever read. Who else would have the guts to name their protagonist "Protagonist"? Who else would drop a five page dissertion on Sumerian mythology in the middle of an action book?
The cake is a pie
Everyone always leaves that out... what's the deal?
I would also suggest Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards 2000 - 1887 as a quintessential read for all of science fiction.
We also conveniantly foget there are numerous female science fiction writers that put a nice spin on what we are used to.
Recommended:
Ursula K. Le Guin: Just finished reading Four Ways to Forgiveness. The Left Hand of Darkness is excellent
Charlotte Perkins Gilma:
Try Herland
Octavia Butler
I liked Parable of the Sower
Or at least the books I read. After reading Snow Crash I became a Neil Stephenson fan. I've picked up all his books I could get my hands on, and will buy Cryptonomicon as soon as I get some free time.
Has Slashdot ever had an "Ask Neil Stephenson" interview? If not, we need one. If so, another one would be nice. Stephenson is knowledgable about Linux, a great Cyber(and Cypher)punk writer, and funny as shit. I'd love to ask him about whether YT is Mrs Matheson, what happened to Uncle Enzo, Gnome vs. KDE, whether Snow Crash changed any of his religious beliefs, and why every damn company wants to "do Snow Crash", but nobody's talking about "doing smartwheels" (there's gotta be a reason that that's the only technology that made the transition from Snow Crash to The Diamond Age. There's a lot more I could think of if it came to it.
Now, compare to the ending in "Diamond Age" in which the last chapter reads like it came from a different book and all of a sudden the ending to "Snow Crash" is excellent. Unfortunately, the way he ended "Diamond Age" pretty much ruined what had been a very enjoyable book because the whole plot just went to pieces. "Snow Crash" wasn't like that IMHO - everything wrapped up, as the reviewer said, the pieces had all been in place for some time and he just tied them all up nicely.
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Who doesn't like Stephenson's writing, his plots, his pacing, his dialogue, his characters, or his books?
/. would review books by different authors. Generally if you give one good review to an author people are going to check out his/her other books. I would much rather see reviews of different authors rather than a review of every book a given author has written.
It would be nice if
I've noticed something that I thought had to be unique to my experiences.. that being that Nobody Buys Snow Crash By Themselves. I've yet to meet anybody who has gone to the bookstore, seen this book, picked it up, and liked it. Eveybody had a friend who handed them their battered, much-read copy and said, 'Hey, you're gonna like this'. The book somehow got introduced to the geek culture and has been spreading from carrier to carrier ever since. You may not be actually handed the book, but more likely than not you heard from a fellow geek that it was good and you went out and bought it.. I know i'll never lend my copy again, I've had to buy it twice now since my first copy never came home. ;) --insert spooky x-files music here--
So is the nam-shub of stephenson subliminaly planted throughout the book? Did the publisher soak the paper stock in the blood of geeks? Or perhaps there's really no Mr. Stephenson at all.. the book came in on a comet from out beyond the oort cloud
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
- Don't waste your time with the Illuminati trilogy; it's all a very long joke, and by the time you get to the punch line, you'll have wasted a great amount of time.
- Asimov - doesn't have the style of Gibson, but wrote a number of great books. I'd recommend the Robot Trilogy and the Foundation Trilogy (and the 4 or 5 other related books), but I read this stuff when I was twelve - it may be too puerile for your taste (don't know your age).
- Clarke - wow, spent many found hours with good ol' (Sir) Arthur C. He's more cerebral than Asimov, but sometimes there isn't much story or plot. Definitely read 2001 and 2010 , and Rendezvous with Rama and the second Rama book. Don't bother finishing any of his book series, they end horribly. For example, 2061 was mediocre, but 3001 was just monstrously bad.
- On the opposite end of the spectrum, try Stanislaw Lem. He's a bit hard to find, and he is weird. Try The Cyberiad and The Futurological Congress . Lem should get more props - he's really important, but people tend to shy away from translated work.
- Kurt Vonnegut. Anything. Start with Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five , but I don't think he's written anything second-rate. NOTE: Not all of his work (and arguably none of his work) is scifi. Also, avoid Slapstick till you've read some of his other work.
- Philip K. Dick. Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep has a delicious cyberpunk feel to it, but it predates the genre. Very influential.
- Jorge Luis Borges. Possibly one of the greatest writers of all time, and ertainly one of my favorites. Borges wrote in a genre called magic realism; it'll make you think of Twilight Zone. Try Ficciones. One favorite story is "The Garden of the Forking Paths".
That's hardly all of them - I've left out everyone from Jules Verne to Douglas Adams. However, this is probably a good start.-Josh
But there's a generation gap between the two, and that's why I love Snow Crash and am lukewarm to anything Gibson wrote beyond Neuromancer. Whereas Gibson writes for a general public fascinated by technology, Stephenson is a second-generation cyberpunk writer (insofar as his effort on Snow Crash goes; the rest is mildly cyberpunk.) Stephenson writes for people who read cyberpunk. And who reads cyberpunk? Hackers.
And that's where the genius of Snow Crash comes in. Stephenson obviously plays on the clichés of the genre. His novel is highly humorous, yet it deals with very real people facing very real danger. Characters such as Raven are both satirical yet very much human.
Same goes for the Metaverse; it's a wild place, filled with avatars of giant penises and such behavior you might expect from the normal brainless troll populating the Web years from now. Yet it is also a place that's barely real, and Stephenson makes a point of reminding us of that fact throughout the novel. The Metaverse is an illusion, yet it carries a good part of the drama. Contrast this with Gibson's hyperrealism, where Cyberspace is more real than the real world.
All this, in my mind, makes of Snow Crash the groundbreaking novel it is. And even without them, it'd still be a witty and entertaining read. Snow Crash has injected humour and self-reflection in a genre that was in desperate need of a dose of self-derision.
Now, if only Stephenson could learn to end a novel properly, without having to resort to the #&$^ showdown between the forces of Good and Evil...
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Is the hacker community trying to live up to these novels?
We have talked numerously about the script kiddies, that everyone likes to rip on, for trying to live up to the MTV and movie potrayals of hackers...
But do these books serve as a guideline for future innovations to the internet. I am sure there are some very intelligent people out there right now trying to make the "Metaverse" spoken about in Snow Crash, a reality.
Is that misguided?
And all this time I thought that came from everyone playing Ultima IV when they were supposed to be studying! Another illusion ruined. ;)
Weapons of Mass Analysis
My question is, of course, with all the disorganization... what else have I missed?
--
Neal Stephenson would be an excellent person to interview on /.
Of the interviews we've done here so far, John Carmack was definitely the most responsive and insightful. Sterling (surprisingly) was the worst.
Stephenson consistently strikes me as not only one of the cleverest SF writers around right now--Gibson may be a better prose stylist, but Stephenson is much funnier--but one of the brightest.
In each of his books, he seems to have had a number of deep insights into contemporary culture, and extrapolated it into a future world-view. The "franchise" society in Snow Crash, for example, was a profound meditation on the commercial balkanization of American culture.
I, for one, would love to have a (mediated) discussion with him about the future.
\