Love Neal's work. He's created so many great worlds but I think Snow Crash and Anathem are my favourites.
I have this vague feeling that I bumped into him in a provincial high street in England once. I've no way of actually verifying it was him but if we ever meet again next time I'll be prepared to give him better directions. :P
I haven't read Anathem yet (adding that to my reading list) but Cryptonomicon is high on my list! Snow Crash was incredible and it's one of the few books where I still remember most of the characters in it.
Honestly, IMHO it's complete and utter crap compared to the AMAZING, INCREDIBLE work Stephenson did with everything that came before.
Snow Crash? A milestone in modern sci-fi. Diamond Age? A truly incredible work of art! Even lesser stuff like The Big U or In the Beginning Was the Command Line were really, really good.
Then came Cryptonomicon, and it was good too ... but he was already deteriorating into loving the sound of his own voice way too much by then, so you had to wade through a bit to get to the good stuff.
And then there was Anathem ... where he made up half a language and required you to learn it to read the book (and it was like ten zillion pages long). Good writing is NOT about just throwing whatever brilliant ideas you have onto the page ... it's about cutting it down to the good stuff. Stephenson just stopped doing that by the time he got to Anathem.
To be fair, lots of people were willing to wade through all that fake language BS and Stephenson writing 100 words when 10 would do, and they all report loving the book ... but as a complete and utter Stephenson fanatic, even I abandonded him at Anathem.
I found Anathem significantly better than Diamond Age fwiw. Different strokes.
Diamond Age you can tell why he is very popular with silicon valley executives (and honestly is showing its age nowadays -- Japan is oddly relevant and the description of future China would read comical for someone in the 2020s). Anathem you can tell why he is popular with nerds like me.
It was published in 1992, but it was likely written in large part during the 80's ... and back then the world thought Japan was the future because of the popularity and success of Japanese tech corporations.
Their failures a few years later would dispell that myth ... but for awhile it really seemed plausible, and you'll see a similar fixation on Japan in lots of sci-fi from the 80's.
Yep. Sorry, thought I made it clear in my comment that this was a reference to the book showing its age.
The comment about popularity with executives was related to this romanticization of Victorian-era social structure that I see as a prominent undercurrent of Bay Area-coded literature, more recent iterations include Too Like the Lightning.
I'd make the same contrast between Anathema and Snow Crash. Cyberpunk in general seems to appeal to a class of person that's not quite a nerd's nerd - perhaps a little more extraverted, the kind of person that might go to conventions.
I loved Snow Crash, and I still think about Diamond Age fairly often, 20+ years later. The ideas in Diamond Age were really just incredible.
I even enjoyed his first book, the Big U.
But I also agree about Cryptonomicon. After eating up Snow Crash and Diamond Age, I've tried to make it through Cryptonomicon twice and failed. I just can't seem to finish that book.
I noped out of Anathem when I realized learning the new language was going to be non-optional and non-trivial. I was also at a place where I needed my reading to be recreational rather than mind expanding.
Makes me wonder what Anathem looks like in other translations and whether... Mathic was it(?), was as much an issue in translation. Maybe I'll take another go at it. It's been years, and people that I respect greatly have told me it's one of their favorites.
I'd disagree. Especially his last two books are very much getting to the point, and I really liked Seveneves and Termination Shock as well, all after Anathem. ("Fall" is the exception that proves the rule/trend; I'll just pretend that didn't happen. One of the very few books I've ever not finished after making it beyond the first half.)
> as a complete and utter Stephenson fanatic, even I abandonded him at Anathem.
You might want to give his later stuff a try. I think he's really improved his ability to wrap a story up, without compromising on the grand ideas.
Anthem is my favorite as well. Picked up a first edition a while ago, was hoping his book tour would have taken him near me so I could get it signed but looks like he stuck to the coasts and Texas.
Thirded for Anathem. It isn't for everyone, you've got to have a high tolerance for made up words and enjoy puzzling things out but if that is you (likely if you read HN) then it is great. Probably my favourite sci-fi book ever by number of re-reads!
Neal Stephenson has worried (or rather hasn't, but I won't spoil the plot of "Fall" here) about deepfakes way before most people have even heard about generative AI.
Love Neal's work. He's created so many great worlds but I think Snow Crash and Anathem are my favourites.
I have this vague feeling that I bumped into him in a provincial high street in England once. I've no way of actually verifying it was him but if we ever meet again next time I'll be prepared to give him better directions. :P
I haven't read Anathem yet (adding that to my reading list) but Cryptonomicon is high on my list! Snow Crash was incredible and it's one of the few books where I still remember most of the characters in it.
Honestly, IMHO it's complete and utter crap compared to the AMAZING, INCREDIBLE work Stephenson did with everything that came before.
Snow Crash? A milestone in modern sci-fi. Diamond Age? A truly incredible work of art! Even lesser stuff like The Big U or In the Beginning Was the Command Line were really, really good.
Then came Cryptonomicon, and it was good too ... but he was already deteriorating into loving the sound of his own voice way too much by then, so you had to wade through a bit to get to the good stuff.
And then there was Anathem ... where he made up half a language and required you to learn it to read the book (and it was like ten zillion pages long). Good writing is NOT about just throwing whatever brilliant ideas you have onto the page ... it's about cutting it down to the good stuff. Stephenson just stopped doing that by the time he got to Anathem.
To be fair, lots of people were willing to wade through all that fake language BS and Stephenson writing 100 words when 10 would do, and they all report loving the book ... but as a complete and utter Stephenson fanatic, even I abandonded him at Anathem.
I found Anathem significantly better than Diamond Age fwiw. Different strokes.
Diamond Age you can tell why he is very popular with silicon valley executives (and honestly is showing its age nowadays -- Japan is oddly relevant and the description of future China would read comical for someone in the 2020s). Anathem you can tell why he is popular with nerds like me.
The Japan thing just reflects the book's age.
It was published in 1992, but it was likely written in large part during the 80's ... and back then the world thought Japan was the future because of the popularity and success of Japanese tech corporations.
Their failures a few years later would dispell that myth ... but for awhile it really seemed plausible, and you'll see a similar fixation on Japan in lots of sci-fi from the 80's.
> The Japan thing just reflects the book's age.
Yep. Sorry, thought I made it clear in my comment that this was a reference to the book showing its age.
The comment about popularity with executives was related to this romanticization of Victorian-era social structure that I see as a prominent undercurrent of Bay Area-coded literature, more recent iterations include Too Like the Lightning.
I'd make the same contrast between Anathema and Snow Crash. Cyberpunk in general seems to appeal to a class of person that's not quite a nerd's nerd - perhaps a little more extraverted, the kind of person that might go to conventions.
I loved Snow Crash, and I still think about Diamond Age fairly often, 20+ years later. The ideas in Diamond Age were really just incredible.
I even enjoyed his first book, the Big U.
But I also agree about Cryptonomicon. After eating up Snow Crash and Diamond Age, I've tried to make it through Cryptonomicon twice and failed. I just can't seem to finish that book.
I noped out of Anathem when I realized learning the new language was going to be non-optional and non-trivial. I was also at a place where I needed my reading to be recreational rather than mind expanding.
Makes me wonder what Anathem looks like in other translations and whether... Mathic was it(?), was as much an issue in translation. Maybe I'll take another go at it. It's been years, and people that I respect greatly have told me it's one of their favorites.
language and social structure is actually the best part of Anathem
I'd disagree. Especially his last two books are very much getting to the point, and I really liked Seveneves and Termination Shock as well, all after Anathem. ("Fall" is the exception that proves the rule/trend; I'll just pretend that didn't happen. One of the very few books I've ever not finished after making it beyond the first half.)
> as a complete and utter Stephenson fanatic, even I abandonded him at Anathem.
You might want to give his later stuff a try. I think he's really improved his ability to wrap a story up, without compromising on the grand ideas.
Anthem is my favorite as well. Picked up a first edition a while ago, was hoping his book tour would have taken him near me so I could get it signed but looks like he stuck to the coasts and Texas.
Thirded for Anathem. It isn't for everyone, you've got to have a high tolerance for made up words and enjoy puzzling things out but if that is you (likely if you read HN) then it is great. Probably my favourite sci-fi book ever by number of re-reads!
I really enjoyed it as well. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve ever read from Stephenson.
He appears to be making the podcast rounds promoting his new book. He also spoke to Nick Gillespie at Reason: https://reason.com/podcast/2026/10/28/the-untold-story-behin...
that seems to be the only time that he does media. not that i blame him.
he doesn't seem to enjoy it all too much :D
If that's what it takes to promote his new books, I won't complain. Clear win-win, I usually get both a great book and a great podcast episode :)
I also really enjoyed this conversation including him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7FN53FqB1U
very reddit-era takes imo. it is a bit late in the timeline to be betting on S curves and worrying about deepfakes
Neal Stephenson has worried (or rather hasn't, but I won't spoil the plot of "Fall" here) about deepfakes way before most people have even heard about generative AI.
I think the worry about fake news was a very widely held pre-GAI view.
Sure, but not automatically generated text or image content.
Fair enough, I couldn't get into Fall so I don't know precisely what he predicted.
Deepfakes and slop, essentially, and I still expect more parts of that prediction (that I don’t want to spoil) to become true.