Neal Stephenson

I wish he was a better writer.

smart guy, can't stop himself from reminding us how smart he is in his fiction

>>9659237
elitist redditcore

>>9659247
is it worth reading any of his huge tomes ?

>>9659274
i enjoyed cryptonomicon. gave up after a while with the baroque cycle although the premise is good. snow crash is fun

he's super-smart and loves his material, i just found the style off-putting. worth reading i suppose

>>9659247
i've only read cryptonomicon but this is true

enjoyed it but it didn't half drag at points when he was being such an oh so clever professor

seems approachable and a cool dude. he even wrote a book of writing advice.

bad writer with a good head on his shoulders.

>>9659247
>>9659322
t. insecure brainlets

>>9659301
yeah its glorified pulp, i wish he learned to write tighter prose. oh well. what he made is good though.

Love Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, and The Diamond Age. Zodiac is a fun little book. I keep meaning to read some of his other stuff (Reamde, Seveneves, Command Line, etc) but I tried the Baroque Cycle and can't do it.

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>>9659237
Anathem, The Diamond Age and Snow Crash were enjoyable reads and I liked them well enough for what they are. But I wouldn't really recommend anything else he's written.

Only read anathem and snow crash but enjoyed both. I would say hes worth a read.

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I have a 40 min commute one way, so 1 hour 20 min both. I downloaded his audiobooks and have listened to Snow Crash, Diamond Age and am on book three of the Baroque Cycle. I like his writing. Plan on listening to more.

Snow Crash and Diamond Age are my favorites so far.

>>9659240
>>9659247
>>9659301
>>9659322
Has /lit/ ever been this consistently right?

>>9661319
Anathem is cute. Especially if you like philosophy.

>>9659237
The Big U isn't as bad as he thinks it is.

Also all of his books start to get uncomfortably long after Snow Crash. He should write something shorter, in the realm of ~300 pages.

Stephenson is one of the very few writers that tries to write about the entire system that produces the modern world, this immensely complex organization that always has another facet, something else that's more complicated. You can see bits and pieces of it in the Gibson knockoff he created for Snow Crash, then the development of it in Diamond Age, with the curiosity he displays about the Chinese and Victorian systems. The quote about hypocrisy in Diamond Age is worth the whole book.

Anyway his finest work so far is Cryptonomicon, which is about information and how it's free and how it's not and how that shapes the world we live in, casting WWII and the rise of the internet as historical inflection points to make his case. Why do we get a ten-page digression into a side character's fetishes? Because Daniel's working to make information free, and Van Eyck phreaking definitely frees information, and it drives home the point that there's information that doesn't actually want to be free. Why do we get three pages about Captain Crunch? Because that is how high-functioning IT guys think about everything, and we need to believe that he'll turn himself into a codebreaker by programming with just an LED light for feedback. It's a big book because it's a big system.

Baroque Cycle is his most ambitious work, actually attempting to explain the rise of the world's economic system at the same time it shows the beginning of systematic science, and it's even bigger with even more digressions. I'd say it's impossible to explain what he's trying to explain without giving the audience as many breaks as he does, and even the breaks introduce us to Neat History Facts he feels are necessary for our understanding of the period. The seventeenth century comes across as alien with glimmerings of the familiar, of the world of Cryptonomicon, and it's not easy to explain just how and why that world works.

Really enjoy this Shit but he can't end a story properly

I've read Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Reamde and I'm soon going to start the Baroque Cycle. I always find pleasure and enjoyment in reading his works, it's most likely his humor in presenting facts.

>tfw spent a few months with a pack of cards in my pocket so I could practice the thing from cryptonomicon at any spare moment.