6 ms·

Do you think he's eternally mediocre, or is his recent stuff worse? Is all scifi mediocre? Is the problem that Stephenson "crossed over" and got more mainstream

by crucini 10y ago

Do you think he's eternally mediocre, or is his recent stuff worse? Is all scifi mediocre? Is the problem that Stephenson "crossed over" and got more mainstream credibility? Is Gibson also mediocre?

overcast 10y ago
My first experience with Stephenson was Snow Crash, and it was an abomination. I tried Cryptonomicon next, and while slightly more coherent, it was the end of the line for me and this guy. Stephenson likes to write like he's smarter than he really is, plots that are literally everywhere, and characters I really don't care about. Let's not forget the third person present tense writing style. Regarding Gibson, I only read Neuromancer, and enjoyed the writing. Obviously the concepts were ahead of its time, so reading it much later didn't have the same impact. But neat story.
- ashark 10y ago
  If you didn't care for Cryptonomicon, you're probably right to stop. I've read four of his novels and that's the only one that didn't fit the pattern of [promising first 1/3], [2/3 section is bad but I'm holding on that it'll go somewhere], [3/3 goes off the rails entirely, no payoff for suffering through the middle third]. Cryptonomicon was consistently OK, at least. The Diamond Age was the most frustrating of them, because it starts off so good, but by the end it's a total mess. There's a whole scene in the last third that exists just to have one character tell you what another's motivation has been since a few chapters in, since it's entirely obscure to the reader. Not in a big reveal kind of way, but in a "uh oh, I let some friends read a draft and they are really confused by this major character, better fix it, but, like, without working very hard" way. I mean, at least he bothers to tell us, but wow. Like you, I enjoyed Neuromancer quite a bit (and I read it after Stephenson—only last year, in fact). The other two in that trilogy are somewhere on my mental to-read list.
  - overcast 10y ago
    Your pattern is commonly stated when describing Stephenson novels. I don't even know what to think of Snow Crash. It reminded me of someone just jotting down everything in their head while sitting at a coffee shop, and then sending it to the printing press. Thanks for the future warning.
    - ashark 10y ago
      Admittedly, Snow Crash follows it the most weakly of the other three I've read. Anathem and The Diamond Age fit the pattern perfectly.
  - VLM 10y ago
    The focus being on character development and conversation and scenes shows you might be a fan of soft sci fi. Thats OK. Different strokes, different folks, etc. The only real problem Diamond Age has from a hard sci fi perspective, is its 20 years old and everyone knows about additive manufacturing and 3-d printing and slicing objects to be printed and feedstock issues and compiling and analog analogies to digital logic gates and compilers and natural language processing and the dangers of closed source, the idea of more or less tablet computing and wikipedia rolled into one. Its all really boring today of course, other than he got quite a few details wrong and its fun to spot them. Twenty years ago, of course, its ideas were absolutely mindblowing. I really enjoyed exploring and daydreaming about the new engineering and new computer science and new concepts in Diamond Age. Sure there was some fluffy interpersonal story to fill it out, but I mostly ignored it for the fascinating hard sci fi concepts. In the late 90s it was a truly awesome hard sci fi novel. Not a very good soft sci fi novel, but whatever. Someone should suggest a modern hard sci fi novel... published in the last year or two.
    - ashark 10y ago
      Oh, the ideas are good, certainly. I'd have rather they'd been delivered in a much better novel half as long, though—which is, I suspect, as long a story as Stephenson could have managed from that promising beginning without wrecking it. It would have been less irritating if none of the story had been good, really, but that first section is great. I don't think it's very good hard SF, either. It does so much that its explorations of the social implications of the advances—which are the whole point of fleshing out an entire novel from the "gee, wouldn't it be cool if we could X?" concepts that the book is full of, rather than writing the short essay or even (these days) tweet that would suffice to explain them as well as the book does—are underdeveloped and/or feel false. The density of these drops off quite a bit early in the book, too, leaving little to chew on but the confused characterization and the increasingly unsatisfying story.
  - Uhhrrr 10y ago
    I was on the edge of my seat towards the end of the second third of Seveneves. The last third was mostly world building, though. I liked it, but I can understand why others would check out.
  - adrienne 10y ago
    Stephenson also has this ur-hacker myth thing going on in basically all his books, and he makes shit up about sciences (like linguistics) that he doesn't actually know a goddamn thing about. The idea expressed by a commenter below that he qualifies as "hard" science fiction is, well, absolutely true as far as it goes - but only because nearly all of the writers lauded as writing "hard" science fiction make shit up about sciences (like sociology) that they don't know a goddamn thing about.
- crucini 10y ago
  OK. I find Neuromancer and Snow Crash pretty similar, as raw, high energy cyberpunk books with no attempt at respectability. Gibson was artier and a better writer (in the narrow sense of prose stylist.) It's kind of hard to picture someone liking one and disliking the other. Now I could see liking those early books and disliking the later output of both authors; they became wordier, softer, more pretentious - while keeping a lot of merit.
arzt 10y ago
Speaking as some who has only read the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon, there are definitely sections of Stephenson's books that are a slog, but I generally find finishing them is rewarding.
metaphorm 10y ago
My opinion on Stephenson: Cryptonomicon is fun, Baroque Cycle is great, Anathem is his best work (from a literary perspective), and Seveneves is 2/3rds awesome 1/3rd bad scifi pulp. Snow Crash is how most people first encounter him. It's a warmed over cyberpunk book that repeats a lot of what Gibson did, but is also good. The Diamond Age is one of the best pieces of speculative fiction written in the last 20 years except that it fails badly to have a coherent story with an ending that makes sense. Which is a shame considering the ideas in the book are so good. REamde is shit and should never have been published. Dude was playing too much World of Warcraft at the time and decided to write a novel about playing too much World of Warcraft. Bad book. Avoid.
- simonbarker87 10y ago
  Weird, I loved part 1 and 2 but part 3 stands out as the best bit to me - I really enjoyed the envisioning of rebuilding a world from scratch and getting lost in that new world. I think the third part could make a nice series of books but I think I am in the minority about part 3
- facepalm 10y ago
  I enjoyed reading Reamde.

by crucini 10y ago

Do you think he's eternally mediocre, or is his recent stuff worse? Is all scifi mediocre? Is the problem that Stephenson "crossed over" and got more mainstream credibility? Is Gibson also mediocre?

overcast 10y ago

My first experience with Stephenson was Snow Crash, and it was an abomination. I tried Cryptonomicon next, and while slightly more coherent, it was the end of the line for me and this guy. Stephenson likes to write like he's smarter than he really is, plots that are literally everywhere, and characters I really don't care about. Let's not forget the third person present tense writing style. Regarding Gibson, I only read Neuromancer, and enjoyed the writing. Obviously the concepts were ahead of its time, so reading it much later didn't have the same impact. But neat story.

ashark 10y ago
If you didn't care for Cryptonomicon, you're probably right to stop. I've read four of his novels and that's the only one that didn't fit the pattern of [promising first 1/3], [2/3 section is bad but I'm holding on that it'll go somewhere], [3/3 goes off the rails entirely, no payoff for suffering through the middle third]. Cryptonomicon was consistently OK, at least. The Diamond Age was the most frustrating of them, because it starts off so good, but by the end it's a total mess. There's a whole scene in the last third that exists just to have one character tell you what another's motivation has been since a few chapters in, since it's entirely obscure to the reader. Not in a big reveal kind of way, but in a "uh oh, I let some friends read a draft and they are really confused by this major character, better fix it, but, like, without working very hard" way. I mean, at least he bothers to tell us, but wow. Like you, I enjoyed Neuromancer quite a bit (and I read it after Stephenson—only last year, in fact). The other two in that trilogy are somewhere on my mental to-read list.
- overcast 10y ago
  Your pattern is commonly stated when describing Stephenson novels. I don't even know what to think of Snow Crash. It reminded me of someone just jotting down everything in their head while sitting at a coffee shop, and then sending it to the printing press. Thanks for the future warning.
  - ashark 10y ago
    Admittedly, Snow Crash follows it the most weakly of the other three I've read. Anathem and The Diamond Age fit the pattern perfectly.
- VLM 10y ago
  The focus being on character development and conversation and scenes shows you might be a fan of soft sci fi. Thats OK. Different strokes, different folks, etc. The only real problem Diamond Age has from a hard sci fi perspective, is its 20 years old and everyone knows about additive manufacturing and 3-d printing and slicing objects to be printed and feedstock issues and compiling and analog analogies to digital logic gates and compilers and natural language processing and the dangers of closed source, the idea of more or less tablet computing and wikipedia rolled into one. Its all really boring today of course, other than he got quite a few details wrong and its fun to spot them. Twenty years ago, of course, its ideas were absolutely mindblowing. I really enjoyed exploring and daydreaming about the new engineering and new computer science and new concepts in Diamond Age. Sure there was some fluffy interpersonal story to fill it out, but I mostly ignored it for the fascinating hard sci fi concepts. In the late 90s it was a truly awesome hard sci fi novel. Not a very good soft sci fi novel, but whatever. Someone should suggest a modern hard sci fi novel... published in the last year or two.
  - ashark 10y ago
    Oh, the ideas are good, certainly. I'd have rather they'd been delivered in a much better novel half as long, though—which is, I suspect, as long a story as Stephenson could have managed from that promising beginning without wrecking it. It would have been less irritating if none of the story had been good, really, but that first section is great. I don't think it's very good hard SF, either. It does so much that its explorations of the social implications of the advances—which are the whole point of fleshing out an entire novel from the "gee, wouldn't it be cool if we could X?" concepts that the book is full of, rather than writing the short essay or even (these days) tweet that would suffice to explain them as well as the book does—are underdeveloped and/or feel false. The density of these drops off quite a bit early in the book, too, leaving little to chew on but the confused characterization and the increasingly unsatisfying story.
- Uhhrrr 10y ago
  I was on the edge of my seat towards the end of the second third of Seveneves. The last third was mostly world building, though. I liked it, but I can understand why others would check out.
- adrienne 10y ago
  Stephenson also has this ur-hacker myth thing going on in basically all his books, and he makes shit up about sciences (like linguistics) that he doesn't actually know a goddamn thing about. The idea expressed by a commenter below that he qualifies as "hard" science fiction is, well, absolutely true as far as it goes - but only because nearly all of the writers lauded as writing "hard" science fiction make shit up about sciences (like sociology) that they don't know a goddamn thing about.
crucini 10y ago
OK. I find Neuromancer and Snow Crash pretty similar, as raw, high energy cyberpunk books with no attempt at respectability. Gibson was artier and a better writer (in the narrow sense of prose stylist.) It's kind of hard to picture someone liking one and disliking the other. Now I could see liking those early books and disliking the later output of both authors; they became wordier, softer, more pretentious - while keeping a lot of merit.

arzt 10y ago

Speaking as some who has only read the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon, there are definitely sections of Stephenson's books that are a slog, but I generally find finishing them is rewarding.

metaphorm 10y ago

My opinion on Stephenson: Cryptonomicon is fun, Baroque Cycle is great, Anathem is his best work (from a literary perspective), and Seveneves is 2/3rds awesome 1/3rd bad scifi pulp. Snow Crash is how most people first encounter him. It's a warmed over cyberpunk book that repeats a lot of what Gibson did, but is also good. The Diamond Age is one of the best pieces of speculative fiction written in the last 20 years except that it fails badly to have a coherent story with an ending that makes sense. Which is a shame considering the ideas in the book are so good. REamde is shit and should never have been published. Dude was playing too much World of Warcraft at the time and decided to write a novel about playing too much World of Warcraft. Bad book. Avoid.

simonbarker87 10y ago
Weird, I loved part 1 and 2 but part 3 stands out as the best bit to me - I really enjoyed the envisioning of rebuilding a world from scratch and getting lost in that new world. I think the third part could make a nice series of books but I think I am in the minority about part 3
facepalm 10y ago
I enjoyed reading Reamde.