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

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.