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Is Cryptonomicon even sci-fi? I mean, Stephenson is known for the genre, and certainly it will appeal to genre fans, but it's not actually set in the future...

by sho 7y ago

Is Cryptonomicon even sci-fi? I mean, Stephenson is known for the genre, and certainly it will appeal to genre fans, but it's not actually set in the future... I totally second the recommendation, though.

arethuza 7y ago
One of the characters is actually an immortal alchemist - though that might not be obvious just from Cryptonomicon.
- Uhhrrr 7y ago
  Haha, in Stephenson's latest we find he is even more than that!
  - peteforde 7y ago
    Spoilers, people. ;) Cory Doctorow has often said that good sci-fi doesn't predict the future so much as anticipate the present. Let's not lose sight of the fact that Cryptonomicon came out in 1999. While there were early cryptocurrencies that all went nowhere, Stephenson was a good decade ahead of the BTC paper. It could also be argued that his particular focus on the obliteration of sensitive emails being kept on private servers was unnervingly prescient, too.
- peteforde 7y ago
  Coincidentally, I recently got into an interesting argument with my father. He'd just seen Captain Marvel and got defensive when my friend referred to it as a superhero movie; he insisted that it was a science fiction movie. I probably shouldn't enjoy being empirically correct so much, but this dispute gave me the opportunity to demonstrate that he was, quite simply, wrong. Disregarding the movie, it's the attempt to identify sci-fi that is interesting. In the same way the judge couldn't define pornography "but knows it when I see it", there is not one standing definition. However, the greats who established the genre agreed on some important basics which hold water today. Cribbed from Wikipedia: Heinlein: "...realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method." Wells: "...a conscientious attempt to be faithful to already known facts (as of the date of writing) was the substrate on which the story was to be built, and if the story was also to contain a miracle, it ought at least not to contain a whole arsenal of them." Shippey: "...the basic building block and distinguishing feature of a science fiction novel is the presence of the novum... a discrete piece of information recognizable as not-true, but also as not-unlike-true, not-flatly- (and in the current state of knowledge) impossible." It's Wells' point that led to me leaving this comment. Don't get me wrong - I get genuinely excited every time REDACTED shows up in a Stephenson novel... but his immortality is, for me, uncomfortably close to a miracle. Now, sometimes this is preferable; hands up if you would prefer to not know the word Miti-chlorian.
peteforde 7y ago
That's a valid question to which I offer a hopefully interesting answer: given that Cryptonomicon came out in 1999, it would have been a prediction (or anticipation) of a future that was more and more true over the next 10, 15 and 20 years - especially if you were in the 99.9% of the population that was outside of the ultra-nerdy pre-crash tech bubble that we live and breathe in and take totally for granted today as HN members in 2019. I'm reminded of "This Is Water" - the David Foster Wallace commencement speech where he started with an allegory about the frog making small talk with a fish. I paraphrase: "The water is lovely today, isn't it?" "What the hell is water?"

by sho 7y ago

arethuza 7y ago

One of the characters is actually an immortal alchemist - though that might not be obvious just from Cryptonomicon.

Uhhrrr 7y ago
Haha, in Stephenson's latest we find he is even more than that!
- peteforde 7y ago
  Spoilers, people. ;) Cory Doctorow has often said that good sci-fi doesn't predict the future so much as anticipate the present. Let's not lose sight of the fact that Cryptonomicon came out in 1999. While there were early cryptocurrencies that all went nowhere, Stephenson was a good decade ahead of the BTC paper. It could also be argued that his particular focus on the obliteration of sensitive emails being kept on private servers was unnervingly prescient, too.
peteforde 7y ago
Coincidentally, I recently got into an interesting argument with my father. He'd just seen Captain Marvel and got defensive when my friend referred to it as a superhero movie; he insisted that it was a science fiction movie. I probably shouldn't enjoy being empirically correct so much, but this dispute gave me the opportunity to demonstrate that he was, quite simply, wrong. Disregarding the movie, it's the attempt to identify sci-fi that is interesting. In the same way the judge couldn't define pornography "but knows it when I see it", there is not one standing definition. However, the greats who established the genre agreed on some important basics which hold water today. Cribbed from Wikipedia: Heinlein: "...realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method." Wells: "...a conscientious attempt to be faithful to already known facts (as of the date of writing) was the substrate on which the story was to be built, and if the story was also to contain a miracle, it ought at least not to contain a whole arsenal of them." Shippey: "...the basic building block and distinguishing feature of a science fiction novel is the presence of the novum... a discrete piece of information recognizable as not-true, but also as not-unlike-true, not-flatly- (and in the current state of knowledge) impossible." It's Wells' point that led to me leaving this comment. Don't get me wrong - I get genuinely excited every time REDACTED shows up in a Stephenson novel... but his immortality is, for me, uncomfortably close to a miracle. Now, sometimes this is preferable; hands up if you would prefer to not know the word Miti-chlorian.

peteforde 7y ago

That's a valid question to which I offer a hopefully interesting answer: given that Cryptonomicon came out in 1999, it would have been a prediction (or anticipation) of a future that was more and more true over the next 10, 15 and 20 years - especially if you were in the 99.9% of the population that was outside of the ultra-nerdy pre-crash tech bubble that we live and breathe in and take totally for granted today as HN members in 2019. I'm reminded of "This Is Water" - the David Foster Wallace commencement speech where he started with an allegory about the frog making small talk with a fish. I paraphrase: "The water is lovely today, isn't it?" "What the hell is water?"