I had to scroll down way too far for a critical comment... I feel the same. Having grown up on SciFi I found him to be the most overrated author in the genre.

I had to scroll down way too far for a critical comment... I feel the same. Having grown up on SciFi I found him to be the most overrated author in the genre. I don't know how the author of that article came to the conclusion that Stephenson writes "realistic characters" when all the characters I've seen in the only two books I read by him (Snow Crash and Anathem) were pure cliche. I understand that it was supposed to be a joke in Snow Crash but after reading Anathem I'm not so sure if he really intended it to be a joke in the first place. Female characters are especially bad. Than there is the world building: yes he can go forever about a single small thing quoting wikipedia for pages. Than a few pages later the character leaves the enclosed environment and what you get is a rough sketch of the rest of the world. As if he ran out of "describing". In the end you're left borrowing from other authors like he somehow expects you to do. Also...all those single small thing describing was completely irrelevant. It's quite sad because he does have good ideas but he neither has a clue how to bring them to an interesting end nor when to stop beating it. 1/5 would not recommend.