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I didn't like either of them very much, but I've really enjoyed other books of his. - The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. - Seveneves - Cryptonomicon - Anathem -

I didn't like either of them very much, but I've really enjoyed other books of his. - The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. - Seveneves - Cryptonomicon - Anathem - Reamde - Fall; or, Dodge in Hell (Although the metaworld parts in that get a little tiresome)

ElevenLathe 3y ago
Yeah honestly he just keeps getting better IMO. Seveneves in particular gives me chills just thinking about -- so dark at points. Likewise, I think the Blue Ant books are Gibson's best work, though I have a strong attachment to Mona Lisa Overdrive just because of where I was in life when I first read it.
- themadturk 3y ago
  Nice to see love for the Blue Ant books. I enjoy everything Gibson has written, but Pattern Recognition is by far my favorite.
  - ElevenLathe 3y ago
    It's wonderful! He gets the timbre of early 2000s forum culture exactly right.
tsujamin 3y ago
Loved Seveneves and Fall, in particular the little slice of Ameristan in the Fall, but I feel like in both cases they are great books with a mediocre book attached to the end.
gorjusborg 3y ago
Cryptonomicon has such an epic build up...
- Melting_Harps 3y ago
  > Cryptonomicon has such an epic build up... And was probably the most prophetic of all his work, to be honest Snowcrash was total satire, and fan-service: it was much like the Crypto-anarchist Sloath short-story he wrote (THE GREAT SIMOLEON CAPER) it was meant to appeal to a a certain audience and really no one else. It was widely distributed (it was in TIME back when that was a big deal in the 90s at the peak of Silicon valley's foray with Crypto Anarchy) but ultimately targeted content to a specific demographic, which would illicit a certain response. Few if any every bring this up when discussing NS' bibliography. Its like Solar Opposites is a riff of Rick and Morty where the Rick character is put in a different universe and rides that story-line as far as it can before it gets tiresome but has a b-plot to carry it through for the audience to make it an entire season. And while Snowcrash was... mediocre (in my opinion) things like Sushi-K rapping or the hi-jinks of Uncle Enzo's Pizza delivery business are exactly the kind of hokey material one would expect from such subject matter that would land for said demographic. Is it a good representation of the Cyberpunk genre, as a fan, absolutely not. Also wasn't Amazon supposed to make a series about Snowcrash and has been 'in the works' [0] for like 7 years now? They canceled The Peripheral which was kind of a rip-off Snowcrash and that had good reviews, I can't imagine they'd really try to try to flesh-out the Metaverse when 85% of Snowcrash is just filler with an incredibly bad ending. Hell, Amazon canceled The Expanse despite having a ton of more original content and being quite the cash cow, the books still sell incredibly well and the fans are die hard, many of them signed up for Amazon specifically for the last seasons and canceled when it was over. Personally, I think with costly shows like GT getting the axe and Clacrkson's Farm (something I enjoy more) being what is left from the trio it shows that Amazon doesn't have the wear-withal to see such immense things through in my opinion so we may never see Hiro or YT on screen. 0: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16383994/amazon-streaming-video-ringworld-snow-crash-lazarus-sci-fi-tv https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16383994/amazon-streaming...
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  And it has the several page digression about the best way to eat captain crunch where one of the characters has just gotten out of jail and is thinking about inventing a spoon to deliver milk perfectly to the cereal! Good book, but Neal would benefit from a stronger editor.
  - arethuza 3y ago
    Some people think those are the best bits of his books!
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      Yeah, agree. If you take away all of his digressions, how much would be left. Everyone hating on the digressions. But you can't just have a few pages of plot points and call it a book.
  - jspiral 3y ago
    in the future our personal editors will create our own editions of these books. mine will have an even longer captain crunch section and yours will be abbreviated
2024throwaway 3y ago
Seveneves is probably my favorite book, ever. I have the audio book and I'll probably listen to it for a 3rd time here soon.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  I stopped reading Seveneves after we zoom forward to the future and stuff got weird, a bit too weird for my suspension of disbelief. Does it get back to more hard sci-fi stuff or remain as something which, to me, felt more like a sci-fantasy hybrid? Oddly enough I love books like Dune, but the dramatic change in Seveneves was just too jarring for me to continue enjoying it.
  - 2024throwaway 3y ago
    I would argue the sci-fi indeed gets so hard, that it becomes soft again by nature. The technology falls away from the focus, as it should, but it is still very much there.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I think it's pretty clear from the comments here that there are those of us who just can't really buy the jump-cut and there are those who can.
  - auspiv 3y ago
    I was listening to it on audio book and after the "5000 years later" I paused it and didn't pick it back up for a long while. Slogged through the rest. Won't read/listen to it again. The ending was ok. This was my first Stephenson book. Not going to do more.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      I think Seveneves would have worked better for me had the jump cut been a significantly shorter period of time, had there been a shorter more hand-wavy epilogue that didn't get into all the detail, and (frankly) had it thrown out a lot of the last part of the novel. But I'm not Neal Stephenson either.

ElevenLathe 3y ago

Yeah honestly he just keeps getting better IMO. Seveneves in particular gives me chills just thinking about -- so dark at points. Likewise, I think the Blue Ant books are Gibson's best work, though I have a strong attachment to Mona Lisa Overdrive just because of where I was in life when I first read it.

themadturk 3y ago
Nice to see love for the Blue Ant books. I enjoy everything Gibson has written, but Pattern Recognition is by far my favorite.
- ElevenLathe 3y ago
  It's wonderful! He gets the timbre of early 2000s forum culture exactly right.

tsujamin 3y ago

Loved Seveneves and Fall, in particular the little slice of Ameristan in the Fall, but I feel like in both cases they are great books with a mediocre book attached to the end.

gorjusborg 3y ago

Cryptonomicon has such an epic build up...

Melting_Harps 3y ago
> Cryptonomicon has such an epic build up... And was probably the most prophetic of all his work, to be honest Snowcrash was total satire, and fan-service: it was much like the Crypto-anarchist Sloath short-story he wrote (THE GREAT SIMOLEON CAPER) it was meant to appeal to a a certain audience and really no one else. It was widely distributed (it was in TIME back when that was a big deal in the 90s at the peak of Silicon valley's foray with Crypto Anarchy) but ultimately targeted content to a specific demographic, which would illicit a certain response. Few if any every bring this up when discussing NS' bibliography. Its like Solar Opposites is a riff of Rick and Morty where the Rick character is put in a different universe and rides that story-line as far as it can before it gets tiresome but has a b-plot to carry it through for the audience to make it an entire season. And while Snowcrash was... mediocre (in my opinion) things like Sushi-K rapping or the hi-jinks of Uncle Enzo's Pizza delivery business are exactly the kind of hokey material one would expect from such subject matter that would land for said demographic. Is it a good representation of the Cyberpunk genre, as a fan, absolutely not. Also wasn't Amazon supposed to make a series about Snowcrash and has been 'in the works' [0] for like 7 years now? They canceled The Peripheral which was kind of a rip-off Snowcrash and that had good reviews, I can't imagine they'd really try to try to flesh-out the Metaverse when 85% of Snowcrash is just filler with an incredibly bad ending. Hell, Amazon canceled The Expanse despite having a ton of more original content and being quite the cash cow, the books still sell incredibly well and the fans are die hard, many of them signed up for Amazon specifically for the last seasons and canceled when it was over. Personally, I think with costly shows like GT getting the axe and Clacrkson's Farm (something I enjoy more) being what is left from the trio it shows that Amazon doesn't have the wear-withal to see such immense things through in my opinion so we may never see Hiro or YT on screen. 0: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16383994/amazon-streaming-video-ringworld-snow-crash-lazarus-sci-fi-tv https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/29/16383994/amazon-streaming...
datadrivenangel 3y ago
And it has the several page digression about the best way to eat captain crunch where one of the characters has just gotten out of jail and is thinking about inventing a spoon to deliver milk perfectly to the cereal! Good book, but Neal would benefit from a stronger editor.
- arethuza 3y ago
  Some people think those are the best bits of his books!
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Yeah, agree. If you take away all of his digressions, how much would be left. Everyone hating on the digressions. But you can't just have a few pages of plot points and call it a book.
- jspiral 3y ago
  in the future our personal editors will create our own editions of these books. mine will have an even longer captain crunch section and yours will be abbreviated

2024throwaway 3y ago

Seveneves is probably my favorite book, ever. I have the audio book and I'll probably listen to it for a 3rd time here soon.

somenameforme 3y ago
I stopped reading Seveneves after we zoom forward to the future and stuff got weird, a bit too weird for my suspension of disbelief. Does it get back to more hard sci-fi stuff or remain as something which, to me, felt more like a sci-fantasy hybrid? Oddly enough I love books like Dune, but the dramatic change in Seveneves was just too jarring for me to continue enjoying it.
- 2024throwaway 3y ago
  I would argue the sci-fi indeed gets so hard, that it becomes soft again by nature. The technology falls away from the focus, as it should, but it is still very much there.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I think it's pretty clear from the comments here that there are those of us who just can't really buy the jump-cut and there are those who can.
- auspiv 3y ago
  I was listening to it on audio book and after the "5000 years later" I paused it and didn't pick it back up for a long while. Slogged through the rest. Won't read/listen to it again. The ending was ok. This was my first Stephenson book. Not going to do more.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I think Seveneves would have worked better for me had the jump cut been a significantly shorter period of time, had there been a shorter more hand-wavy epilogue that didn't get into all the detail, and (frankly) had it thrown out a lot of the last part of the novel. But I'm not Neal Stephenson either.