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Comment by SeanLuke | Hacker News Reader

I greatly dislike Snow Crash: it feels like slogging through Leviticus, plus an astronomical amount of suspension of disbelief.

However.

There is no doubt in my mind that Snow Crash has the finest first chapter I have ever had the pleasure of reading. You should buy the book just for the first chapter.

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I have similar feelings about the book. "an astronomical amount of suspension of disbelief" is a good way of putting it. There's too much detail and too little explanation, and so I felt like I couldn't see the forest because the trees were in the way.

Here's a HN comment I wrote shortly after reading it last year:

> Snow Crash is so bizarre. It launches you straight into the story with no explanation, starting off with some crazy pizza delivery man in a rocket car with swords and an electric zapper thing for people who don't pay the bill. The whole book is like that--it never explains how, why, or when, leaving you to piece it all together yourself. The entire time I was reading it, I was waiting for a 30000 feet view of the world. But then it ended, never having fully explained itself.

> I've never read anything else quite like it, and honestly don't know what I think of it. Are all of Neal Stephenson's books like that?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19704665

To your last comment, I bought Snow Crash, based on a lot of recommendations, and hated it, for the stated reasons. It completely put me off Neal Stephenson. Then, much later, I relented and got Cryptonomicon, and it is one of my favorite books ever.

I have since dabbled a bit with Stephenson, and amazingly his other books fall along the same divide for me. Zodiac is amazing, the Victorian sci-fi series (Diamond Age?) are unreadable. One book, Seveneves, the first part is amazing Neal Stephenson, the second is lazy, naive and dumb Neal Stephenson. Super puzzling, almost as if he has (really bad) ghost writers.

I have since gone back to Snow Crash (could not finish it the first time), and with some overbearing, it is not entirely unlikable.

That's funny because I love The Diamond Age, I like Snow Crash and thought Cryptonomicon was mediocre at best. I also never made it to the second half of Seveneves because I disliked the beginning so much.

Clearly there are two styles of Stephenson books, and we like the opposite ones.

[edit]

Maybe I should try finishing Seveneves to see if I like the ending?

Hear, hear. The Diamond Age is probably my favourite:

  The Diamond Age +++
  Snow Crash ++
  Quicksilver/The Confusion/The System of the World ++ (I think it makes sense to rate them as a series)
  Anathem +
  Seveneves -
  Cryptonomicon -
  Reamde --

Fall, or Dodge in Hell: hate to admit it but I haven't read it yet. It's sitting right next to The Rise and Fall of DODO, which is also waiting to be read. And I should probably read Zodiac at some point, but it hasn't seemed urgent.

I'm not hugely fond of the earlier books but I loved Cryptonomicon and all of the later novels apart from Reamde - Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pretty good in my view and ties up some loose ends from earlier books in satisfying ways.

I still think The Baroque Cycle would make a wonderful sprawling multi-series show (Jack Shaftoe being one of my favourite fictional characters).

If you didn’t know....and I don’t want this to be a spoiler, but you figure it out in the first few pages...Fall is a direct and some what spiritual sequel to your two lowest rated....that being said it waves in a good bit of the snowcrash absurd stuff as well.

I roughly agree with your ratings and would rate Fall/Dodge in Hell at a ----.

yeah, I too did not like Fall/Dodge in Hell. However, the first section, about internet hate/bot culture I liked.

I was captivated by the first half of Seveneves and simply endured the second half. The very end was like, “meh - I see what you did there” but to get there took great feats of endurance.

You're probably thinking of The Baroque Cycle, which is pre-Victorian.

Not OP but I think they are talking about Diamond Age. It's set in futuristic Victorian society.

"series" definitely suggests they meant Baroque Cycle since it is 3 books, even if "Victorian" misses the mark by a few hundred years.

Diamond Age is a single book, and one of the "phyles" (cultures / pseudo nation states) is called the Neo-Victorians

No one else is mentioning Anathem, so I'll plug it here. It's a glacially paced math-fiction book that gets pretty good around page 800 or so. I enjoyed it, but can definitely see why others wouldn't. In any case, I read it years ago, but IIRC it does eventually more or less deliver on the 30,000 foot view.

>Are all of Neal Stephenson's books like that?

He got better over his career, but the short answer is yes.

The Big-U and Interface were fantastic.

In case you haven't read anything else, and for other people here, yes his books are projects.

I really liked Seveneves though. And The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. has been good so far!

Interesting. I've loved most of Stephenson's books and Cryptonomicon easily holds the title of most re-read book in my collection.

Seveneves, on the other hand, I absolutely loathed in basically every regard. My loathing for it makes it memorable enough to be my most hated book (there are plenty of books out there that are 'worse', but are also unmemorable -- Seveneves is viscerally memorable)

the end of seveneves is what fucks it, it's a great book until the last third/quarter.

I actually like the ending of Seveneves - not as great as the first part but still pretty good.

> The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. has been good so far!

If you give up reading when it gets to the Halloween party, you’ll be sorted. The ending is disappointing.

> it feels like slogging through Leviticus

I genuinely laughed out loud when the article called the book "accessible". I enjoyed the book much more than you did, but it is nearly 500 pages long and full of long, in depth, and dry discussions about a variety of obscure topics like linguistics and ancient Sumerian mythology. That isn't for everyone.

Compared to anything post-Cryptonomicon, it's incredibly accessible. The digressions into ancient sumerian mythology are broken up fairly well with action scenes. It's not like it spends 3 pages describing a technique for eating breakfast cereal...

I literally bought 5 boxes of Capt'n'Crunch to try to figure out what the hell he was talking about. He spent so long trying to get us to grok the process and experience the joy too.

I tried, Neil, I really did.

But I came up with bupkiss. It just cuts the roof of your mouth, Neil. There is no magic in them. No joy, just oral soreness.

Also, the card deck cypher is really cool, but when your little cousin comes over and then ruins the cypher to play solitaire, yeah, that sucks.

Mostly nostalgia bait, they're little sugar bombs for kids... who go apeshit for anything sugar. Turns into a comfort food -- my dad still occasionally splurges on sugary breakfast cereal.

That he got you to try it is perhaps the best praise you could give.

Cryptonomicon’s the only one of his four books I’ve read that I thought held up for the whole length. Anathem was interesting but spent too much time treading water, then fizzled out. The Diamond Age was one of my favorite first thirds of a sci-fi book that ended up being one of the most frustrating books I’ve finished. I’ve rarely been angry at a book but that one did it, so, that’s something I guess. I’ve read an actual book of Sumerian texts in translation so my Can Tolerate Boring cred is legit, but the mythology sections of Snow Crash—which are a lot of the book—were a real slog. Cryptonomicon? Consistent and fine throughout, and even has a real ending that might have been thought out from near the beginning.

Zodiac is quite good. It's early from him so it has a rough spot or two, but it's a fun time and doesn't linger too long.

Might check it out. Snow Crash is my second favorite of his that I’ve read—despite not enjoying a good chunk of it—largely on account of its shortish length.

I agree that Cryptonomicon was more consistent; I just didn't like what it had to offer.

Sure, and my breadth of reading of and connection with Stephenson‘s work, especially considering his popularity, are such that I wouldn’t claim anything like authority on the matter. Just offering another view in case anyone’s in here looking for reading advice or recommendations, for which I think I have just enough experience and perspective to offer something that might help someone, at least so far as defending Cryptonomicon as, to the right reader, a highlight among Stephenson’s books, and maybe not just for crypto nerds (I wouldn’t count myself as one). Lots and lots of people really like the three of his books that struck me as so-so to poor, so plenty of folks surely think I’m wrong there.

Snow Crash could definitely make a good series. Of the three I’ve read but didn’t like much, I’d say it’s the one I’d be most likely to enjoy as a show even if it barely deviated from the book, in fact. Hell, it has a better shot in that format than Cryptonomicon would. And anyway, Cryptonomicon’s more speculative elements are probably not aging very well since I read it—too much of it’s become ordinary and mundane.

> Cryptonomicon’s more speculative elements are probably not aging very well since I read it—too much of it’s become ordinary and mundane.

Indeed. I call this the Serial Experiments Lain effect.

I'm /still/ trying to read Anathem.

> it feels like slogging through Leviticus, plus an astronomical amount of suspension of disbelief

You sure you're not confusing it with Anathem? SnowCrash was a quick read for me, but Anathem made me hate reading and I don't think I even finished it.

How far into Anathem did you make it? Anathem has a glacial beginning - the introduction is perhaps 200 pages long. But once you've survived that and the plot starts, it's quite compelling and pays off the glacial introduction. That said, it took me three tries to make it through the introduction. World building a society of mathematician-monks on another planet is tough going indeed.

It's funny, I had the opposite reaction.

The first part was really a great coming-of-age story and was strangely comforting. The world is crazy, but there is a place for people who want to pursue knowledge.

The second part felt like an interruption. I'm usually completely unable to and disinterested in guessing where a plot is going, but I could have summarized the second part without reading it and that made it drag (still decent, still fun at times, but I wish either the twists had been better or that the author had relied on them less).

An interesting take for sure. I too read it as a coming of age story - also strangely comforting - but see the part after the plot proper begins as an allegorical coming of age story as well, recapitulating (and I think I can say this without spoiling the back half) the development of our understanding of mathematics and the natural world post-Newton. It's a bit like he transitions from a personal coming-of-age story to a societal coming of age story: what happens when you grow up and realize that the world is incomprehensibly weird?

At the phrase “societal coming of age” I balked, but I guess the second half is putting the question “which society”, or rather which kind of society can inherit (that is, accept responsibility for) such knowledge? The grossest contrast is between the secular and mathic societies; but the remarkably well recreated dialectic between the Platonists and Sophists in the dinner conversation between the Incanters and Rhetors in the last Lucub... converging on Husserl and phenomenology...! that was golden (one of a few nuggets).

Still I think the question of which society can “come of age” and inherit the world in its full, weird, complexity, is drawn back to the relationship between Orolo and Raz, because that is where the real spark of inspiration (and sacrifice, and fraternity) flies, and, improbably, catches fire.

That really reframed my whole understanding of the story, great!

Who doesn't love 40 pages (more?) of winding a clock as a hook? :)

Agreed, though, that it picks up a tad more after the clock winding and other front matter.

For what it's worth, when I first started Anathem, it was a slog and I put it down a little ways in. A few years later I tried it again and absolutely loved it. If you're a Stephenson fan, don't cross it off the list just yet.

I loved Anathem, one of the few books I can say I absolutely devoured.

Reamde on the other hand...

I liked Reamde, but it's an atypical Stephenson book. Full of action, fast paced, pretty short on exposition, although there are some diversions about handguns and intercontinental aviation navigation.

Anathem was the last passable novel before Neal Stephenson started writing "stories" around a sci-fi concept, rather than writing stories. A throwback to Zodiac, perhaps. Snow Crash and Diamond Age were his best works.

Diamond age was glorious (although I think possibly Stephenson's worst ratio of beginning:ending quality), but I adore Cryptonomicon.

I enjoyed the whole of the Baroque Cycle as well.

Diamond Age has my favorite concepts of any of his books, but the plot is pretty forgettable to me. Like I can't even remember most of it and I've probably read that book 5 times.

The characters are fairly weak as well.

I tried several times but could never get through Diamond Age. Snow Crash is one of my all time favorites and Zodiac was stellar, but that one just never clicked for me.

Anathem I hated the first reading. I’ve now read it seven times, enjoying it more each time, taking time to try and understand it more and more each times. My most recent read of it was incredible, and it’s easily my favourite of his novels.

It is the very finest first chapter I've ever read.

Any tv/film adaptation is playing with the highest possible difficulty score for its opening minutes.

In fact, I'm not sure they could do better than acting out the entire first chapter with a voiceover to tie the transitions together.

It fits a pattern of great books that overdo some sort of theoretical exposition. I think I skimmed or skipped a good chunk of

The language stuff in snow crash (actually I may have read it all I can't remember, but I thought it went on a bit)

The conspiracy stuff in Foucault's pendulum

The Talmud stuff in Unsong

I enjoyed all of these a lot though, especially snow crash and unsong

Brothers Karamazov spends a lot of time on serfs and Russian clergy.

My biggest problem with Snow Crash was at the end of the book. The author has done this in other books too, where you have a very detailed story but then it feels like the end gets rushed. Kind of like another 200 pages of novel get squeezed down to 12 pages.

This is absolutely par for the course for Stephenson. He's written at least 4 books like this, as far as I can tell.

Seveneves in particular is 700 pages of incredible, next-level worldbuilding, then the potential for 3 more 300+ page volumes compressed into 180 pages. It's like at the 700 page mark the "wrap it up" light comes on, and he hastily bookends it.

Stephenson is great at starting stories. Arguably he does this several times in each book.

He can't write endings for shit, though. (Every book of his that I've read - Anathem, Seveneves, Reamde, Cryptonomicon/Snow Crash/The Diamond Age, and more - all fail to come to a satisfactory ending. But I keep reading, because the rest of the books are good...)

Cryptonomicon and Anathem get endings of a sort... later :)

Would you mind expanding on this?

I've read both books and am curious what you mean.

I haven’t read anthem, but his latest is in the cryptonomicon universe....ties up a couple loose ends...or at least shows some repercussions.

Right. It does a similar (albeit smaller scale) thing for Anathem.

I thought his most recent (Fall, or Dodge in Hell) was a followup to Reamde, not Anathem or Snow Crash?

And I was pretty sure Cryptonomicon led into Snow Crash and then The Diamond Age...

The Baroque Cycle seems to end well IMHO.

I'll see your Snow Crash opening chapter and raise you an Excession.

You can't compare Stephenson and Banks. Banks is actually a good writer.

I don't really enjoy Stephenson's prose. It's often plodding, rarely beautiful. Thankfuly, apart from its lacklustre ending, Snow Crash largely compensates through sheer entertainability. It's unapologetically fun in a genre which tends to take itself far to seriously.

In good hands, I really think it can make a very good show.

Heh, sort of agree. It might well be enjoyable if played for laughs. The problem with Stephenson is I think a lot of people (not necessarily including Stephenson) take him far too seriously...

Iirc the first chapter was a short story that he later expanded. I enjoyed the rest Of Snow Crash (way back when) but found everything else he writes to be incredibly boring.

The audiobook version of Chapter 1 is simply sublime. I can listen to it repeatedly and always laugh out loud and marvel at its mastery of language, emotion, and satire. It's as if Mark Twain took a time machine to the future and called you after lunch to tell you about it.

> slogging through Leviticus, plus an astronomical amount of suspension of disbelief.

Plus?

touche.

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