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Comment by sfjailbird | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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

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