Why I Am a Bad Correspondent (1998) | Hacker News Reader

Why I Am a Bad Correspondent (1998)

nealstephenson.com

48 pointsluu28 comments

Title currently says 2015, but the "Bad Correspondent" essay is originally from 1998. There's a thematic followup called "Why I am a Social Mediapath" that's from 2015 though.

> I am trying to be a good novelist, and hoping that people will forgive me for being a bad correspondent.

%s/novelist/coder

%s/a bad correspondent/unresponsive on slack

> If I organize my life in such a way that I get lots of long, consecutive, uninterrupted time-chunks, I can write ...

I’m surprised that he isn’t wealthy on the back of his world famous novels, and also why some of his novels haven’t been brought to cinema. Snow Crash would make a good film in the Internet age.

Perhaps, this essay is old though, and by now he is and some of them have been.

I just wish he would go back to writing hard sci fi books like Snowcrash. IMHO after/during Cryptonomicon he started writing books only very serious people would enjoy.

I admit I haven't tried to read anything after his baroque cycle. (Which I couldn't finish. I got so bored.)

Did he ever recover from that desire to write those overly complicated books?

Anathem is really good, and possibly his best. Several big ideas that will make you close the book and go for a long walk to think about, and it also has a real ending. Deserves and rewards multiple readings.

Reamde is a lightweight page-turner, but fun.

Seveneves and Fall: meh.

D.O.D.O.: can't say anything good about it. Only Stephenson book I've donated to a drop-box.

> Reamde is a lightweight page-turner, but fun.

Read it a couple of times. Totally agree. This, but at a larger scale (like Snow crash) is the kind of Stephenson I love!

Thanks for your thoughts. I think I'll try reading Anathem.

I didn't follow up with the entire novel, but the opening chapter to Seveneves had some of the energy of Snowcrash.

Um, now when you say so, I think I actually bought the ebook on some platform and started reading it. Then I was distracted.

It's so hard to read books ~20 years later. So many other things pulling for your attention. Like HN.

https://www.engadget.com/2019-12-14-snow-crash-tv-series-hbo...

Ready Player One was competently directed by freaking Steven Spielberg with a "$155–175 million" budget and still sorta disappointed lots of us who had read the book.

Perhaps some awesome scifi books are just better left to the imagination?

Edit: I felt the same after watching "Ender's Game" (2013).

Edit 2: I felt that the TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens" featuring David Tennant and Michael Sheen was absolutely brilliant. I hadn't gotten around to reading the book yet though...

Both Ready Player One and Ender lacked grittyness and good actors to carry the roles. Turning them into fluffy afternoon cartoons. Good Omens on the other hands was solidly built around good acting and a style that fit the book.

This article also says that Amazon may develop William Gibson's "The Peripheral". https://www.engadget.com/2019-11-13-amazon-william-gibson-th...

I'd love to see that!

How do you know he isn't wealthy?

He wrote as much, it's at the end of the essay.

Which is 22 years old now.

HN title said 2015 when parent wrote that comment.

The text on this site is so annoying to read due to lack of contrast.

I have in the past been very critical of some web pages for poor readability. When I first read this page I didn't think it was that bad. I have seen web pages designed by professionals that are much worse: tiny fonts and really low contrast.

If you are using Firefox there is an extension named "Tranquility" that does a reasonably good job of correcting readability issues. I don't know if there's a similar extension for Chrome.

Save this as a bookmark/shortcut/tool

  javascript:(function(){var%20newSS,%20styles='*%20{%20background:%20white%20!%20important;%20color:%20black%20!
  important%20}%20:link,%20:link%20*%20{%20color:%20#0000EE%20!important%20}%20:visited,%20:visited%20*%20{%20
  color:%20#551A8B%20!important%20}';%20if(document.createStyleSheet)%20{%20document.createStyleSheet
  (%22javascript:'%22+styles+%22'%22);%20}%20else%20{%20newSS=document.createElement('link');
  %20newSS.rel='stylesheet';%20newSS.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles);%20
  document.getElementsByTagName(%22head%22)[0].appendChild(newSS);%20}%20})();

I added some line breaks to your JS because it was borking the layout of this page. Sorry—it's our bug; we're going to fix it.

Quick fix for me was to "select all" which for you might be Ctrl-A, or Command-A, or a comically annoying ordeal of long-pressing and dragging selection handles around...

Yeah, I edited the CSS before reading...

Cal Newport's Deep Work [0] strongly advocates for exactly what he's doing. Neal may say "Bad Correspondent", but someone like Cal would argue that he's doing exactly what he must do to be successful as an author. Cal even mentions that Neal is his "Deep Work Idol" for this reason [1].

The difference is, Neal seems to feel badly about this, likely due to the pressures society puts on public figures to be available to them.

I really like the "Sender Filter" concepts outlined in Deep Work to help address this very issue (also discussed on Cal's blog) [2].

If you haven't noticed, I re-read Deep Work recently, so it's all fresh ;)

[0] https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/

[1] https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2016/02/16/write-an-attentio...

[2] https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2016/04/12/to-make-email-eas...

I think in Fall he calls the internet "The Sewer"... In case anyone was confused how he felt about it :-)

Miasma

He is a worse web designer.

At least he can pay his bills with his books.

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