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Comment by woleium | Hacker News Reader

I really enjoy Stephenson's work. If you have yet to read any of his stuff i'd recommend starting with Cryptonomicon

Snowcrash is where i would begin (where i did begin). It was some years ago now so i don't really remember why I hated cryptonomicon but I did, iirc, the plot jumped around all the time, I couldn't care about the protagonists. Am I remembering correctly that the whole plot ultimately revolved around a large stash of gold?

Cryptonomicon is a fictionalized telling of how Alan Turing cracked the enigma code and how that led to the future of computing.

The timeline does jump around between world war 2 and "modern" times. There was a large stash of gold, but I don't remember that being particularly important in the grand scheme of the book.

It's one of my favorite books of all time.

I love science fiction and read a lot of it, but I just couldn't get through Cryptonomicon, I just have the feeling that after a lot of pages nothing is really happening. Should I just keep reading until it gets better then? The start seems super slow with 0 interesting developments.

IMO Cryptonomicon is one of those novels where the journey is the real destination. If you don't enjoy the texture of his prose as it meanders through weird character episodes and technical exposition, there isn't some huge payoff at the end that will make it all worth it. That's pretty much all the book is.

If you're looking for something built around a more traditional plot, Anathem or Reamde might suit you better. People also like Diamond Age, but I think it falls down at the end--IMO at that point he still hadn't figured out how to write endings.

If Cryptonomicon was hard to get into for them, Anathem will be a nightmare.

It still is my favorite of NS books but easily accessible it is not.

Reamde would be the most accessible, it's basically a more techy Tom Clancy novel partly set in World of Warcraft.

I'm not convinced it's the subject matter and/or length turning people off Cryptonomicon. For all its weird made up words and spec-fic wankery, the fact is that Anathem has a pretty standard YA-esque protagonist and a relatively coherent plot that's paced well (IMO) and carries its momentum through to the end. This makes it read more like a mainstream page-turner than a lot of his other works, the most prominent of which is probably Cryptonomicon. I mentioned Reamde for the same reason, though as you say it's a lot more grounded in the world we know.

It seems like at least one child of my comment agrees with me. It's interesting (and kind of neat) how much fans of Stephenson seem to disagree on the merits of his individual works.

I'm a big fan of Anathem but never made it through Cryptonomicon despite a few attempts. So I don't think this is necessarily true.

I liked both Cryptonomicon and Anathem once I actually punctured through the wall of frankly gratuitous language, but I fell asleep multiple times on the way. Recommending it to other folks is something I wouldn't do I think, as I don't feel the books were very well written.

I really like all of his novels from Cryptonomicon onwards - apart from Reamde - I did like Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, probably because it wrapped up the Baroque Cycle in such a neat way.

Diamond Age is definitely my favorite, despite the shortcomings at the end. Having said that, "Fall, or Dodge in Hell" is the only book of his that I've struggled to keep reading.

Fall is AFAICR the only one of his that I've at least half regretted reading all the way through, and this from an until recently compulsive -- in the sense that I always finished every book I hadn't given up on already in the first few (tens) of pages -- reader. (Fortunately, I seem to have outgrown that recently.) Anyway, it was weird how bad I found it, given how much I liked the previous Dodge book (especially the part with the kids driving through the "Facebooked" West). [EDIT:] Cribbing from sibling comments: Reamde ? [/EDIT]

In online discussions, I've seen Seveneves getting a lot of flack, which I also found peculiar because IMO it was great; pretty much a return to Snowcrash form but with the added bonus of a few decades experience (so he knows how to write endings etc :-) ).

But after Fall, my second-least-favourite of his may be Diamond Age. Can't recall for sure why, been ages since I read it. [EDIT:] Not that I thought it was bad, I think. Just the least good of many many good books. Apart, that is, from Fall. [/EDIT]

I also enjoyed Diamond Age, as well as several other Stephenson novels.

However, I recommend against The Big U. It's awful.

I think one of the points people like Stephenson is his sometimes slow, semi rambling erudition on a matter of things that a particular mindset finds an entirely thrilling. Most of his good stuff is about the world and the books are just lenses into queer and interesting things.

Similar writers - Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Umberto Eco, Douglas Adams.

This slow ponderous style with brief moments of impactful plotting might not suit all.

You missed out on the part about how purchasing high quality furniture improves a marriage's sex quality.

It’s probably the longest book I’ve read that I didn’t particularly care for. What kept me going was the intermittent amusing cryptographic or engineering digression.

You can tell which places Stephenson visited during his research, because he’ll describe them in great detail, like the business district of some city in the Philippines.

It gets a little better as it goes along, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it.

Me either. I wouldn’t even describe it as Representative of the kind of fiction he is famous for.

Honestly, and I say this as someone who loved the book, it doesn't get 'better'. If you don't like the prose and structure of the first 50-100 pages you probably won't like the book.

Thanx, that's all I needed to know. I have sometimes pushed through hundreds of pages because I knew something was coming, but if nothing is coming I really prefer to spend my time otherwise :)

I was going to offer the same advice (and generalize it to anyone who writes big books, whether its the count of monte cristo or modern sci-fi epics) people who write long books, and therefore people who read them, generally aren't in it for the destination, but the journey.

Having said that, there are some authors mentioned in this thread that didnt immediately click with me that are now my favorites. There's usually at least one (relatively) short book that should give you an entryway to try them out, without the full commitment.

I don't mind long books, I wrestled through the first 400-500 pages of Atlas Shrugged and couldn't put it down after that anymore. Also, the entire Foundation trilogy went down quite well. I can appreciate a journey, but perhaps not all journeys.

It's a good tip to try short books of writers first, I'll do that. Although generally I let myself be guided by reviews, and it works for me in general, Cryptonomicon is one of the outliers.

I’m a fan of stephenson, but honestly i’d skip it. Its not one of his best to the degree that you should force yourself to read it—if the beginning doesn’t grab you, it’s not going to later as it doesn’t change much throughout the book, or the surrounding other three books.

If you haven’t read snowcrash, grab that, it’s a fanatastic book.

The gold is intended to back the cryptocurrency that the modern-era folks are trying to get off the ground. An unassailable gold backing for the currency, plus the data haven project, was supposed to prevent genocide by making fascism more difficult to implement. I think.

Spoilers :-)

Totally agree, it was my intro to his work.

I’d also recommend “Mother Earth Mother Board”, an essay of his also in Wired about the laying of an intercontinental fiber cable. Hugely enjoyable and a good peek into his writing.

My intro to his work was his essay: In the Beginning... Was the Command Line [1]. Back then I didn't read Snow Crash; a couple of years ago I did. Loved it! I haven't been able to get through Cryptonomicon. I did like Diamond Age, but as another commentor said it falls off at the end.

Written by someone with bad attention span when it comes to reading fiction (easily bored/distracted).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Co...

Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books of all time, but as Stephenson's success has risen so has lack of editing.

He's the one author that I think would really benefit from releasing both a "mainstream" copy of his works and then a "director's cut" of the same story.

I agree with this. Snow Crash and Zodiak were such taut novels, Diamond Age was a little lush, and Cryptonomicon was a slog for me and then I tuned out.

My favorite remains Zodiak -- I read it over and over as a teenager and when I moved to Dorchester, MA years later had deja vu when I realized how well he captured the Boston area. I used to do stealth rides on my bicycle around Boston late at night because, yes, the cabbies will try to kill you. Fun times.

And let's not mention Seveneves.

Seveneves was alright, but Anathem, fuck me do I have better things to do. Anathem was the first time I felt a complete disrespect for my time from Stephenson.

Funny Anathem is still my favorite book from him.

Read it 4 times by now, which is quite rare for me.

Seveneves I didn't particular like and sometimes skipped pages at a time. Just goes to show how peoples taste is different.

Anathem is definitely my favorite novel of his, too.

Seveneves: just stop after act 2. Pretend the last couple hundred pages of the book don’t exist.

Fall: this is the first Stephenson book that I ended up skimming. I could not bring myself to care about the endless retelling of Paradise Lost. And yes, I’ve even read The Big U. It was better than Fall, imo.

Snow crash or seveneves are more accessible imo. That’s where I would start. No doubt cryptonomicon is an amazing piece of work, but it’s a beast to get through. Not as much of a beast as Anathem, but still tough.

Anathem is my favorite book of his, but I definitely had to pause and reread and just decide not to fully absorb the detailed architectural descriptions of the maths/monasteries in the early pages.

I lost count of how many times I started and stopped anathem before finally pushing through to finish it. It has to be at least 5 or 6. It’s worth it imo, but I agree there are entire sections that I will never fully understand.

You could tragically gloss over 90% of that and still have a very solid story.

I even enjoy his lesser novels and have read all of his novels multiple times. So, I've been looking forward to this one and just finished my second re-read of Fall, which has grown on me since it came out; probably one of his least accessible novels. Half of the fun in that one is all the back references to his past novels (e.g. Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, REAMDE) with characters and events being referred to.

So, maybe don't start with that one. Snow Crash, the Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon are probably all good ones to start with and all still very much on topic despite being a few decades old now.

English is not my primary language and I had a really hard time getting into the Cryptonomicon. Started three times over 20 years and didn't make it over the first 100 pages the first two times.

Having now finished it I can say that it is definitely worth it, but I would recommend to start with something simpler, e.g. Diamond Age.

I find him frustratingly variable. I enjoyed Snow Crash and reamde and some of his non-fiction work. A lot of the rest (including Cryptonomicon and Seveneves) seems over-long, over-digressive, and annoyingly inconclusive. I don't know why - he's clearly an intelligent and thoughtful author.

Nah, Snow Crash. And then Anathem.

I have read Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. I highly recommend The Diamond Age, it’s just so… interesting. And stunning in parts.

Diamond Age, Snowcrash, and Seveneves are much more accessible and (IMHO) better.

If you want a book where several things are happening on every single page, Reamde is for you.

People treat it like it is not his style because it is an absolute romp. It sends up every action/sf trope in one book. Russians, crashing a business jet, plasma cutter, off-grid extremists, you name it, it's in there.

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