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Comment by huhtenberg | Hacker News Reader

No offense to Neal, but I'd love to read more of Snow Crash and Diamond Age style books.

Have you looked at Seveneves? I really enjoyed the first half, never finished the second half. Never really liked Diamond Age, but really liked Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. I have Termination Shock queued up, will see how that goes. The description of this one didn't sound interesting to me.

No, just the synopsis. He lost me at Reamde to be honest.

The first half is pretty good hard-ish sci-fi, might be worth checking out.

The first and second half of Seveneves felt like two different books, each written by a different author. The second half, in my opinion, does not come close to the quality of the first.

That effectively sums it up for me as well. I enjoyed the hard-ish sci-fi of the first half, then it turn into some speculative future storyline and I lost interest 5 mins in.

I'll take another book like Anathem any day.

Stephenson's latest book, Termination Shock seemed tired. It didn't have the sarcasm and vigor that sprinkled his earlier work.

Yeah I'm with you. Actually what I read it as was like a jazz musician who is so deeply into the music he just improvises and puts it out into the world immediately. Diamond age was so well crafted it felt like he agonized over every scene, termination shock felt like he had an outline and just did it in one shot. I didn't like it either although some scenes were fun

Same as Dodge: fall in hell, it's so much longer than necessary, the metaphors were so drawn out. And yet there are enough good parts I'll read it, just not reread

Me too, but i assume this will not happen for a while as this is the first in a series.

I also imagine that his more recent non scifi stuff also appeals to a broader audience

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