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I am just here to thank HN for introducing me to Neal Stephenson. My life has been made better by reading his books.

It's so nice that someone writes books for smart people.

All and every book I read before were for the lowest common denominator level of people. Sure, smart, educated, cultured, wise people could get more out of some of them (like Anna Karenina), but the books were written to be made accessible to each and every human.

Getting to know Neal's works has brought in a paradigm shift in my reading and thinking, and now I read other authors like Greg Egan, too.

Thanks to Neal for being himself. And thanks to HN for suggesting his works on books threads.

I am reading Quicksilver right now, and read Anathem, Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age before. Loved each one.

If you are reading this comment, feel free to suggest me other authors or works, although not from Neal, as I will read ALL of his works, anyway.

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> It's so nice that someone writes books for smart people.

I've read a lot of Stephenson and I don't mean this as a knock against him exactly, just an observation: he writes in a way that is inclined to make the HN crowd (myself included) feel smart because we are the target audience.

If you look at a lot of the protagonists, many of them are startup founders and game designers and coders and cryptographers and mathematicians, going on "heroes' journeys" where they save the world and/or get the girl. Nerds (aka hackers) who save the day. It's almost like it's engineered to stoke the egos of technologists.

Stephenson (who - again - I have read a lot of, and admire in a lot of ways) will always feel to me like a bit of a relic from early Internet culture, where a sort of persona was idolized. The startup founder / hacker / clever man (it was always a man).

A similar author to me is Andy Weir.

Thanks, I know all this.

But if I spelled out all nuances and caveats, then that wouldn’t be a comment, right?

Neal's books aren’t for smart people like Quantum Mechanics books are. I know.

But then again, what is smartness? Isn't a lot of what smartness is, is having the right background and preparedness?

All caveats and nuances can't be included everywhere, right?

I read Andy Weir's Peoject Hail Mary. It's something that I liked, yeah, but would have much more appreciated when I was 17. Not right now.

Now I like my books to be more wide, covering multiple aspects of reality.

E.g., when you read Permutation City, it is not only some SciFi, but it enables you to think deep and hard about consciousness and self.

I am yet to read Dune, but I think it is also a "deep" book.

I disagree. Neal's characters are mostly weak and forgettable. Even the storylines often seem to be playing second fiddle. The real power is in his imaginative and thought-through world building. I have close to zero recollection who was the hero in Anathem, instead I often come back mentally to the ideas around the concents and avout society.

You may also like Philip K Dick. There seems to be a decent intersection between fans of each, and while they’re radically different authors, they have the same heavy cerebral load - Dick makes you put the book down, stare into the middle distance, and go “whoa”. The kinds of books that leave a lasting imprint on your mind.

Oh, and Iain M Banks. More accessible, I’d say, but no shortage of Big Ideas.

> "...makes you put the book down, stare into the middle distance, and go “whoa”. The kinds of books that leave a lasting imprint on your mind."

100% solid agree. That's what makes a book worthwhile to read.

I saw The Man in the High Castle series when I had time for webseries, and while it was kinda mid, it had some great aspects.

Suggest more if you can. Need not be Sci Fi.

Well, obviously "Do Androids dream of electric sheep" simply because the movie left out a little bit too much, which you can catch up on when reading the book. Keyword "Mood Organ".

I also liked "Second variety" which has also been rendered as a audio play IIRC.

And, for the non-sci-fi part, A Scanner Darkly is pretty weird. Has also been rendered as a movie...

Second Variety has a movie adaptation - Screamers. It’s pretty bad.

You might like "The shadow of the torturer" by Gene Wolfe. Definitely had a few "whoa" moments in it for me.

Neal's particular strength is in a detailed world-building. Dick created wild worlds, but they are not particularly fleshed out, kinda dream-like in their vagueness, therefore for me not "convincing" in the same way as Neal's worlds are.

With Banks, the worlds (Culture being a major one) are more fleshed out, but somehow to me not as interesting. I've read several of his books, but somehow didn't enjoy the Culture ones a lot (read Player of Games, Use of Weapons and Excession). I did like the A Song of Stone a lot, but that's not even sci-fi. I'm aware my opinion is quite unpopular regarding Banks.

He's detailed (maximalist as he likes to say), but I wouldn't call it worldbuilding (with exceptions). A fantasy author does that. He just gets into the nitty gritty about tech or ideas.

Why can this be called "worldbuilding" in fantasy, but not in sci-fi?

His sci-fi books (Anathem, Diamong Age, Snow Crash) are not just detailing technology, but the whole society. All of the detailed descriptions about concents and avouts (in Anathem) is without any technology since they explicitly disawow technology.

Like I said, exceptions. I don't think tDA and SC do that much worldbuilding, speaking as someone who doesn't usually care for it. Those who ape the Tolkien high-fantasy school lean on it more, meandering descriptions. Anathem is actually my favorite.

> Those who ape the Tolkien high-fantasy school lean on it more, meandering descriptions

You seem to have a very specific idea of what constitutes "worldbuilding".

In my mind, every scifi has to do worldbuilding, because they deal with some non-existent worlds - they can't just rely on reader's being familiar with reality. They can't just say "imagine it exactly like today's US, just with faster than light travel". The authors have to describe the setting of the plot to the reader to at least some detail. Stephenson does that in my opinion very well and it's the main draw for me.

I haven’t read the books but based on the show, which I’ve just started re-watching, I’d say The Expanse is an exemplar of worldbuilding in sci fi. I agree that GP seems to have an odd idea of what exactly world building is.

I find Stephenson is detailed and wordy as you say, and the dream-like vagueness of PKD’s worlds also stands - but I would say that PKD uses worldbuilding as a narrative tool far more frequently, where through his impressionistic strokes of the pen you end up with an implied and coherent world - only for him to twist it, to shatter it, to absolutely subvert your expectations.

His shorts are where he shines, but I’ll admit to having read and enjoyed his entire corpus, down to the man’s withering legal correspondence.

I’ve gotta say I do love the culture series and his sci-fi works, but I have an equal amount of shelf space dedicated to Iain Banks - The Bridge and Whit stand out.

I always found most of PKD’s short stories quite excellent, but all of his full-length books that I have read have been a slog. It’s quite telling that almost all of the movies based on his works have been based on his short stories, not novels.

Therefore, I always recommend that people start reading his short stories, and avoid his books. See also: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8805118>

Three Stigmata and DADOES are my favorites and they're full-length. The only one I didn't like was Valis.

> It’s quite telling that almost all of the movies based on his works have been based on his short stories, not novels.

Because that's easier to adapt to 2h films than a long novel? Lots of short stories become film.

I’m probably one of the rare HN subscribers with a formal education in film production rather than CS or engineering, and you are absolutely right. The first thing they teach about screenwriting is to temper one’s ambitions, because two-hours is nowhere near long enough to adapt a full novel without serious cuts. I imagine that’s obvious to anyone who’s been disappointed by a feature adaptation. I assume that it’s also down to the fact that it’s much more fun to expand on a good short story or novella than it is to have to choose what to cut from a good novel.

If you feel this way about the works of Neal Stephenson, might I suggest Cixin Liu?

Though well-done in it's own right, the 3-Body Problem Netflix series does not quite do justice to the intricacy of Liu's writing in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. You might find the change of pace to be somewhat jarring in comparison to Stephenson but it fulfills a similar enjoyment of Science Fiction.

I read 3BP and loved the series.

While not very high quality as literary works, the books are products of originality, and deep thought.

I just appreciate that these books were written down.

I kind of liked Exhalation by Ted Chiang.

I have planned to read other works by Cixin Liu, and check out Ken Liu's works.

Great suggestion, by the way.

I enjoyed 3 body problem. I found the sequels more of a collection of sci fi tropes than a good coherent story. You will get better original thoughts from David Brin, Stephen Baxter and Vernor Vinge

I can recommend for example Hannu Rajaniemi and Peter Watts

seconded, the quantum thief series lives in my brain rent free

Both great authors, both nothing like Stephenson.

Thanks, I will check them out. Any more recommendations?

Karl Schroeder; Bruce Sterling; for far-future implications of tech, Linda Nagata. Elizabeth Bear's _Ancestral Night_. For magnificent scope, Sam Hughes (qntm)'s _Ra_ and _Fine Structure_.

Thanks!

I can recommend Lockstep from Karl Schroeder. Scifi books rarely tackle the problem of huge distances, slower thab light speed travel and the resulting long time scales and their effects on multi-star civilizations (FTL is the usual boring cop-out). Lockstep provides an interesting take on the problem.

qntm's stuff. Also "This is how you lose the time war" is both smart with the world building, and challenging in the good way with the prose.

Is that anywhere close to the Quantum Thief series in research quality/accuracy? I've read physicists who say they can't get time travel to work even in fiction, it's just that incompatible with everything else.

It's implicitly about looping and diverging multi-multiverses. Not hardcore one-casualty-stream-only time travel.

Yeah, that's how you have to do it, but the main issues are 1) what do you care about, which actually surprisingly mostly boils down to how you calculate probabilities in multiverse situations and 2) how the hell do you find anything? Sure, you somehow jump to a different universe, but I can't think of a physics based reason why you'd be able to 1) get back to your original universe and 2) find any other one you jumped to previously ever again.

I'd still at least try it. Sci Fi stuff in it is part of the charm, not the point. Maybe that's non-Stephensonian, I guess.

Definitely read Embassytown by China Mieville. I'll second the Cixin Liu rec (though his series is divisive), and also recommend Philip K Dick.

I read Embassytown and Daemon and Freedom(tm) by Daniel Suarez close together. I find they have an interesting theme throughout regarding the role of truth and manipulation. I would not recommend the sequels to 3 body problem. If you like big picture space opera, Existence by David Brin and Exultant by Stephen Baxter are better.

My current hero is Greg Egan. I wish Incandescence had a sequel. I was sad when the book ended. Probably the best piece of hard sci-fi I've ever read.

I read Permutation City some months back, and it was truly great. Loved it. I am going to read many more of his books.

Not in the style of Neal Stephenson, but if you like hard sci-fi Vernor Vinge and if you like trippy cyberpunk Rudy Rucker.

In the same vein as Vernor Vinge, I would recommend Stephen Baxter. Stephen's writing always gives me the same feeling as when I look at the stars at night and am reminded that where I am is just a small part of everything. The manifold trilogy as well as the long earth series he did with Terry Pratchett are very good. The first is not anthropocentric, which I found was a refreshing change.

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