Neal Stephenson on the State of Science Fiction

And what are we supposed to do in order to watch all the exerpts? Follow the entire site? No RSS feed, email subscription, anything? Pass.

It's especially ironic considering that they're interviewing a writer.

Nevermind that videos like this are completely inaccessible to the deaf.

I was chatting to a friend about this the other day who felt the same way. He will have moments in his books that will come across as such powerful theologies and ideas that you will spend years thinking about it. The problem is for every mind blowing idea he explores, he has 15 chapters of the wordiest words I've ever worded. I'm reading Cryptonomicon and he spent 19 pages - 19 PAGES - describing a guy eating cereal. Combine that with the fact that he will frequently use words that I don't think anybody but him knows (The whole reason I bought a e-reader was so I can use the definition function to understand what the hell he is talking about) and it feels like I'm reading the literary equivalent of Dark Souls. I really love the ideas he writes about, I just wish he didn't have a burning hatred for the reader.

My biggest problem with Stephenson's works is that he doesn't really finish his books, he either just stops abruptly (e.g. "Diamond Age" or "Snow Crash") or winds down gently, but anticlimactically (e.g. "Cryptonomicon" or "Anathem").

I still love his books, because they're full of awesomeness and the ending doesn't make the rest of the book crap (unlike what BioWare did to Mass Effect with the original ME3 ending).