Hacker News Reader

Comment by ceequof | Hacker News Reader

It seems like my first knee-jerk impression of every Stephenson novel of the last decade has been "ugh, terrible", gradually replaced by a retrospective fondness after finishing it.

The first couple pages of Seveneves certainly does not impress, but maybe I'll like it better after reading the whole thing.

View on HN

Anathem was kind of a slog for the first 200-250 pages, but then it started to get good, and then awesome, by the end of the book my mind was thoroughly blown.

Vonnegut spoke at my convocation. His advice for fiction writers was to write your whole work and then throw away the first chapter, thus dumping your reader into the action. He despised setup.

Vonnegut was one of a kind in many ways.

My first reaction to the linked excerpt was that Seveneves reminded me of Galapagos (thematically)

I didn't find the beginning quite a slog but I did wonder if there was going to be a "plot" in the conventional sense. As you say, the rest of the book was a near-continuous crescendo. One scene in particular (Saunt Bucker's Basket!) made me literally stop reading while my brain processed.

My wife read my copy after me. If I remember correctly, she more or less read up to that scene in 5-10 page increments, and then read from that scene to the end in most of one night.

> Saunt Bucker's Basket!

That was, bar none, the best reading experience in my life.

what chapter is that in?

I don't write fiction but when I write longer-form articles, whitepapers, and so forth I find that a good percentage of the time I end up going back and chopping out a good bit of what a former boss described as "throat clearing" at the beginning. Not always; sometimes by chance I hit on a good metaphor or story or some other lead-in that works. But at least as often it's way too much digression and backstory and setup in advance of getting to the actual topic at hand.

With respect to Anathem in particular a lot of the problem is you didn't really understand what was going on for quite a while and I found that made it a bit of an effort to keep going.

That was part of the payoff, though. You're confused at first, wondering wtf is up with the vocabularly people are using, it all starts to make sense about 3/4 of the way through the book.

Damn, I need to read that one again. It's been too long.

And when you read it again, you might find that it's still too long!

I kid, I kid. I ended up loving Anathem too, although I seriously struggled to get going.

It is and, as I recall, Stephenson said as much in a foreword or afterword. Most of the book is an exercise in only partly understanding what's really going on or even the frame of reference you should be applying. It was well done and I enjoyed the book in the end but it definitely had a certain bar to clear in order to get into it. (In general, I find Stephenson's recent books could be tightened up and I didn't really like Reamde; it was a page-turner but suffered from coincidences driving plot.)

The new vocabulary was tough. It was a difficult thing to keep a track of through the whole book.

A Clockwork Orange was the same way. Real effort to get through the first 50 pages or so.

earlier editions of A Clockwork Orange had a Nadsat dictionary in the back for reference.

I had the opposite trajectory. I loved the early worldbuilding but didn't really care for the magical powers invoked at the end.

Glad I'm not the only one.

I think I started, and then shelved, Anathem three times before finally powering through the first third of the book and like you was hooked once I did.

This is how Cryptonomicon was for me. Anathem, I read after that, and I kinda understood what I was getting into, so I got through it much more more quickly.

Hmmm. Maybe I'll give it another shot. I started Anathem twice and just couldn't get into it.

The first time I read Anathem it was certainly slow to get through the first 200 pages, because I kept referencing the glossary to learn the vocabulary. The 2nd and 3rd times I read it the entire book flowed much more smoothly, and even the beginning was quite enjoyable.

I had the exact same experience with Anathem.

I remember around the 200-page point thinking, "ok, now we're getting started."

I had the same experience, anathem took me 4 tries, but eventually I got through the first 200 pages and then thoroughly enjoyed it.

I gave up within the first couple hundred pages. Just wasn't enjoying it.

That's interesting... my reaction to "Snow Crash", "Diamond Age" and "Cryptonomicon" was that the premise set up was interesting but the ending always descended into a lame Hollywood action sequence. I'm sure I'm not the only one?

Same thing happens in Reamde.

Yep, that too, although in that case I didn't even think the premise was that interesting. With the three I mentioned I was totally hooked until the last quarter of the book.

The first couple pages of Seveneves certainly does not impress

Man, no kidding. It feels like a very inelegant info dump. While I realize those tend to show up in Stephenson books at some point or another, it's a rough way to start.

I liked a lot about Anathem but found Reamde unmemorable. I'd love to see a return to form.

Yep, exactly. Stephenson has a crazy lot of potential - Diamond Age hit pretty well for me, Anthem hit, but some of his other stuff are simply not for me. Readme was a straight forward action story in the middle and I just gave up. He seems to have very very different writing modes.

Anathem is one of the best reads in years. But Quicksilver and other book in the baroque cycle is impossible to get through.

Agreed. For me, it seems that on a page by page basis, the writing was phenomenal - he can verbally paint a picture in a way that no one else can. But the whole Baroque Cycle seemed to lack any actual plot, as far as I could tell. I mean, stuff happened, but it wasn't stuff in the course of resolving some central tension to the story, so you had no idea what direction you were traveling in. And I just couldn't go another thousand or two pages aimlessly.

Diamond age was a disaster for me. I found the beginning and middle very good and looked forward to more development of a few things. And then it turned into something completely different and weird. I'd rather see the last pages of his new book just to verify he figured out how to write an ending.

Diamond Age is one of my favourite books. Alongside Cryptonomicon, American Gods and Rainbows End.

Reamde was a dud for me as well.

That's absolutely true. I remember the first 100 pages of 'Cryptonomicon'. I was just trying to make sense of that blabber I wasn't used to. Since English is not my mother-tongue, I had to use the Kindle to search through the dictionary all too often, otherwise it was impossible to follow. After a 250 pages, I was familiar with most words, even saw some patterns emerging. The novel became increasingly more and more interesting as the pages flew by.

I recently started re-reading 'Cryptonomicon' and just finished the first 100 pages. There's an awful lot of setup and flipping between characters but right around this point the stories stop weaving about and begin to demonstrate a determined path. Without those first 100 pages you'd lose a lot of backstory that ends up being pretty interesting as you learn the characters, but I agree it is difficult to follow.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com