An Interview with Neal Stephenson | Hacker News Reader

An Interview with Neal Stephenson

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    SP: Two-thirds of the way into your novel,
    Seveneves – in fact, on page 569 – you do
    something kind of crazy. The story suddenly
    skips ahead 5,000 years. What’s the idea here?

It took me maybe a week to read the first 2/3's of the book, and about three weeks to read the last 1/3. In many ways, these two parts feel like completely different books, one of which is significantly better than the other.

Also, I was occasionally distracted at the beginning when snippets of dialog from Anathem were reused in the form of exposition in Seveneves.

But, that said, I think the book is worth reading, especially the first 2/3's.

My personal, quick, rough ranking of Stephenson's bibliography:

    * Anathem
    * Snow Crash
    * The Diamond Age
    * Seveneves
    * Cryptonomicon
    * The Baroque Cycle
    * Zodiac
    * Reamde
    * The Interface
    * The Big U

Haven't Read

    * The Cobweb
    * The Mongoliad

Could you cite any of these bits of reused Anathem dialogue? I've read Anathem countless times, and didn't notice anything other than "plane-change maneuvers are expensive" or something to that effect, which I think is more of a truism than reused dialogue.

"Plane change maneuvers are expensive" is the one I remember off the top of my head, but I do distinctly recall another line elsewhere in the book. Sorry I can't be more specific.

I noticed a lot of parallels between Snow Crash and Anathem. Both had dialogues meant to educate the reader, and there is a little overlap in the concepts explored in both books.

Plane change maneuvers _are_ expensive; reusing that sentence can't possibly detract from a book.

Rephrasing such a sentence undoubtedly requires far less energy than the delta v necessary to accomplish the actual maneuver.

Coming up with different phrasings of the exact same concept per book is potentially more expensive in terms of suspension of disbelief.

"Why is she taking a whole paragraph to say, 'Plane change maneuvers are expensive'?"

Why bother? It's not like Stephenson invented that sentence. It's a fact, stated in the simplest possible way. If you google that literal sentence, you'll find quite a few uses unrelated to his books.

Want to take a swing at that yourself? I did do some google searches for the phrase in question, and other people have used it online (though I admit all the citations I found in my cursory search date to after Anathem, though that is no guarantee that they are aping it.)

No comment on re-use or what-not, but:

https://www.google.no/search?q=Plane+change+maneuvers+are+ex...

I enjoyed the second part of Seveneves quite a bit, myself, though I definitely feel like it could easily have been expanded a bit, and become a second volume. I will say, however, that the sharp divides between the "races" felt a bit artificial to me, much like the ways the alien species in something like Star Trek are monocultures, for no obvious reason beyond author/plot convenience.

I'm trying to break through the initial wall in Anathem presently. I think part of what's impeding me is that I bought it in mass-market paperback format, and the binding on my copy is egregiously bad; it's shedding leaves like a Minnesota maple in September.

I think he was going for a take on mitochondrial Eve, and what could happen given current/future technology. But I agree, the racial purity hopes and dreams of the seven Eves would have been obliterated about two minutes after the second space baby hit puberty.

Anathem does take a little while to get into thanks to the language, but it's great!

In one of his recent interviews, Stephenson said that he was intentionally playing off the silly trope of Star Trek type aliens that are basically just caricatures of humans with this-or-that trait emphasized. Not that he was trashing Star Trek, just that he was having a little fun trying to make up a backstory about why humans and vulcans can interbreed.

I assumed all of his books read like this. Stephenson is great at building a world and characters but once the story needs to stumble into some kind of ending, it all gets contrived and uninteresting. (Right now I am stalled at 75% of Snow Crash.)

SnowCrash had an awesome ending!

Man if only he had picked me to build a game with him maybe stuff would have gone better

Thanks! That will help me get motivated to finish it. I really enjoyed most of it so far.

Snow Crash is a much better book if you skim all the stuff about the ancient Mesopotamians. He gets a little off into the weeds with that stuff, and apparently the editor failed to cut things back properly.

interesting... i found that bit one of the most interesting in the book! I also found Snow Crash to be his most readable. I devoured it in just a few sittings!

I agree. It was my favorite part of the entire story as well.

Stephenson had an Authors @Google talk in 2008 [1], which was mostly about his book Anathem. In it he actually addressed what he calls the "Stephenson can't write endings" meme, as he calls it, at 10:54 going on for about three minutes [2]. I think his endings are just fine, myself, and also think that this whole idea that he can't write endings is just a self-perpetuating meme.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnq-2BJwatE

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnq-2BJwatE&t=10m54s

Definitely finish the book. Are you at the weird ancient studies part of the book? It wraps up quick and gets right back to awesome.

I haven't read Reamde, yet. I've read lots of complaints about it on Goodreads, so I'm kind of on the fence about getting it.

In your opinion, how was Reamde compared to works like Anathem, Snow Crash, Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon? I'm asking because I like your ranking :)

Reamde was just bad. Not even on the charts. It's extremely tedious and narratively preposterous.

http://coldewey.cc/post/26464791525/reamde-neal-stephenson-2...

I'm going to read a few reviews of Seveneves before I read it, Reamde burned me so bad. Although now that I know this huge plot point (spoiler warning!?!?).... I don't know which way that tips the scales.

I genuinely don't understand it when people talk about their experience of a work as if their opinions are somehow objective facts. "It was bad" vs. "I didn't like it", for example. That just doesn't make sense to me.

I'm sorry you didn't like it, but that has no bearing whatsoever on the material, itself, or anyone else's experiences of it.

I think that is just a quirk of the English language...

For what it's worth, I also didn't like it - I thought the characters were dry and cliche. Multiple times I caught myself thinking "that makes no sense"...

He cites a few specific issues, like random animal attacks that appear just in time to steer the plot, that are arguably grounds for calling it "bad." Well-written review IMHO.

I'm disappointed that I haven't seen your review of Reamde until just now. I think it's spot on, with the exception that

    They pull the gun out from the holster, chamber
    a round, flip the safety off, line up the sights...

understates the stultifying minutiae of the Makarov holster that Stephenson explores.

edit: Ah, never mind. Just hadn't read far enough into your review.

In my mind it's much more like Zodiac. It's not nearly as "smart" as Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon, and at least to me sort of screamed "grocery store fiction" as I was reading it. That said, I could not put it down, and found myself following every twist and turn with a grin.

Not the GP, but I quite enjoyed it, personally. It's probably the least "Neal Stephenson"-ish work in his oeuvre, to be sure — if you come to it expecting another Snow Crash, you're going to be disappointed — but I had fun with it.

I've read Reamde several times. It's a fantastic book. It's an interesting story set in modern times. I actually think it's a little more down to earth than some of his other work, more of a traditional story arc. I'm a huge fan of Anathem and Reamde is a very different style. The audiobook is also really good with a great narrator.

The cool ideas it presents aren't as cool as those in Snow Crash or Diamond Age, and when it goes off the rails it does so way worse than the other two. As I recall it's about 70% bad Tom Clancy plot.

I don't think you'd miss much if you never read Reamde. Whereas Snow Crash & Diamond Age (haven't read the other two) really do have fascinating premises & ideas.

Reamde is totally worth reading. Great fun!

Have you tried Mother Earth Mother Board?

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html

It's a ~40,000 word article from 1996 he did for Wired about the laying of undersea fiber-optic cables. I'd say it ranks as one of his best writings, just behind the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon

Yep, back in 1996 and thought it was great. I re-read it a couple years ago when his collection of essays, Some Remarks, came out.

Oh God, Mother Earth Motherboard was so great. Im really upset I lost my copy of that issue. That was a real treasure to 16 year old me. I'd love to read it again, in print.

I agree with your list mostly except for two points. Reamde should be near the top and Seveneves closer to the bottom. I found parts of SE to be interesting, but in the first part it just becomes a series of characters making more and more unrealistic choices in a survival situation.

I was really into the story until the President shows up. Then for no reason with clearly defined motivations, she starts making divisions that other well trained and selected people start following for no clear reason. It was like Neal knew where he wanted to be in 5000 years, but once he got everyone into space and Earth destroyed he didn't know how to tie them together. So he introduces Julian as a mcguffin to kill the swarm and whittle the survivors to 8 people.

And don't get me started on the mermen.

Maybe you've had the fortune to not have met any really manipulative people. Julia seemed pretty plausible to me.

I think you're bending the term 'McGuffin' slightly past its limit. Originally it meant "interchangeable object of pursuit that drives the plot" - a secret document, a special microchip, a stolen diamond etc. Recently I've seen people using it to mean "contrived shift in the plot", but even then it seems wrong to apply that label to a person. Villain or antagonist maybe?

Grrr.... being 1/2 through that book right now, I really wish I hadn't opened this comment thread with this comment at the top. Spoiler alert???

I still can't believe he willingly worked at Intellectual Ventures -- largely considered the most egregious (successful?) patent troll. I still purchase, read, and enjoy each of his books... but I feel a small pang of guilt knowing that some of his ideas may have originated from a shady organization.

Neal, if you're reading... perhaps you could shed some light and assuage our misgivings?

Also ripping off all his fans (including myself) on his failed kickstarter.

Stick to books Neal.

I know a lot of people feel ripped off, but as a funder, I think it was a genuine, if failed, experiment, and I was glad to fund the attempt.

Pre-kickstarter: "They told us a true-to-life sword-based simulation wouldn't be any fun. Help us make one and prove them wrong"

Post-kickstarter: "They were right"

He draws a distinction between Intellectual Ventures and Intellectual Ventures Labs (where he worked):

http://corporation9592.com/Intellectual_Ventures.html

I'm just getting into Neal's work. I saw Snow Crash on a list of best sci-fi (maybe via HN) and started there. I then read Diamond Age and just finished Cryptonomicon (which I really liked—probably my favorite of the three).

I started reading Anathem, which I know is seen as his "seminal work" but it's been a slow start for me: all the made-up vocabulary combined with strange names makes it a very disjointed reading experience.

I read the first chapter of Seveneves back in May, so that one is on the list, as is The Baroque Cycle.

I had the same experience with Anathem. It is a little hard to get in at first. But about 200 pages in, it really starts rolling. Great mix of world, plot, characters, and ideas. (Ultimately, it is a mashup of Plato and quantum mechanics.)

That was my sense as well, so trying to gut through it. I had a similar problem with Infinite Jest (i.e., getting into it), but know the payoff is well worth it.

Yeah, long-timescale math monasteries just seemed like an attempt to bore me to death. There's no initial event, no mystery to grab you — but when that does kick in, you're firmly grounded in this world. Then it's a great story, until that ending, which takes it even another step further out.

If by chance you missed it, there is a glossary at the end of the book. (I've seen some comments from people who didn't notice until they finished it.)

Also, if you enjoyed the Shaftoes and Waterhouses of Cryptonomicon, consider putting the Baroque Cycle before Seveneves.

I didn't notice the glossary and I am actually glad I didn't. By the end of Anathem all of the strange names for things become second nature and you understand from the context what their meaning is. It is almost like what happens when you learn a new language and are able to think in that language.

I'm reading an ePUB, so hard to flip back and forth. Probably easier just to try to drink from the proverbial firehose until you can internalize it.

A bit of warning about Seveneves: treat it as a duology. A lot of readers complain about the pacing problems caused by that 5000-year jump the article mentions. Basically, the pace slows down to a crawl again at that point and starts slowly building up.

If you treat Seveneves as one book, that might annoy you. If you treat it as two books, published at the same time so you don't have to wait for the next one after you've finished the first, then it suddenly makes sense.

And if you're used to Neal's writing style, then you already possess the patience you need with almost every one of his books, because they usually start slow and build up a tremendous momentum over time, until they reach a frantic pace and then they just... stop ;)

Don't get me wrong, I love his books, but I'm all too aware that you simply have to get used to his style and "forgive" him for certain aspects of it. I know I can and do, but I also know people who can't.

> they usually start slow and build up a tremendous momentum over time, until they reach a frantic pace and then they just... stop

That was my problem with Diamond Age. I was left wondering, "Where's the last 100 pages!? Is this an unfinished manuscript?" Cryptonomicon was better balanced at the end, IMO. Snow Crash was OK (given that it is kind of a weird book overall), but similar trend.

Anathem is seen as his seminal work? Huh. It is, by far, my least favorite of his books.

The Baroque Cycle is fantastic and I just finished Seveneves which is really good as well.

It's a very divisive book, people seem to love it or hate it. I'm a long time Stephenson fan, have read everything he wrote multiple times (excepting Seveneves for the moment), and Anathem is my most favourite of his works.

Maybe it was the monk aspect but it felt very much like Eco's In the Name of the Rose -- another book that everyone seems to love but that just didn't reach me for some reason.

Interface is oft forgotten, but it is a very good book, and very timely with era of billion dollar presidential campaigns and industrial strength data mining.

> just finished Cryptonomicon (which I really liked—probably my favorite of the three).

I pretty much gave up Stephenson after I got half way through "Cryptonomicon". (Really enjoyed "Snowcrash" and loved "Diamond Age"). But then I read (half of) it after I'd just finished Singh's "The Code Book".

It just felt like Stephenson's science and drama subtracted from the real-world science and drama the book was inspired by.

My theory was that after "Diamond Age" he couldn't get an editor that dared cut his manuscripts in half any more. But I'm willing to give some of his newer books a chance -- I see they're quite well received by people that seem to like other good books :-)

If you enjoyed "Snow Crash", you might also enjoy (or hate...) Bruce Sterling's "Islands in the Net".

FYI ... we've posted some behind the scenes video as well as some illustrations at Neal's site -- http://seveneves.lithive.com and will be sharing some beautiful illustrations of some of the vehicles in the next day or so.

video is interesting. thanks.

Neal Stephenson is my favorite contemporary writer. I really think he stands apart — his ideas are big, varied, and interesting, and he doesn't limit himself to one particular corner of fiction. Definitely worth checking out, if you haven't read his work.

I'd especially recommend "The Diamond Age" to start with.

I only read The Diamond Age. It's setting is grand, immaginative and full of detail. I was specially enamored with the concept of "ractors".

But the last 100 pages left me extremelly dissapointed. Some plot threads go nowhere, others intersect "just because". The whole ending sequence was weird and happened too fast. I guess there was some moral or meaning to the end, but if there was i just didn't get it).

And there was a disgusting thing that happened that left me really disturbed. (I'm usually NOT disturbed by that kind of situation. I guess I was just really attached to the character. And the way it was written was tactless and too casual).

But I loved the rest of the book. I think of it as a great meal with a crappy desert :)

EDIT: About "Ractors": After VR sets in, I can totally see "racting" being the next big thing for entertainment!

EDIT 2: Forgot a "not" in there.

I've read a few of his books, and what they seem to have in common are the badly written endings. He doesn't seem to be able to properly wrap up a book (although I haven't read the last couple of his).

This is definitely a common flaw. If I recall correctly, he gives up on endings altogether in Anathem, with the narrator literally writing something along the lines of "there's much more left to tell, but this is enough." Seveneves skirts the issue by basically slapping together two rather disjoint stories, ending one "book" by abruptly beginning another.

Not the worst flaw in an author, once you know to expect it.

I've read a few as well, and I totally agree. It seems everyone else whose read his books says the same thing. His ending just never compare to the fantastic worlds and stories he creates in the first 2/3's.

I understand where people are coming from when they say Stephenson's endings aren't up to snuff, but I disagree. His endings are usually like the ending of the first Matrix movie. Things are about to get very different for almost everyone; the story was about how that transformation happened, not what that transformation is. Saying anything further would feel, at best, extraneous. At worst, it would undermine the story that was just told.

Right. A story with an ending is nice, but he makes whole worlds that stick in my mind, where endless stories can play out.

Snow Crash is much lighter fare, and my usual suggestion for people who want to try Neil Stephenson. Though with the audience here, Cryptonomicon is probably a good bet.

Zodiac is fun and lighter than Snow Crash.

Indeed. It's got some really great one liners, the kind of stuff that is a bit lower brow, but makes me so giddy I have to read it aloud. If you don't believe me:

http://soquoted.blogspot.com/2006/04/neal-stephenson-zodiac....

Absolutely, Zodiac was excellent. I feel like Snow Crash is slightly more representative, though I guess his range is pretty huge at this point; the difference between, say, Big U and Anathem is cavernous.

Cryptonomicon was my first contact with Stephenson, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It also opened my eyes to WW2 crypto and a whole lot of other very interesting things!

I really hope Seveneves is the first of a series. It left a few seemingly important dangling questions and teasers.

Also, I wonder if he's angling for an RPG spinoff. Not to give too much of the last third up but the character types felt very 'rpg class-ish' to me at the end complete with complementary factions.

I would pretty much buy anything Stephenson writes, but I wasn't all that happy with this book. It's very depressing in that you get a look at the deaths of billions of people, something they all know about well ahead of time. I found myself reading it the same way Cory Doctorow describes here: http://boingboing.net/2015/06/03/neal-stephensons-seveneves....

> Stephenson builds up a sense of brutal inevitability, of humanity's insignificance in the cosmos that had me putting the book down for hours at a time, unable to read on (but my curiosity always overcame my sorrow).

The final (future) part of the book was more fun; I could have gone for just that with some references to what happened in the past. Indeed, there were various things that didn't feel wrapped up at the end, and I wonder if there's a sequel coming or he's just going to leave it like that.

Perhaps because I didn't care much for the first part, I found myself more critical of some of the science fiction too.

I just finished reading Seveneves (his latest book, which this interview is mostly about), and quite liked it. It is quite depressing though.

Good to hear, I've been looking for another hard science fiction book since The Martian.

It's actually a lot more like The Martian than you might think. Most of the book is about how hard it is to live in space.

Yeah, I read Seveneves, then The Martian and many things felt very familiar. I have to say, however, I was very annoyed with the style of The Martian.

It definitely tickled some of the same parts of my curiosity. Grinding hard sci fi.

Seconded! I really enjoyed it - fun hard scifi and almost like two different books (and sets of characters) in one!

I'm sort of curious how you set up "and then the moon explodes".

Is this the sort of event that has a theoretical foundation in astronomy or physics?

Something hits the moon with enough force to cause it to break apart. He doesn't speculate at all what it might have been. I think he'd say it doesn't really matter - It happened, now what?

In the book the initial assumption was that it was hit by a tiny primordial fast-moving black hole. They never really follow-up on it, being distracted by issues of survival.

Sorta-kinda-not-really. The closest thing to an explanation in the public excerpt [1] goes like this:

The most generally accepted theory was that the puff of dust observed by the Utah astronomer was caused by an impact. That the Agent, in other words, came from outside the moon, pierced its surface, burrowed deep into its center, and then released its energy. Or that it simply kept on going out the other side, depositing enough energy en route to break up the moon. Another hypothesis stated that the Agent was a device buried in the moon by aliens during primordial times, set to detonate when certain conditions were met.

[1] http://www.nealstephenson.com/news/2015/04/13/seveneves-exce...

Not really, and the scenario has some other problems too[1]. But all sorts of books have fantastic premises, just look at Lord of the Rings! I can accept an awful lot of improbability in a book's setup as long as the plot given that premise makes enough sense. In Seveneves it did so I was happy.

[1]http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2015/06/seveneves-an...

I spent a long time pondering the premise of the subsequent planetary bombardment. Would the moon fragments really bang into one another the way they do in the book? Would it lead to massive fragmentation and ultimately the aforementioned bombardment?

for the last few decades, the kinds of really smart geeks who in the 50s and 60s would have been building rockets or something have been moving to Silicon Valley and creating startups to make little apps.

Ouch! So close to home. So true. But now we've automated the process - http://tiffzhang.com/startup/ - those people can get back to something more useful, like finally learning IPv6 to allow us to build mesh networks for swarming spacecraft to evade inbound asteroids.

I'm almost done with seveneves and the thing that gets me is how defensive his wrighting has become.

He explains every semi-technical concept in excruciating detail as if he expects an army of angry nerds to tear the book to shreds if he doesn't explain early research into how whips work or the theoretic underpinnings of how swarming algorithms work.

Oh, Neal Stephenson, ins't that the guy from this one sword fighting game on kickstarter?

This is sort of like saying, "Oh, Richard Stallman. Isn't that the guy who sings Hungarian folk songs?"

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