I'd read it because I was on a cyberpunk binge and wanted to see what the hype was all about. It was shit. I kept picking up Stephenson's later novels and they were shit too.
Stephenson gets praised a lot for some unfathomable reason, and I suspect a lot of it has to do with the fact that he likes to make this big confusing knot of multiple plot threads and post-modernist horseshit correlating something completely unrelated to the plot at hand that forces you to slowly try to unspool the whole mess trying to find some central core of meaning that in the end does not exist and you can't put it back together again. People seem to think that somehow constitutes brilliance. Take everything negative anyone's ever said about Metal Gear Solid 2's plot and multiply that by about 5 or 6 orders of magnitute and you have a Neal Stephenson novel.
While I agree that Snow Crash is basically garbage, I do think you're underselling Stephenson's later work. Where you see messes to unspool many find a treasure trove of fascinating historical facts and trivia to uncover.Originally Posted by dethtoll
At least, in theory. I only made it through 150 pages of Cryptonomicon before I finally admitted I was merely putting in time.
Last edited by Stitch; 27th Oct 2009 at 15:06. Reason: Snow Crash is two words.
I just finished Monstrous Regiment, one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.
For me, this was the last book -- I have now read them all.
I've now started Irvine Welsh's "Crime".
Including Unseen Academicals?
Good analogy. And entirely appropriate.
I like how dethtoll didn't address my first question and answered only half (albeit the significant half) of the second.
FISSION MAILED
Just finished reading the last of the main books from the Honorverse. I love me some good military sci-fi with a touch of space opera and big ass space battles between ships on the order of some 50.000 to 8.000.000 tons!
Took me whopping 30-40 days to go through all 11 books (which started at around 300-400 pages but went up to 800 towards the end).
On a totally unrelated note, anyone got a suggestion for a good military sci-fi and/or space opera series that's not the Honorverse, Vorkosigan Saga or The Saga of Seven Suns?
[EDIT]You can get all but the 11th books and most of the anthologies for free here - there are versions for Microsoft Reader (.lit), Mobipocket (.prc), HTML and RTF. There is no DRM or rootkits or any other filthy content controlling devices - read more about why and how all those books are available for free here (click on Site Information).
Last edited by dj_ivocha; 27th Oct 2009 at 20:51.
STEN. If you liked Honor Harrington you will like STEN. Also take a look at the McCaffrey series. Dinosaur planet and the 4 sequels ending with Generation Warriors.Just finished reading the last of the main books from the Honorverse. I love me some good military sci-fi with a touch of space opera and big ass space battles between ships on the order of some 50.000 to 8.000.000 tons!
Took me whopping 30-40 days to go through all 11 books (which started at around 300-400 pages but went up to 800 towards the end).
On a totally unrelated note, anyone got a suggestion for a good military sci-fi and/or space opera series that's not the Honorverse, Vorkosigan Saga or The Saga of Seven Suns?
Have you signed in at www.honorverse.com ?
I also suggest the BOLO series started by Keith Laumer and continued by many others as well as the MANKZIN wars series.
Stephen Donaldson's The Gap Cycle.
Great overblown themes that work.
The first book is just a novella but the next 4 have plenty of meat on 'em.
(And you can't get much more space opera, Donaldson loosely based the series on Wagner's The Ring, as he explains in the afterword to the first book.)
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
ba da ba ba ba i'm lovin' it
(hi dethtoll)
I don't know how you expect me to answer "what makes you think people are praising Stephenson without reading his books" in any way other than what I did. There's a large contingent of people who enjoy discussing/praising things they've never actually read (or watched, or whatever) as if they actually have. So yes, there are goons out there who like Snow Crash because they've never actually read it, or have only read part of it.
I didn't actually see your second question somehow (I had ten minutes before class and had just woken up from a 3-hour nap in the back of my car) so I'll answer it now: I don't dislike all post-modernist fiction. I just don't like Stephenson. He's overrated as fuck and his books are boring sacks of bullshit. I don't like any of his books, but Snow Crash left me feeling especially cheated.
Hey hey, easy there.
I love Stephenson's work, but I have no trouble admitting he/his work is overrated.
While we're talking overrated...
James Ellroy
He's a great writer, but he's still a big asspipe as a person.
...
Oh, I'd like some advice...
I've been pondering about trying out Dan Brown (the Lost Symbol sounds fairly interesting). But Brown himself has me on the fence. I mean, I don't want prejudge, but God he's a prick. He seems to be oozing with self-importance and that's really setting off alarm bells with me.
Last edited by metal dawn; 27th Oct 2009 at 20:26.
I started to read my first fiction book to read in a while, since maybe The Road, which had been gathering dust on my bookshelf.
THIS:
explains THIS:
But I would be doing you a disservice if I did not tell you, right now, to RUN THE FUCK AWAY. Dan Brown is to literature as a pedophile is to sex. They both have the basic concepts down but are doing it in such a completely wrong way that they make people very uncomfortable or very angry. Dan Brown is the worst writer on the planet. You'd be better off reading Stephanie Meyer for God's sake- she's merely a Mary Sue who made it big. Dan Brown is so bad as to cause apoplexy and madness in those unfortunate to read it while possessing IQs greater than 100. If someone tells you a Dan Brown novel is the best book they ever read, they're probably not lying. Avoid like bubonic super-AIDS.
I don't want a MMO browser Honorverse game, I want movies and TV series instead.
(honorverse.com mailing list kru represent as of now. Any idea on when it'll be done?)
Sounds interesting, adding it to the backlog of books to read, along with tBm's suggestions.
Also added a link to download all of the Honorverse books and anthologies for free in my previous post. Agogogogo
I'd rather gargle with sulfuric acid and pull my eyeballs out with tweezers.
And Dan Brown is worse.
From Dan Brown's 20 Worst Sentences
The Da Vinci Code, opening sentence: Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery.
Angels and Demons, opening sentence: Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own.
Deception Point, opening sentences: Death, in this forsaken place, could come in countless forms. Geologist Charles Brophy had endured the savage splendor of this terrain for years, and yet nothing could prepare him for a fate as barbarous and unnatural as the one about to befall him.
Professor Pullum: “Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic opening sentence”.
Scots, is The Road any good? I ordered Blood Meridian... never read it before.
Should be in later this week with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. According to my coworker the latter book rocks, but it seems like it might be pop fiction. We'll see. Until then I'm inducing self-inflicted torture by trying to get through A Feast for Crows.
I could live with that. Harrington kicks ass.I don't want a MMO browser Honorverse game, I want movies and TV series instead.
(honorverse.com mailing list kru represent as of now. Any idea on when it'll be done?)
[...]
Good one, Iggles.
grip: I want to read Blood Meridian as I've heard it's bloody good, although supposedly devastatingly scary in terms of its antagonist. That said, I'm a little scared because if The Road is anything to go by - his style is BLEAK BLEAK BLEAK, unrelentingly so.
It can be a bit of a drudgery. Ultimately I think there's a touching study of a father son dynamic under the most intense pressure at work in The Road and how the seed of humanity can survive in even the harshest of environments, but by the end of it all you just feel drained and so much of the book is painfully ugly that I struggle to recommend it.
I dunno about Scots but IMO The Road is excellent, the writing style is unconventional but it gives a sense of the frayed and haggard life the two characters lead.
LOL. I'm reminded of Garth Marenghi...jesus...I figured his books were bad but I didn't think people actually wrote like that.
It seems that in the past few years there have been a number of these hyper-pop-fuction books, Harry Potter, Twilight, Dan-Brown-fuckery. (Were there books that reached this level of popularity before and I just didn't notice? Or is it safe to say that they're on a different tier of mass-market appeal, this is a recent phenomenon?) Now, I've avoided them like a plague, I've avoided them on principle, and every now and then I feel a pang of elitism- What you think you're too GOOD for them just cause everyone else likes them doesn't MEAN they're bad! But I've tried to reason thus: Books generally don't get that popular, so if they DO become that popular there must be something about them that makes them so popular, and this thing is generally an enormously hackneyed writing style.
Has anyone read The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace? One of the main characters in it judges stories for a literary magazine, and he submits a story himself, and it includes the line "He smiled wryly" "'He smiled wryly' nobody smiles wryly unless its described that way in a book." I guess its the difference between showing and telling, I forgot where I was going...
I've noticed characters in science fiction "grin" often. I think it indicates to the reader who the rogues are.
But yeah, it usually does. I was like that about Harry Potter for the longest time, but I eventually gave in and was really glad I did. You have to come to the point where you can just enjoy something because you do, even if a billion other people like it. I readily acknowledge the Rowling is a terrible writer, using worn out fantasy conventions, but there was something about those books that made me comfortable and provided a really enjoyable read. That's all I really care about because nobody's pouring over my book collection telling me what's cool or not. Hell, I'm reading Janet Evanovich stuff right now, totally out of my preferred genre, but I'm enjoying the hell out of them - and they're not at all good from a literary standpoint, completely disposable, pop rubbish. But I look forward to settling in with her characters every night before going to sleep, and that's really what I care about.
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