I would have said it was because the narrator’s main language was a sort of bloodless church Latin, and in spite of being a horny teenager he had a fairly prim approach to earthly things, having been brought up in a group home by science-monks and all. He’s the one relating all the other characters’ dialogue, so it makes sense that he’d just say “so and so uttered an obscenity” rather than say it verbatim. Besides, he’s writing his book for people in other universes who will read it in translation anyway .
2 Likes
I bought mine on kindle the day I heard about it (yesterday), and am reading it now. Would you like spoilers?
He was an in-joke for Tolkien’s family. Bombadil was, like, one of his kids’ toys or something.
This actually would have been much easier to get across in a movie. “What an odd person, he doesn’t seem to belong to this world!” Well of course, and the audience could see he’s, like, a doll made out of felt, or wood, or something, like from Toy Story, but the other characters wouldn’t be able to figure it out.
Reading that book inspired me to go back to school and study physics.
2 Likes
I dunno - I have to agree with my 10 yr old - Bombadil seems like an omnipotent OP fantasy character. Like a minor god, who could challenge even Sauron, within the bounds of Bombadil’s land.
I agree his books can be long and a slog for some but I do love all the intricate details. I appreciate your comment that it’s been all downhill since Diamond Age, we should all have a long downward slide that lasts so long and is so prolific. 
2 Likes
So on Adam Savage’s podcast today, he divulged that he was halfway through the new Stephenson book, having gotten an advance copy, and he suggests that rereading Reamde might be a good idea.
1 Like
I had to get the Audible versions of the Baroque cycle to make it though.
Absolutely fantastic though. He manages to work in some really GOOD science and history in there, and I use a number of things in some of my upper level classes because they’re great explanations of, eg, how does cryptography work? Why is noise important?
Also, no one has said textducken yet, so I will.
2 Likes
Yeah, I got an advance copy too. The science fiction peters out and the fantasy part had some literal world building and was a bit of a slog for not much reward.
I much prefered Reamde. There’s just a little crossover, but not at all important to the story. Unless I’m completely not remembering Reamde.
All in all, not that great. I wish… nah, spoilers. I didn’t need to make the effort to read it.
2 Likes
My biggest disappointment with the LotR movie was cutting Tom Bombadil! And my biggest disappointment with the books was intimating that he was a hugely powerful being of great potential, and then never picking up his story again. So yeah, my fave also.
1 Like
If you plan on reading Fall it may behoove you to read Reamde first as the new release is based on its predecessor.
In his youth, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia.
One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead and put on life support, leaving his stunned family and close friends with difficult decisions. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Legally bound to follow the directive despite their misgivings, Dodge’s family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived.
In the coming years, technology allows Dodge’s brain to be turned back on. It is an achievement that is nothing less than the disruption of death itself. An eternal afterlife—the Bitworld—is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls.
But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem . . .
Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pure, unadulterated fun: a grand drama of analog and digital, man and machine, angels and demons, gods and followers, the finite and the eternal. In this exhilarating epic, Neal Stephenson raises profound existential questions and touches on the revolutionary breakthroughs that are transforming our future. Combining the technological, philosophical, and spiritual in one grand myth, he delivers a mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age.
1 Like
Just ordered Readme on Amazon. Seven Eves was my first exposure to Neil Stephenson and I loved it. Expect good things!
1 Like
pedant alert sorry
Well, if you made it through Seveneves (which I liked a lot but only after having let the first read-through settle for nearly a year), you should be semi-prepared for the level of violence in Reamde. That book has a lot of violence and stabby stuff and I get it that it’s central to the plot but yeesh. Not the same cartoony over-the-top violence replete in Snow Crash … but definitely plenty and it’s realistic which somehow makes it worse/harder for me to take.
Yep.
I am re-reading (?) (listening to?) the audiobook of Reamde and the narrator’s voice is so cold and hard! He was cast well, but I find him hard to take. He’s fkn creepy when he voices the bad guys. Caveat emptor y’all, or maybe I’m just too much the delicate flower.
Completely with you @moosemalloy, yes.
I actually know people who resemble Zodiac main characters rather a lot. Also, it has some nice bits about the craft of applied chemistry. That came in useful when I was trying to motivate my neighbor’s son about Big Science when he was failing chemistry in high school. I gave him that book. He actually went to college, which our community found remarkable. He loves Neal Stephenson’s works now. Ha!
We read Anathem to our son as a bedtime story (a chapter at a time) the year it came out. I’m telling you, it’s the perfect children’s tale if you have the stamina [uh and if you have a good match on the mindset of your audience].
As other posters upthread have pointed out, there’s no cussing in Anathem, and there’s little gooey violence to redact on-the-fly. We quote that book all the time. It’s like a Handmaid’s Tale in terms of its prophetic powers. It’s been useful when our son’s school adopted an International Baccalaureate curriculum, and had a course called “Theory of Knowledge.” He ended up quoting from Anathem even as the course progressed to harder, more abstract concepts.
Oh I dunno. My guess is Stephenson is an acquired taste, like Pynchon. And he in no way will dumb down his work, also like Pynchon. For every person who loves the minimalism of Hemingway or McCarthy, the page-turner-y drive of Crichton or whichever pop American thriller author one finds stocked in airport bookstores, there is a smallish group of people who will like the complexity and dryly hilarious social criticism of Stephenson or Pynchon (or probably William Burroughs, though he’s not for me thanks).
I look at the recent vast tableau erected and thankfully ended for us by George R.R. Martin…
… and note that, unlike with Martin’s work…
(seriously WTF Martin really?)
…the end of a Stephenson novel does not leave me feeling strung-along and cheated. I feel like my time has been well-spent with interesting characters, and I learned new things in areas I seldom or never venture.
Oh hey lookit, the man’s on tour:
Nice!
ETA: grammar
2 Likes
I mean, Martin still has 2 books to write?
1 Like
After I finished reading Anathem for the first time, I said to myself, Yeah, it’s Stephenson all right … but something is missing.
Early in the second reading the missing element leapt out at me: obscenity.
Then it occurred to me: maybe Stephenson omitted the obscenity because he wants Anathem to succeed as a Young Adult novel, and he felt wrong about putting obscenity in a young adult novel.
I’ve mentioned this before in another thread, forgive my redundancy. Note the interesting reply from @semiotix.
1 Like
I noted it upthread and thank you!
I don’t really think that Stephenson’s primary intention wrt Anathem was YA fiction but maybe someone can ask him in Austin on June 19. Someone…
If anything, I imagine Snow Crash to be way more applicable to YA fiction mentality even if the book itself would have an R or X rating in the U.S. were it a movie.
I sense that in order for us to enter Erasmus’ world, much as we had to enter Bobby Shaftoe’s and Daniel Waterhouse’s, language itself and word choice in important. This was also noted upthread. (Sorry y’all I am posting in haste and need to go to work, so I will try to improve this post when I get back home.)
It’s part of the worldbuilding technique (see his Baroque Cycle with more time- and place-centric language) that really became obvious to me here, in this Stephenson collaboration, The Mongoliad:
https://www.amazon.com/Mongoliad-Cycle-Neal-Stephenson/dp/1612182364
Lots AND LOTS A N D L O T S of violence. Heads up [and frequently, off]. Dead deading dead dead.
The audio book for the Mongoliad series is competently done and doesn’t squick me the way that the Reamde audiobook narrator’s voice does.
I suspect people who liked Ramez Naam’s Nexus trilogy will enjoy REAMDE – which has long, very fun techno-thriller-y page-turner sections.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
