I really like Snow Crash. I've re-read it two or three times, which is a hell of a lot for me. I also liked The Diamond Age.
So you can imagine my disappointment when Stephenson decided he was only going to try to rewrite the Great American Novel while targetting trainspotting history nerds for the rest of his career.
Also, Neal's more than slightly irritating politics come through a lot more when he's not writing SF (I like to think escaping from reality also allows him to escape the rut of his political views ... or maybe it's me that's able to escape them in those instances). Quicksilver is basically a thousand-page endorsement of unregulated small-state late capitalism seen through the prism of eighteenth century political events. You can literally walk through it going "oh, so that's a massive compliment to the stock market ... and there's a hagiography of low-taxing government ... and here's a ringing endorsement of the 'ethnic dynamism' of the early US settlers ... and here's a poorly considered anti-religious rant ... " etc.
Dickens ... oh Dickens. I'd rather watch teledramas of his works than actually read them. There's something too ... garrulous ... about his writing.
Crime and Punishment is like the book. I love that book. One of the few classics that has really, truly blown me away.
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Re: What a lot of Dickens. I don't like Dickens much ...
So you can imagine my disappointment when Stephenson decided he was only going to try to rewrite the Great American Novel while targetting trainspotting history nerds for the rest of his career.
Also, Neal's more than slightly irritating politics come through a lot more when he's not writing SF (I like to think escaping from reality also allows him to escape the rut of his political views ... or maybe it's me that's able to escape them in those instances). Quicksilver is basically a thousand-page endorsement of unregulated small-state late capitalism seen through the prism of eighteenth century political events. You can literally walk through it going "oh, so that's a massive compliment to the stock market ... and there's a hagiography of low-taxing government ... and here's a ringing endorsement of the 'ethnic dynamism' of the early US settlers ... and here's a poorly considered anti-religious rant ... " etc.
Dickens ... oh Dickens. I'd rather watch teledramas of his works than actually read them. There's something too ... garrulous ... about his writing.
Crime and Punishment is like the book. I love that book. One of the few classics that has really, truly blown me away.