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WarLocke posted:I am about 300 pages into Anathem right now and when it was a pseudo-monk philosophy lifestyle type thing it was fairly interesting, but when it takes a hard right with the twist I haven't been able to put it down. I enjoyed the hell out of Cryptonomicon, Reamde, Snow Crash, and The Big U, and I absolutely loved The Diamond Age. I couldn't get in to Anathem at all, how long does it take before the twist? (Don't spoil the twist if you can help it, I just want to know how far through the book it is).
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Mar 1, 2014 00:55
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Grifter posted:Reamde didn't really work for me because it felt too implausible. I know that sounds strange when I can perfectly accept a samurai biker hacker, but there was something in how the characters all came together at the end that felt really strained. That aspect of the ending was the only thing that felt slightly off to me. On the other hand, that's how his books seem to go. It's also the kind of snowballing coincidental disaster that I enjoy in authors like Tom Sharpe (or sometimes Terry Pratchett), so I can totally forgive the slightly contrived coincidences. That's also one of the reasons I liked The Big U. It's got lots of Chekov's Guns (including the railgun) that end up getting used in a surprising and awesome way.
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Mar 13, 2014 01:20
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Yeah, I can understand that. I just didn't think it was that obvious compared to (for instance) Tom Sharpe's books. The idea of a constantly escalating series of disasters that all contribute to the big final disaster is something I enjoy though, and I can understand that if that's not your thing it could be a bit offputting. e: Also, the premise of Reamde seems pretty far-fetched to me to begin with so I guess I didn't have a moment where I ended up going "this part is comparatively unrealistic".
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Mar 13, 2014 06:39
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The general theme of "gamification" of work (and vice-versa) was pretty in-depth, as was the increasing fuzziness of online/IRL.
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Mar 13, 2014 23:47
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Some of his action sequences are great. Bobby Shaftoe on top of the fort is amazing, and also the bit with Randy/Amy/Enoch in the river. The part in The Big U where the LARPers actually get attacked by the mutant rats or whatever was also fantastic. Reamde didn't really have those. I still liked it though, and like Precision said I'm pretty sure it was partly satire - the terrorist plot has to be satire once they're on the plane.
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Mar 31, 2014 23:07
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Why are people comparing the Crypt's currency to bitcoins? Unless I completely missed the point, the currency in the Crypt is gold-backed and that's the whole reason for Randy and Doug's plotline. precision posted:Are there any hints that REAMDE takes place in the same "world" as Cryptonomicon and Baroque? I can't remember. I'm currently halfway through Quicksilver, but I've read REAMDE and Cryptonomicon a couple of times. I'd say that REAMDE isn't in the same universe. The Crypt comes online in the late 90s or early 2000s, and REAMDE seems to be set much closer to ~2010 than ~2000. If the Crypt exists in README's world, then T'Rain's importance as a way of anonymously moving money online doesn't make sense.
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Apr 2, 2014 23:35
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I could see what the first guy was talking about in an "online currency and the shenanigans that ensue". It's not a 1:1 comparison, but it still has a lot of nerds being dumb with online money. Fair enough. Ugly In The Morning posted:He was pretty great, but I thought his parts were dragged down by the whole romance thing with the spy lady (I want to say Mina, but I'm 99 percent sure that's just Alpha Protocol eating my brain). It was really shoehorned in from the start where it could have worked naturally, and it really annoyed me every time Stephenson would jam it in again. Yeah, he's my favorite character in that book, and his romance was my least favorite subplot. I did like the British agent's plot at first, and I think it would have been way better if she hadn't been involved later - the first part of her story works pretty well as one of Stephenson's "forget movies, this is how this thing usually goes for real" semi-tangents. She's a British Spy but her actual job is to pretend to be a business person and sit in an office all day looking out the window.
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Apr 3, 2014 01:00
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Gato posted:On the other hand, I thought the MMO stuff was fascinating, though I don't know much about Bitcoin so I don't know how relevant that aspect is. I thought his idea of superimposing an MMO onto tedious jobs like watching security footage was amazing. I wonder if it'll turn out to be as prescient as Snow Crash was, which seemed like it pretty accurately came up with the modern or near-future MMO from scratch. "Gamification" is a growing thing right now - from teachers applying MMO-like progression numbers to grading, to stuff like Fitocracy where you lift weights and level up, to stuff like looking for cancer cures via video game (some of which seem to just be game skins over distributed computing programs and some of which seem to actually involve folding proteins as a puzzle game). e: Just hearing/seeing "Good job! Your number went up!" or "Achievement Unlocked!" is apparently a surprisingly powerful motivator for everything from WoW to primary school projects to powerlifting. I don't know why. Neal's point seems to be that it doesn't really matter what's actually going on behind the game-skin or what the in-game task might be, because if people think they're playing a game and leveling something up then they're happy to do tedious work. I think he's right. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 01:24
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Yeah, but it works even if you don't get anything tangible out of it. See Fitocracy - you level up, it shows you a "congrats" screen, it takes more points to get to the next level now, nothing else changes, and it's still super motivating.
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Apr 22, 2014 01:33
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Snak posted:I never even thought of that, and that makes way more sense. It's also the kind of semi-clever but cringeworthy thing that helps the book be "a parody of dumb nerd poo poo, while also being the dumbest of nerd poo poo". I love that summary so much.
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Jan 22, 2015 01:43
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Khizan posted:Anathem is his best book IMO but it definitely has a slow start; it took me a solid 2-3 attempts to get into it. I guess it's time for me to make my third attempt then...
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Jul 5, 2015 03:15
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Inspector 34 posted:I feel like Seveneves would have worked better as a series of short stories filling in backstory for a larger series. I've had this thought about quite a few different novels. I liked the way Asimov's stories about robots all linked together, but I can't think of a more recent example.
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Aug 10, 2015 03:49
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 12:39 |
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Took me 3 goes before I got past the first 30 or so pages of Anathem. Don't know why, it's an amazing book that I've re-read twice.
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May 8, 2017 00:56
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