I'm so happy this is out, I didn't know he had a new book being released.

If it starts off slow, no worries, IMO, so did Cryptonomicon (1st 100 pages) and the Baroque Cycle (1st 300 pages) trilogy and I would still list them as some of the best and most exciting things I've ever read. I read Crytonomicom 3 times and the last two books of the Baroque cycle twice.

I would literally dream of Shaftoe's adventures (don't ask him about the lizards) and after I gave the books to my husband, he loved them as much as I did, even if he complained they were preventing him from getting some projects done.

Thanks.

I was a freshman in college studying computer science and I took a little writing seminar called, "Interpreting Cyberspace." One of the assigned readings was Snow Crash and I devoured it. I ended up minoring in linguistics because of that book. If I wasn't afraid that I would bore you to tears with my life story, I could list a few more ways that the book changed my life.

I have to say that I lost a little steam on Stephenson after Cryptonomicon. Not that I didn't like the book, it was just that I was exhausted. It was like running a marathon. To be honest, I haven't even started the Baroque Trilogy. Frankly, I'm afraid it will eat my life.

Still, I think everything you say about Stephenson is spot on. Even now, whenever I see Snow Crash in the book store, I have to flip to the first page and read, "The Deliverator belongs to an elite order..."

Hmm... Maybe it's time to run another marathon.

The local library has it on order. I just place a hold.

This excites me greatly; I hadn't realized quite how long it had been since System of the World, and assumed the next Stephenson novel was still on the distant horizon. And it sounds marvelous.

... over the last few years has been the Dream Casting of my movie version of "The Baroque Cycle." A la "Lord of the Rings," it will take several hours of screen time, several years to produce, and -- since many of my casting choices are no longer with us -- may take some special "Alchemickal Potions" from Mr. Stephenson to make some of my choices Available for the project. Now where was that gold.....?

I see Michael Caine and Sean Connery as Jack and Bob Shaftoe, Michelle Pfeiffer as the lovely Eliza, Michael Hordern as Daniel Waterhouse, Alec Guinness as Isaac Newton, and Peter O'Toole as John Churchill, for starters.

But I digress! Neal Stephenson is one of the most adept practicioners alive of the English Language. I can't wait to read "Anathem!"

...overrated author in America today. He peaked with Snowcrash and the decline has been exponential. I'm still annoyed with myself for wasting the better part of a summer on (an autographed copy, at that) Cryptonomicon. Got news, it ended even slower than it started. Too bad he doesn't have an editor with balls to make him cut at least 50%. Cryptonomicon had the most flaccid ending imaginable. Not to mention it was smug, coy, dishonest and cliched in it's portrayal of academics and simultaneously bullshit and chickenshit. When I heard he had a new — return to SF, whoo hoo! — novel I knew I was 100% not interested. When I actually looked at the pre-release glossary I was 150% disinterested and when I saw the length I was at 200%.

Stephenson has a bad case of I'm-smarter-than-any-of-you which usually devolves into whiny white guy posturing.

There are so many better SF writers and life is short.

I am delighted beyond words that his new book is out. I will gladly spend money I cannot afford to buy it this weekend.

Food is a luxury I can postpone. There is a new Neal Stephenson book to buy!!!

Is the same book. Stephen King did this with The Regulators/Desperation. Neal Stephenson carried it to his entire output.

It was with great pleasure that I read SnowCrash. Immediately after, it was the turn of the anarchically cool Zodiac. The Diamond age worked better than both, except (alas) for the finale.

Maybe it was this, or maybe it was Cryptonomicon that marked the beginning of Neal's sad decline and fall; an mathematical inevitablity, given the diffusion of his ideas through absurdities that would have made the constructors of the Niger Forgery blush.

And then, the last two novels - the Baroque Cycle, and now Anathem: the devotees cling to something like a memory of water effect, where those particles of NS goodness, enclosed in nanobubbles of philosophical froth, somehow compensate for the general void.

but the fan base are only so obliging; the promise of those initial novels make going through the tedious verbiage all the more painful. SF has always orbited philosophy, but Neal, now, is just revolving around himself. Someone, tell him to come back.

Something for everyone I guess. I never finished Zodiac, though I didn't hate it and my husband hated SnowCrash.

Ever read A Cantical for Lebowitz, Mr. Stephenson?

I bet you have...

What a pleasure to learn that Stephenson has a new one out, and one that sounds awfully good. I know of only one other writer with as deft an understanding of where our society is right now, and where it may be heading -- Kim Stanley Robinson. Thank God I don't have to choose between them.

@Verses

> Ever read A Cantical for Lebowitz, Mr. Stephenson?

Of course he's read it. And he can spell it.

Count me among those thinking that the next Stephenson was somewhere in the future. Awesome that it's here now!

I disagree with your assessment of The Baroque Cycle -- though only in detail -- as for me it's the finest fictional take on the ever-interesting theme of "Why Money Works Like It Does" I know about.

I took a day off of work to buy and start reading Anathem.

A tough start, because he throws all the slang and language at you in the very beginning, but once you're in, you're in.