Neal Stephenson

Other novels:

Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller — (1988) Publisher: Sangamon Taylor's a New Age Sam Spade who sports a wet suit instead of a trench coat and prefers Jolt from the can to Scotch on the rocks. He knows about chemical sludge the way he knows about evil — all too intimately. And the toxic trail he follows leads to some high and foul places. Before long Taylor's house is bombed, his every move followed, he's adopted by reservation Indians, moves onto the FBI's most wanted list, makes up with his girlfriend, and plays a starring role in the near-assassination of a presidential candidate. Closing the case with the aid of his burnout roomate, his tofu-eating comrades, three major networks, and a range of unconventional weaponry, Sangamon Taylor pulls off the most startling caper in Boston Harbor since the Tea Party. As he navigates this ecological thriller with hardboiled wit and the biggest outboard motor he can get his hands on, Taylor reveals himself as one of the last of the white-hatted good guys in a very toxic world.

Snow Crash — (1992) Publisher: Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison — a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about Infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous... you'll recognize it immediately.

Snow Crash

Readers considering whether they should read Neal Stephenson’s breakthrough novel, Snow Crash, would do well to read the novel’s opening chapters about the Deliverator. Rarely has a sales pitch been so blatantly — and so masterfully — launched at the start of a novel. Even James Bond must envy such a rich opening gambit.

For some readers, the remainder of Snow Crash will not live up to the pacing of the opening sequence. In fact, I’d even go so far as to suggest that Stephenson’s hero, Hiro Protagonist — who carries a katana and who is supposed to be “type A on steroids” — does not live up to his introduction. Yet, the style and sheer attitude of the opening is a joy to read, and this mood, which skates the line between irony and geek enthusiasm, is maintained throughout.

The plot is a little complicated, but one of the more important details is that “Snow Crash,” a computer virus, can infect the minds of hackers. It turns out that it also has ties to Sumerian religion, and Hiro will have to infiltrate a floating city in the ocean to find the cure. In other words, the infodumps are both varied and interesting.

The characters are memorable, though they may strike some readers as flat. In all fairness, most of them are more like two or three flat characters, mashed up. Hiro Protagonist, for example, is one part hacker, one part samurai. His sidekick, Y.T., is one part skater, one part (surprisingly dedicated) courier. Hiro’s nemesis, Raven, is one part biker, one part nuclear power. Uncle Enzo is one part mafia, one part… uncle. At times, the ingredients are easy to spot, but it did not prevent me from enjoying the story.

Snow Crash was written when Stephenson still had hair, so many readers devote considerable amounts of energy to weighing how successfully Snow Crash, published in 1992, anticipates the 21st century. To some extent, any cyberpunk novel will face these considerations, and, of course, comparisons between Snow Crash and William Gibson’s Neuromancer are probably also inevitable. Who is the more prophetic? Well, it is hard to miss that the Metaverse seems a lot like “Second Life,” which was launched in 2003. Stephenson also anticipates the way that social networks’ early adopters have more influence than later adopters do. Last but not least, Stephenson’s descriptions are informed by his ability to write code. Still, it’s been a long time since I last saw a guarantee to deliver my pizza within thirty minutes or “your money back.”

Actually, I’m not convinced that accurate predictions distinguish speculative fiction. And for what it’s worth, I found that Snow Crash recalled Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs more than it recalled William Gibson’s early novels. Although readers often wonder how intuitive Coupland, Gibson, and Stephenson are about what’s to come, I was struck by how representative of the 90s Stephenson’s work remains. In fact, Snow Crash feels like the 90s in the same way that Microserfs does. The concern over new viruses, the skater culture, and even Vitaly and the Chernobyls’ music all recall the 90s. Though Stephenson’s detractors are quick to point out that he has a coarse touch with characters and endings, they should acknowledge that he has an uncanny sensitivity to the age he is writing in.

These discussions of prophecy and genre influence are ultimately beside the point. Yes, it is impressive how much of the blueprint behind Stephenson’s later novels like The Confusion, Anathem, and Reamde can be found in Snow Crash. The infodumps, the sitcom-like romantic guidelines for geeks everywhere, and the dry humor that distinguish Stephenson’s mainstream successes are all on display in Snow Crash. More importantly, Snow Crash is an engrossing read, one that I finished and thought I’d like to return to in five years, which is why Snow Crash remains required reading for cyberpunk and speculative fiction fans.

I listened to Brilliance Audio’s production of Snow Crash, which was skillfully read by Jonathan Davis. At times, Stephenson is willing to rely on stereotypical characters, such as mafia boss Uncle Enzo. Davis boldly adopts accents that remain faithful to the original text. Although I felt that he struggled to represent the high octane of the opening sequence, I otherwise enjoyed the remainder of his performance, particularly his reading of the Librarian and, surprisingly, of Y.T. My only complaint with this production is the sound effects that Brilliance Audio used to divide chapters, which here felt too close to the campy “sci fi” sound effects on my smart phone’s alarm clock. —Ryan Skardal

Interface — (1994) As Stephen Bury. Publisher: From his triumphant debut with Snow Crash to the stunning success of his latest novel, Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson has quickly become the voice of a generation. In this now-classic thriller, he and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a shocking tale with an all-too plausible premise. There's no way William A. Cozzano can lose the upcoming presidential election. He's a likable midwestern governor with one insidious advantage — an advantage provided by a shadowy group of backers. A biochip implanted in his head hardwires him to a computerized polling system. The mood of the electorate is channeled directly into his brain. Forget issues. Forget policy. Cozzano is more than the perfect candidate. He's a special effect.

The Diamond Age — (1995) Publisher: Decades into our future, a stone's throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neoVictorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer. Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primer's purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. It performs its function superbly. Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands. Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetes — members of the poor, tribeless class. Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell. When he and his gang waylay a certain neo-Victorian — John Percival Hackworth — in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer.

The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer

In The Diamond Age, anything, no matter how trivial, could be made from diamonds drawn from molecular feeds. This will be the era in which humanity masters nanotechnology. On the one hand, this is a time of plenty and technological progress, but it is also a time of great illiteracy as well. With the rise of universal access to the molecular feed, the governments and nations that we know today will lose their purpose and become supplanted by culture-based societies that have territory around the world.

John Percival Hackworth, for example, is a Neo-Victorian engineer based in Shanghai. He has been commissioned to build a primer that will teach the Neo-Victorians’ children to think independently. More than a book, the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer is interactive and adapts its storyline for the young lady it bonds with. When Hackworth attempts to smuggle a copy of the primer to his daughter, he loses it to a band of teenage thugs.

The primer makes its way to Nell, a young girl being raised in an abusive household. Her mother is largely absent and her mother’s boyfriends offer Nell little guidance about how to live. However, the primer quickly constructs a fairytale world with Princess Nell at its center. Under the tutelage of the martial artist and mouse Dojo, Princess Nell learns about self-defense. These initial interactions between the child Nell and her primer are often as charming as they are intriguing. As Nell grows up, she learns new things, including how to program Turing machines.

Simply put, the premise, characters, and world building of Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age are fantastic. It is a joy to read about Nell’s journeys in her primer, which are always built around archetypal fairytales, as well as her attempts to escape poverty and to find her fortune in the larger world. Her first job is writing plots at a sort of interactive sex clinic. It may not sound like much of a job, but in this society, there are very few things that are worth paying for. Stephenson maintains a light balance of sci-fi exploration, adventure, and humor throughout the text, and he throws in a few intrigues between the Neo-Victorians and the Han Chinese for good measure.

The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer is most often criticized for its abrupt ending, and even die-hard Stephenson fans have struggled to explain why the text ends so suddenly. Perhaps the problem is that while Stephenson does not finish telling the story of The Diamond Age, he does reach a sense of resolution with A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. In other words, the coming of age story is concluded, but we can’t help wondering what happens next. Perhaps it’s ironic that Stephenson’s control over setting and character at once makes The Diamond Age a fantastic read while also crippling its conclusion.

Regardless, this flaw did not prevent Stephenson from winning both a Hugo and a Locus Award for The Diamond Age, and it should not prevent anyone from reading about A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. The two storylines add up to an excellent novel from one of speculative fiction’s finest authors. —Ryan Skardal

The Cobweb — (1996) As Stephen Bury. Publisher: From his triumphant debut with Snow Crash to the stunning success of his latest novel, Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson has quickly become the voice of a generation. In this now-classic political thriller, he and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a savagely witty, chillingly topical tale set in the tense moments of the Gulf War. When a foreign exchange student is found murdered at an Iowa University, Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks finds that his investigation extends far beyond the small college town — all the way to the Middle East. Shady events at the school reveal that a powerful department is using federal grant money for highly dubious research. And what it’s producing is a very nasty bug. Navigating a plot that leads from his own backyard to Washington, D.C., to the Gulf, where his Army Reservist wife has been called to duty, Banks realizes he may be the only person who can stop the wholesale slaughtering of thousands of Americans. It’s a lesson in foreign policy he’ll never forget.

Cryptonomicon — (1999) Publisher: With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century. In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse — mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy — is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detatchment 2702 — commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe — is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces. Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia — a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails grandaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi sumarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty... or to universal totalitarianism reborn. A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, CRYPTONOMICON is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow.

Cryptonomicon

This code business is some tricky shit.  ~Bobby Shaftoe

Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon is a lengthy historical fiction set during both World War II and the late 1990s with much of the action taking place in the Philippines. In the 1940s, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, colleague of Alan Turing, is hired by the U.S. Navy to help break Axis codes. Meanwhile, Marine Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe, who’s too enthusiastic and courageous for his own good, doesn’t realize that his troop’s job is to make it look like the U.S. hasn’t broken the codes, but just happens to always be in the right place at the right time.

Waterhouse and Shaftoe know each other only superficially, but their descendants, who’ve noticeably inherited some of their traits, meet in the 1990s storyline. Randy Lawrence Waterhouse is a systems administrator who’s trying to set up an electronic banking system in the Philippines. There he meets Doug and Amy Shaftoe, a father and daughter team who are doing the underwater surveying for Randy’s Internet cables. Randy and the Shaftoes eventually realize that they share a secret heritage and together they set out on a massive code-breaking treasure hunt.

The plot of Cryptonomicon is clever and elaborate, sometimes exciting (e.g., most scenes with Bobby Shaftoe), frequently funny (such as when Ronald Reagan interviews Bobby Shaftoe, and when the Waterhouse family uses a complicated mathematical algorithm to divide up the family heirlooms), and always informative.

Neal Stephenson’s fans know (and love) that you can’t read one of his books without learning a lot. Predictably, Cryptonomicon is chock full of information. If a character walks past a bank in China, you can bet you’re in for a lecture on Chinese banking. If he sees a spider web dripping with dew, you’ll be taught how spiders catch their prey. Character backstories are used to teach us about the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe or the familial habits of the Filipinos. In Cryptonomicon there are many pages that think they should be in a textbook on computer circuitry (and some that actually admit they belong in Letters to Penthouse). There are three pages devoted to a doctoral dissertation on facial hair and shaving fetishes, and another three pages of instruction on the proper way to eat Cap’n Crunch.

These divergences interrupt the plot and make the book much longer than it needs to be, but you just can’t help but forgive Stephenson (or to at least smile and shake your head knowingly as if he has some sort of uncontrollable yet endearing pathology), when you see him poking fun at himself for this very thing. In one scene, Bobby Shaftoe thinks he’s in “HELL’S DEMO” when he’s forced to listen to someone “explain the organization of the German intelligence hierarchy.” Though the lecture causes Shaftoe to hallucinate, the reader still manages to learn something about the Wehrmacht Nachrichten Verbindungen while being thankful to realize that Stephenson knows he has this “issue.”

It’s easy to tell that Neal Stephenson loves to do research and loves to impart the knowledge he’s gleaned, or ideas he’s thought up, and it’s hard to criticize him for this, especially since it’s all done in his clever, colorful, and entertaining style, even if it’s not always relevant to the plot. And sometimes these infodumps can really set a scene. Here’s a very short example:

The Bletchley girls surround him. They have celebrated the end of their shift by applying lipstick. Wartime lipstick is necessarily cobbled together from whatever tailings and gristle were left over once all of the good stuff was used to coat propeller shafts. A florid and cloying scent is needed to conceal its unspeakable mineral and animal origins. It is the smell of War.

Stephenson also delights in creating quirky similes:

Like the client of one of your less reputable pufferfish sushi chefs, Randy Waterhouse does not move from his assigned seat for a full ninety minutes...

Though I skimmed a few of Stephenson’s longer tangents, I was nevertheless entertained by the clever plot of Cryptonomicon. I read the novel in two formats. One was Subterranean Press’s signed limited edition which was printed on thick glossy paper and embellished with new artwork by Patrick Arrasmith, several graphs, and even some perl script. My Advanced Review Copy of this book weighs 4 pounds (and it was only paperback — the published version is hardback). I also listened to MacMillan’s audiobook read by William Dufris. I’m sure Cryptonomicon was not an easy book to read out loud, but Dufris did an amazing job, even actually sounding like Ronald Reagan during the Reagan interview.

Cryptonomicon won the Locus Award in 2000 and was nominated for both the Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Awards that year. Pretty big accomplishment for a book that’s not even science fiction. For readers who haven’t tried one of Neal Stephenson’s books yet, Cryptonomicon is a good place to start. —Kat Hooper

Anathem — (2008) Publisher: For ten years Fraa Erasmas, a young avout, has lived in a cloistered sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside world. But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change — and Erasmas will become a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world, as he follows his destiny to the most inhospitable corners of the planet... and beyond. Anathem is the latest miraculous invention by the New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle — a work of astonishing scope, intelligence, and imagination.

Anathem

In his “Note to the Reader” at the start of Anathem, Neal Stephenson writes “if you are accustomed to reading works of speculative fiction and enjoy puzzling things out on your own, skip this Note.” My advice is this: Don’t skip the Note. In spite of years of speculative fiction reading, I found myself constantly referring to the novel’s chronology and glossary, not to mention online summaries and Stephenson’s acknowledgements page.

Here’s why. Our narrator, Fraa Erasmus, is an avout, a fid, and an Edharian. He is a Hylaean, a Protan, and a Decenarian. He lives in the mathic world, not extramuros. Nor does he live in the Sæcular world, though he was born there. It is worth noting that Erasmus is also not a Procian, an Ita, nor a Hierarch. He is also not a member of the Inquisition, the Millenarians, or even the Old Lineage.

He’s not even an Earthling.

Anathem takes place on Arbre, which Stephenson suggests we pronounce like “‘Arb’ with a little something on the end.” Arbre is similar enough to Earth that words like “carrot” remain useful, but there are many differences. Perhaps the most important difference between our world and Arbre is the isolation of the learned and the literate in the mathic world’s concents. We learn that roughly thirty-seven hundred years before Anathem begins, the “Terrible Events” nearly destroyed the world. The survivors turned on the literate and the learned, or “avout,” and forced them to live in isolation from the rest of the population and from technology. In spite of this handicap, the avout have nevertheless developed technology at three different times that led to three different attacks on the mathic world. Now, the avout live in accordance with the “Cartasian Discipline,” meaning that they are forbidden from procreating, from using all but a few pieces of technology, and from making contact with the outside world.

There are exceptions to these rules. For example, the avout are allowed to make contact with the outside world during “Apert.” Decenarians like Erasmus are allowed to glimpse the outside world for ten days, once every ten years. Meanwhile, the doors on the Thousanders’ concent only open once every thousand years.

The discipline dividing the affairs of the avout from the Sæcular world runs into trouble when an alien spaceship is discovered orbiting Arbre. It’s a threat so daunting that all of Arbre will be forced to respond as one, and Erasmus and his friends are asked to leave the safety of their walls to help fight alien spaceships. Or as Erasmus sums up the plot: “Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs … We have a protractor.”

Anathem offers readers a very steep learning curve during the first two hundred pages. However, once Erasmus’ world is established, it is easy to enjoy this adventurous, funny, and intelligent science fiction novel. (In other words, it’s a Neal Stephenson novel.) Yes, those first two hundred pages can be difficult, but remember: soon you’ll be reading about mathematicians and philosophers defending their planet against alien invaders. It’s also worth taking the time to do your homework on the history of philosophy and quantum mechanics. Both of these subjects will be discussed in detail, though Stephenson’s taken the liberty of changing most of the words.

Consequently, there’s a need for several lectures over the course of the novel, and Stephenson has devised several means by which the avout can meet, discuss, and debate their ideas so as not to become repetitive. My favorite might well be the “messal,” in which several senior avout dine and discuss ideas while more junior avout serve them. The junior avout can express their boredom with the dinner by leaving the room, at which point we’re treated to a somewhat gossipy, academic discussion in the servitors’ area about the dinner’s discussion. At other times, Stephenson’s characters simply walk along while engaged in conversations that recall Socratic questioning.

Add to this Stephenson’s tendency to engage in lengthy digressions, and we have a novel that is perfectly suited for Stephenson’s fans. However, Anathem might not be the best novel for newcomers, and it is certainly not for Stephenson’s skeptics. It took me several tries to get past Arbre’s jargon and engage with Erasmus’ story.

Having said that, once I did get into the story, I did not resent the effort. I was hooked — and quite sad to see the story end. Anathem is notable for many reasons, particularly the detailed rules and history of the mathic world, but perhaps the best thing about this book is that readers who finish it will find themselves wanting to start over. —Ryan Skardal

Reamde: A Novel — (2011) Publisher: The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Neal Stephenson is continually rocking the literary world with his brazen and brilliant fictional creations — whether he’s reimagining the past (The Baroque Cycle), inventing the future (Snow Crash), or both (Cryptonomicon). With Reamde, this visionary author whose mind-stretching fiction has been enthusiastically compared to the work of Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace — not to mention William Gibson and Michael Crichton — once again blazes new ground with a high-stakes thriller that will enthrall his loyal audience, science and science fiction, and espionage fiction fans equally. The breathtaking tale of a wealthy tech entrepreneur caught in the very real crossfire of his own online fantasy war game, Reamde is a new high — and a new world — for the remarkable Neal Stephenson.

Reamde

It’s becoming increasingly clear that throwing all expectations overboard whenever Neal Stephenson releases a new novel is a good idea. Throughout his somewhat dizzying career, the man has rarely stayed within the same sub-genre for more than one book in a row. I was going to start this review with a brief overview of everything he’s written so far, but quickly abandoned that idea because, even just looking at the major novel-length works, it’s hard to pin these books down with just a few words. “Genre-defying” is one of those terms that gets thrown around way too often, but in the case of Stephenson’s output, it’s more than appropriate.

True to form, after smacking his fans upside the head with the high-concept, far-future, parallel universe SF novel Anathem, Stephenson drastically changes direction again with Reamde, a huge but relatively straightforward contemporary techno-thriller. It’s hard to sum up a 1,000 page tome in a short review, so if you don’t feel like reading this rather long one, I’ll boil it down to three words: I loved it.

Reamde has a handful of main characters, but the glue that holds them all together is Richard Forthrast, a former draft dodger, pot smuggler and World of Warcraft addict who founded Corporation 9592 and created T’Rain, an incredibly popular MMORPG that, among several other innovations, is actually built around the concept of gold-farming, combining complex geological realism (mining!) with the possibility of making real money by converting its in-game currency into cash.

Reamde has a deceptively elegant structure that contains an unconventionally paced but very entertaining story. The novel is divided into two sections: Book One opens with the annual Thanksgiving Forthrast family reunion, during which Richard’s niece Zula approaches him for a job at Corporation 9592, and Book Two ends one year later with the next reunion. These two short sections bracket the meat of the novel: a solid 1,000 pages that cover about three weeks and are, for the most part, some of the most action-packed and sheer, plain fun prose Stephenson has ever written.

The story’s pace is unconventional because its dramatic structure is incredibly lopsided. Rather than the more traditional build-up of introducing the characters and the world, gradually getting the plot started, and then slowly building to a final resolution, Reamde offers maybe 100 pages of introduction, followed by one long, spectacular, incredibly intense dénouement that covers the entire rest of the novel. I’m not kidding: this book goes into full-on overdrive before you even realize it, slamming the reader through 900 pages of explosive action scenes with very few chances to catch your breath.

By the start of Reamde, Richard is more or less retired, but he’s forced into action when a mysterious new virus — called, yes, “Reamde” (Readme? Remade? Reamed?) — creates an incredible amount of havoc in both the virtual world of T’Rain and our own world. What’s worse, his niece Zula gets sucked into the resulting chaos when Russian mobsters lose a large amount of data and cash thanks to a combination of the Reamde virus and her boyfriend’s ineptness. This sets off a multi-threaded action plot that covers two continents, a handful of countries, and the virtual world of T’Rain, centered on locating the missing Zula. It involves said Russian mobsters, Chinese hackers, Islamic terrorists, British spies, various geeky employees of Corporation 9592, and the Forthrast clan, which occasionally feels like it could be a remote branch of the Shaftoe family tree, except for Richard himself, who somehow must have had some Waterhouse genes thrown in the mix.

If all of this sounds exhausting, well... it is. Once things get going, the pace rarely slackens. The book is divided into chapters entitled “Day one”, “Day two” and so on, but these divisions are almost meaningless because the action is spread out across several time zones and anyway, the only sleep most of the characters tend to get is when they pass out from sheer exhaustion, frequently while tied up somewhere. Some of them endure things that are incredibly traumatizing, but the pace of this novel is such that they have no choice but to keep going. It’s very hard to find good points to put this novel down for a break, because Stephenson maintains the tension and breakneck speed throughout the entirety of this doorstopper.

The only real pauses for breath come when Stephenson indulges in his — to me at least — loveable habit of throwing info-dumps of various length and importance into the narrative. If you’re a fan of the author, you’ll expect this, and you will not be disappointed. You’ll know that, when you meet a character from e.g. Hungary, you’re in for a little history lesson about that country. Newcomers may be a bit bemused by Stephenson’s habit of doing tons of research and then somehow finding a way to cram every single bit of it into his books, but if you fall in that category you may be surprised to find out that he’s actually fairly restrained here. It may be that I’ve built up some sort of immunity by now, but to me the way Stephenson throws sidebars of information into Reamde’s story feels almost organic, compared to some of his earlier works. No twenty page breaks to lecture on Sumerian mythology here. A few pages of detour to describe the specific design and business concept of the Chinese equivalent of internet cafés don’t really register on my radar as a distraction or an annoyance because it’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to this author. It’s all interesting, quite often funny, and usually, at least in a sideways manner, sort of relevant to the story at hand. Within the first 50 or so pages, he gets going on color theory and palette drift as it pertains to the T’Rain MMORPG, and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t do it in such a way that it makes you grin, even laugh out loud, a few times. It’s a crazy writer who can squash this much sheer nerdiness into a dictionary-size novel and still have it be the most entertaining thing you’ve read in a while.

Another reason why it’s hard to take a break from Reamde is its cast of characters. Stephenson simply shines here, with some of the most solid, rounded and entertaining people to ever walk around in his novels. Zula is an Eritrean orphan, adopted by one of Richard’s family members, and she’s the very definition of a strong female protagonist. You can’t help but root for her. Her story anchors the entire novel, and most of the other characters move in and out of her periphery at various degrees of remove. Some of these are introduced early on, and some of them only appear well into the story. It’s a bit surprising to introduce not one but several new major players at page 300 or so, in the middle of what feels like the climactic end scene of the novel, but Stephenson makes it work and anyway, you still have about 700 pages of climactic end scene to go at that point, so it all works out.

What’s most surprising is the diversity and realism of all of these characters. There are spies, gun aficionados, gangsters, terrorists, two fantasy authors and several varieties of geek, all spread across multiple nationalities and running the gamut of the criminality spectrum, from relatively innocent hackers to pure terrorists. A very neat trick Stephenson employs here, and one I haven’t really seen done at this level before, is introducing new characters that are progressively less likable as the book continues, creating the odd experience of realizing that you’re rooting for a character you thought was evil earlier. Evil or not, all of them are painted with incredible detail and feel so real that they could jump off the page at any point. For example, early on, there’s a brilliant scene in which three of the major creative forces responsible for the game world of T’Rain are in a confrontation that later comes to be known as the Apostropocalypse. One of them, a stodgy but brilliant fantasy author, is taking another writer to task for using too many linguistically incorrect apostrophes in his fantasy names. He deftly manipulates the third person, who is the geology geek in the company, into making his point for him in a way that practically makes the geo-geek explode with indignation, then casually discards him to get back to driving his point home. I can’t think of any other author who could have orchestrated that particular piece of dialogue with such virtuosity. I imagine that, if Stephenson chooses this particular scene to read at one of his signings, there may be standing ovations.

Still, it’s probably inevitable that some people will be unhappy with Reamde, so here are a few possible complaints. First of all, Reamde is probably closest to Zodiac in Stephenson’s bibliography, or maybe Cryptonomicon if you take out Enoch Root, so if you’re looking for science fiction elements, you’ll come away empty-handed. I actually expect that some unsuspecting readers coming straight into Reamde from Anathem may suffer some form of literary whiplash. (On the other hand, I think Reamde will gain Stephenson many more new fans, because it’s as accessible as it gets for him.) Secondly — well, it’s a Really Big Book. Personally, I wasn’t bored for even a second, but depending on your level of emotional investment in these characters, you may fare differently, especially if you haven’t had the chance to build up your tolerance for Stephensonian info-dumps, sidebars and other digressions. And finally, I’m fairly sure that the P.C. Police will be out in force, because e.g. all of the characters of Arabic descent are terrorists, most of the Russians are gangsters, and so on. Also, lots and lots of guns. Anyone who reads more into this than just a coincidence to service the plot probably isn’t extremely familiar with Neal Stephenson as an author, but I still expect to see a few reviews complaining about this.

If nothing in the above paragraph sounds like it would rub you the wrong way, I can’t urge you strongly enough to find yourself a copy of Reamde. I tore through this monster of a book in a couple of days, carrying its considerable weight around with me wherever I went. I even found myself dreaming about it during a rare reading break, because the level of intensity Neal Stephenson maintains here is so impressive that even my subconsciousness apparently couldn’t let go of the characters. Reamde is a very rare and precious thing: a 1,000+ page novel in which every single page is purely entertaining and nothing is boring. It’s a techno-thriller that’s so quirky and fun that it really only could have come from the brain of Neal Stephenson. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. —Stefan Raets

Reamde

Fate had given us a totally awesome foe.

When Richard Forthrast was young, he was the black sheep of the family. It seemed like he was wasting his brain by playing videogames and smuggling dope across the Canadian border instead of pursuing more dignified and intellectual occupations. But then he turned his money, knowledge and skills to the development of his own MMORPG called T’Rain. He hired a kid with Asperger’s syndrome to construct a realistic and meticulously detailed planet and brought on two famous fantasy authors to develop the world’s language, history, and mythos. Because of his own experience in underground markets, Richard created his world’s economy to allow players to extract money they make in the game. So, Chinese teenagers can actually make a living by mining gold or developing and selling their characters to players who have more money than time, such as wealthy middle-aged American men who play T’Rain to fulfill their desires for world-building and dominance. T’Rain is now the most popular MMORPG ever.

Things are going well for Richard and T’Rain until his niece Zula, who works for the company, discovers that her new boyfriend is a criminal. Along with the illegal information he’s just sold to the Russian mafia, he has also inadvertently passed along a new computer virus called Reamde. Now the bad guys’ important files are being held hostage until they can drop off a ransom in T’Rain. The Russians want Zula to help them track down the hacker.

At this point, Reamde turns into a fast-paced action-packed globe-spanning twisty geo-political thriller. It’s not really a speculative fiction novel at all, but because some of it takes place in an MMORPG and it enjoys poking fun at fantasy literature clichés, it’s especially appealing to SFF readers. And it doesn’t just make fun of geeks, RPG addicts, fantasy tropes, and those of us who feel ridiculously nostalgic for ancient times we’ve never actually experienced, but it also takes amusing but good-natured swipes at Walmart, Midwestern “recombinant cuisine,” linguistic purism, right-wing extremism, and nagging ex-girlfriends whose voices won’t go away. Best of all, though there’s plenty of information in Reamde, Stephenson manages to sneak it all in without making you feel like you’re in a college classroom — a habit that was an issue for me in his BAROQUE CYCLE.

Neal Stephenson’s villains are a little over the top, but I loved the characters that I was supposed to love. They were a diverse group from all over the world and yet they each felt real to me. (Except that I’m still not believing that a clever Chinese hacker wouldn’t have used a proxy or some other method to hide his IP address — this bugged me all the way through.) We followed this large cast of characters, sometimes alone, sometimes in a group, and I never once got bored with any of them. I’m even having trouble picking my favorite. I adored Zula, an Eritrean refugee adopted into Richard’s family when she was young. She is smart, motivated, and determined to do the right thing. Then there’s the Russian “security expert” with a conscience and amazing skills with guns, and, of course, Richard Forthrast himself, who’s intelligent, worldly-wise, and has a fascinating history that’s revealed bit by bit. I feel a bit guilty that I was also fascinated by the Islamic terrorist...

Reamde is informative, amusing, and tense all the way through — quite an accomplishment for a book that took me 32 hours to listen to on audio. The audiobook was produced by Brilliance Audio and read by the impressive Malcolm Hillgartner who handled this huge cast, with its diverse array of accents, beautifully — I highly recommend this version.

I loved Reamde. It’s may not be exactly what Neal Stephenson’s devoted fans have come to expect from this author, and I expect that some readers will think it’s too light, but if I’m going to judge a book by how much fun it was to read, there’s just no denying that Reamde is 32 hours (1052 pages) of pure fun! —Kat Hooper

Reamde

After a decade of novels set in 18th century Europe and in alternate universes, Neal Stephenson triumphantly returns as a bestselling author to contemporary America.

But he doesn’t stay in Seattle for long. Reamde wastes no time crossing borders, taking us — usually illegally — to Xiamen, the Philippines, and British Columbia. Chronologically, our first border crossing is Richard Forthrast’s decision to move to Canada to dodge the draft. Working as a wilderness guide, Richard discovers a smugglers’ route from the prohibition days, and he makes a fortune backpacking marijuana across the 49th parallel. He later goes straight, spends ten years playing World of Warcraft, and invests in a ski lodge.

However, Richard’s greatest achievement is “T’Rain,” a MMORPG. T’Rain is like World of Warcraft, except that it caters to, rather than restricts, Chinese gold miners. T’Rain is an amusing invention, and it allows Stephenson to showcase what may be his greatest strength: the “info dump.” Some authors lose our interest when they engage in an extended info dump. Not Stephenson. He gleefully explains the economy of T’Rain, the creative forces behind its world building, and even arguments over the use of the apostrophe in T’Rain. Should the Dwarvish race be “D’uinn” or “Duinn?” And Richard’s attempt to build compromise around the notion that apostrophes just look cool won’t cut it.

Stephenson’s fans will find it difficult to resist being swept up by these details. In fact, these readers will find that they have torn through a couple hundred pages of exposition in no time at all.

So I was quite surprised when the exposition finished and I realized that Reamde is a techno-thriller, one that recalls William Gibson’s 2010 release, Zero History. Both novels introduce us to a world of spies, creative problem solving in defiance of the rule of law, and a few nefarious uses of the Internet.

“Reamde” is one of these nefarious uses. It is a computer virus that encrypts information on T’Rain users’ hard drives. Because of it, Richard’s niece, Zula, is abducted by Russian mobsters and flown by jet to Xiamen to track down a hacker that uses T’Rain to ransom the encrypted data.

As if that weren’t weird enough, Zula and her captors soon cross paths with international terrorists. Of course they kidnap Zula and plot destruction.

Reamde is further proof that Neal Stephenson is writing in a class of his own. He fuses his typically convoluted plot with the pace and structure of a thriller, and he quite happily tosses bullet points into his fiction. Almost every reader will come upon a section of (the 1000 page long) Reamde that feels unnecessary or indulgent. However, it’s difficult to fault these sequences because they illustrate that Neal Stephenson’s plots are fun enough in spite of, perhaps because of, these digressions. Few other authors digress with such confidence that their audience will still be reading when they finish.

Some readers may be disappointed by Stephenson’s characterization. Although Richard and Zula are easy to relate to, other characters, especially the villains, are traced from stock photos. Relationships are forged, and characters find themselves willing to die for each other, after just a few sentences of interaction. In this, Reamde is very much a thriller, and its page count is strongly tilted in favor of the plot rather than introspection. It’s not surprising there are three hundred pages of detailed action packed into the climax of Reamde, and two pages of resolution in which the loose ends are tied up.

Still, Reamde is a fun, engaging thriller. Though long, it feels as though it could quite easily be made into a Hollywood blockbuster. (Or perhaps it feels like it was inspired by a Hollywood blockbuster.) Consequently, Reamde is a novel that will certainly satisfy Neal Stephenson’s fans, but it may also serve as a gateway into his canon for newcomers. —Ryan Skardal