Autopope! - On the subject of Neal Stephenson's next novel ...

Amusingly put. May I post it to metaquotes?

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Sure.

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Y'know, I saw your post, and was about to point out that someone ganked Stross's comment from usenet, until I realized this was, in fact, Charlie Stross's LJ. And now I feel a bit silly.

And someone needs to explain to me in reasonably non-fanboi'ish language why The Baroque Cycle was so hot. After the nuclear joygasm of Cryptonomicon TBC felt like he smacked me around with a human-sized phallic object, demanding the most almighty fucking praise and worship.

And jesus, anachronistic dialogue and characters aplenty!

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The anachronistic dialogue is your problem, not Stephenson's. How much of the dialogue or characterization in your average SF novel set in the 25th century -- or fantasy novel set in an alternate 15th century -- is accurate? If you think anachronistic language is a problem in fiction, you ought to be livid about the lack of novels about the Crusades that are written in Church Latin or Norman French. Anachronistic language is a necessary, even vital, lubricant for historical (or fantastic fiction).

As to the anachronistic characters -- the Baroque cycle is all about the birth of the modern. There are non-anachronistic characters in it, too: the advantage of a sprinkling of recognizably modern types (e.g. Eliza) is that it makes it easier for the reader to compare and contrast modern outlooks with historical ones.

The whole story reeks of didacticism. It's an attempt to drag the geek community kicking and screaming into some awareness of their own historical context, just as Cryptonomicon attempted to do the same for J. Random 1990's Net Newbie. Indeed, both books feel like components of the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Postgraduate Supplement).

Finally: take the Baroque Cycle. File off the names, dates, and locations. Scramble the map, change the names, and add a second moon (only significant during long sea voyage sequences). What you get, structurally, is a gigantic fantasy epic. The Baroque Cycle did something pretty new in fiction, insofar as it welded an SF/F sensibility onto an historical novel. This evidently works for some folks, but not for others ...

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It's an attempt to drag the geek community kicking and screaming into some awareness of their own historical context, just as Cryptonomicon attempted to do the same for J. Random 1990's Net Newbie.

Hey, I think you just explained why I could never get more than halfway through Cryptonomicon on two successive readings but ate up the Baroque Cycle. I wasn't the didactic target audience.

Whenever I tried to read Cryptonomicon, I'd just founder on the present-day sections. I'd keep saying to myself "Come on, reading this is like my job only much less interesting; get back to World War II already."

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Anachronistic language is a necessary, even vital, lubricant for historical (or fantastic fiction).

While I have no trouble conceding that your argument is fair, it's observable within the texts that Stephenson knows the language of the period in which he's writing, in so much as that he peppers his text with both mentalities and the language of the period. Which suggests he could have written the entire text in one style, rather than subjecting us to this back-and-forth swinging. To me, it's jarring. You seemed to have enjoyed it, by contrast. That novels about the Crusades aren't written in 13th century Anglais isn't so much my problem. It's the inability to choose one form and stick with it.

As for the characters, I wonder if audiences would have complained more had he given us an Eliza closer to Dorothea Brooke than the modern hey-ho-a-wanderin'-we-go Danger Girl type. You argue this is done to set up a contrast. Which means - what - that a modern reader can't do that/think that without Stephenson pointing out the obvious fact that people acted differently elsewhere, at a different juncture in time?

Well shock me, guv.

As for the fantasy-novel component of your argument...yes, and? So it would be a fantasy epic. Guy Gavriel Kay did that quite well in several of his books, including The Sarantium Mosaic, Tigana, The Lions of Al-Rassan, etc. Likely there were others whose names are escaping me at this moment. What is it you want to suggest in relation to this overlaying of SF/F elements?

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Wow. And to think you've only scratched the surface of a Stephenson novel's complexity. I read Cryptonomicon over a year ago, and while I thoroughly enjoyed it, I'm still reeling.

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I reread Cryptonomicon after reading the Baroque Cycle, and was amazed at how many threads connect the two.

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It took me five months to read Cryptonomicon, and I'm a very fast reader. It was so dense I had to put it down and read another novel before coming back to it. I mean, it was INTERESTING, but I couldn't take it in single sittings.

That said, I skipped the BC. I've been hoping he'll get back to something a little more Illustrated-Primer-y or Snow-Crash-ish once he gets it out of his system.

Not holding my breath, just hoping. :->

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Some people do their best stuff as flash fiction or short-shorts, others need more space to fit everything in and make it work. At this point I am convinced that Stephenson's natural length is approximately 500,000 words (give or take a hundred thousand or so).

Seriously; all of Stephenson's novels, up until the Baroque Cycle (which I am willing to argue is a single, long, novel and not a trilogy), had suspiciously rushed and incomplete endings. It is as if he got a telephone call from his editor explaining that he had to end the damn thing NOW!!! But, if you look at the Baroque Cycle you find a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end. A textbook example of the three-act structure, which manages to wrap up nearly every loose end and provide a satisfying close.

You just have to wade through numerous 20 page expositions on economic theory in the seventeenth century and other 'divers alarums and excursions' to get there. Some people will never read something like that, but I like 'divers alarums and excursions' — so it works for me.

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Oddly enough, his earliest work ("The Big U" and Zodiac) doesn't feel, to me, like it has this problem. But then again, they're rather different from his other work in other ways.

FWIW, I'm much fonder of "The Big U" than the author is (for years, he wouldn't allow it to be reprinted, claiming that it was a bad book and he didn't want people wasting their time on it). It's quite obviously based, in certain respects, on his experiences as a B.U. student --- the University head is a riff on John Silber, the architecture owes a bit to B.U.'s Warren Towers, and I'm not sure what language the maintenance people speak, but it's gotta be from the same family as "Crotobaltislavonian". What starts out as a straight campus novel in this setting devolves into something like proto-Snow Crash (giant rats, English grad students gone feral burning books in the library), and gets tied up at the end with a moderately neat bow. Not great lit, but a pleasant diversion...

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I put The Big U and Connie Willis' Bellwether in the same box: books where the author has fallen so far down the rabbithole of their own style that some readers end up viruently disliking the entire book.

Kind of like how I'm ok with moderate amounts of oregano, but some cooks/dishes just HEAP it on and then I can't eat it anymore.

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I adored The Big U. Maybe I'm the target audience or something, but it provided me with non-stop giggles for almost a week.

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Amazon.com doesn't seem to be expecting a next novel from Stephenson at this time... which might just mean that another one isn't due for more than a year.

I don't know if you read the entire Baroque Cycle already in hardcover, but currently it is being reprinted in mass market paperback in volumes (three books to do Quicksilver) at the rate of one every other month or so.

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Presumably, if Quicksilver is being done as three, then the whole cycle is being done as eight.

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Did the Baroque Cycle contain meditations on the manifest evils of Livejournal in some guise? If so, I missed it, and that would have been hilarious.

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I always assumed Eliza was a cypher for the LJ zeitgeist.

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Hah. Yeah, that I could see.

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Is the hidden family due out in paperback any time soon?

As much as I'd love to support you by buying the hardback, I'd just as soon buy you a pint the next time I see you.

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The book is in production as I type -- I vetted the galleys a couple of weeks ago -- and should be in the shops in another 8-10 weeks. "The Clan Corporate" is also on the slipyard and should be showing up in hardcover about four weeks after the paperback of "The Hidden Family". (I am now 58,000 words into "The Merchant's War" and my head is hurting: it seems to be in danger of turning into "From Russia, With Love" with added scheming mediaevals and nuclear blackmail.)

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It's pre-orderable from Amazon, delivery estimate 3-4 May.

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For other possible reason would one want to read a Stephenson novel?

(Incidentally, he's a local to me, but is a very private person. Doesn't do the con scene at all.)

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*Shrugs*

Some writers don't take to fandom. Don't like it, don't understand it, don't want to be part of it. Me, I was a fan as soon as I discovered it existed, before I was published professionally ... but it's not for everyone.

Besides, having random strangers wanting a piece of you because they feel as if they know you -- leaving aside the possibility that you don't know them -- is exhausting. And I imagine it's a whole lot worse for someone like Stephenson (much less J. Random Hollywood Starlet) who's better known.

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But that's what I like best about Stephenson's novels: their gritty realism and inherent human truth.

(Also, they are handy for those moments when I need to reach the top of the bookshelf.)

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I have something of a soft spot for books that are full of ideas, and, only incidentally, have a plot, but a warning label on Quicksilver explaining that it's a thousand pages of backstory, and nothing happens until you're a couple of hundred pages into The Confusion would have been nice.</p>

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This is my general feeling about the story. What an awesome thing it could have been if there had been an editor who could make Stephenson understand that the world can barely handle one Thomas Pynchon, let alone a would-be clone that plays spin the bottle with Douglas Coupland's DNA.

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I imagine it will be a while.

He writes the things with a fountain pen.

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I think he generally writes with tools appropriate to the era. So while he's generally credited with writing the Baroque Cycle with a fountain pen (and there's a photo of that manuscript here), he wrote Cryptonomicon on a mechanical typewriter.

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so he's awaiting the technology for the futuristic one?

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Believe me, fountain pens don't slow the buggers up.

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My cousin's hairdresser's sister-in-law read on fidonet that; Neal Stephenson is writing the new one as part of a series with recursivly decreasing publishing dates.

It was published in the 13th century.

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I was thinking about this very topic in the shower last evening.

I understand that originally "Cryptonomicon" was going to have a third strand set in the future, but Stephenson abandoned this as the size of the book ballooned out of control. So, the next book might be a sequel to The Baroque Cycle/Cryptomonicon set in the future. Arguably "Snow Crash" and "The Diamond Age" are already sequels.

Stephenson is a rocket fan and an advisor to Blue Origin, but has never written a space novel, so a Stephenson space/rocket novel would be cool.

More essays along the lines of "In the Beginning..."/"In the Kingdom of Mao Bell"/"Mother Earth Mother Board" would be pretty damned exciting.

Of course, he could do something totally different: a slim volume of Carverian short stories, a novel about two people nearly getting divorced in the Connecticut suburbs, a collection of philosophical aperçus. But, nah, let's hope it's another good old-fashioned hysterical realist masterpiece (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterical_realism).

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I've long suspected that Cryptonomicon ends with so much up in the air because all that stuff was supposed to be resolved in the future timeline; when the MS. lost that timeline, it may have lost its "real" ending...

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dkellis said it for me, over on metaquotes:

Yes, but will there be an actual ending?

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