Book Review: The Mongoliad - Book 2

A while back I reviewed the first book of The Mongoliad and quite enjoyed it. I'm a huge Neal Stephenson fan, and another friend of mine, Cooper Moo, was involved in this project, so I was really glad to read it.

The Mongoliad: Book Two is not nearly as good as the first. As others have noted, it jumps between a myriad of plot lines with little of the tight interweaving that Stephenson is known for. In a series like this, without an end in sight, this can feel like drudge work to get through as we don't know if things will come together in the next book, or in ten more. My personal pet peeve is that it's not as tightly edited, so different parts by different authors are clearly varied in their pacing and quality, several of them suffering from the excessive use of adverbs and adjectives that feels like high school composition trying to up the drama but coming off as hammy.

That said, it has it's moments, and like the first, there are some great bits of sword-clanging and battleground strategy. These redeem it some, but only partly. I'll hold off on the third book and see in a few months if I'm still itching to get back into the series.

The Mongoliad: Book Two (The Foreworld Saga)

Book Review: Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing

Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing is a collection of Neal Stephenson work from various places over the past two decades. Most of it is available elsewhere and much of it for free, but the book gives you a one stop shop for it all.

Those looking for Stephenson's thoughts on real-world technologies and issues will find much of that here. There's less of his short fiction here thought that exists a bit too. I found I'd already read about a quarter of the material elsewhere, but got some value out of the remainder.

Most of it holds up pretty well, despite some being pretty dated. There's a fictional piece about virtual currencies generated around crypto algorithms which is particularly prescient. Basically nailing the whole e-spying thing and envisioning Bitcoin... in 1995!

There's a VERY lengthy piece, though a fascinating one, about how data cables are laid down on the ocean floor between countries and continents. Fascinating but wow is it long. It was written for Wired originally. Did they not have an editor somewhere?

In the end, expect some thought provoking work, but one bloated piece and a few that don't hold up as well.

Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing

Book Review: The Mongoliad: Book One

Fast paced, medieval sword-n-shield, knights vs mongols, action. The fast action swashbuckling of System of the World, without the lengthy political in-betweeny bits. I tore through this one really quickly. My only complaint is that the next book isn't due out for a while and the cliff hanger at the end has me wanting more.

Book Review: Reamde

I just got done with Neal Stephenson's latest, Reamde: . I think I held my breath for the last 40 pages or so. Whew, what a ride.

Readers expecting something in the way of speculative sci-fi along the lines of Snowcrash or Diamond Age may find it comes up a bit short. The book certainly does a little exploration of "where might MMO's end up, but not to the degree that Stross' Halting State did. That said, it's not like the book won't reward the reader in other ways.

The book takes the reader on a wild ride that starts when some MMO gold farmers try their hand at virus writing to increase revenues, unwittingly tick off some Russian mobsters, who in turn tick off some middle easter terrorists, and then we're off... The rest is classic Stephenson white-knuckle adventure with the reader rooting for the heroes, and not always sure who's on which side.

Reamde: A Novel

Book Review: Anathem

Very few people are going to like ALL of Neal Stephenson's books. I've read a number of them, and usually, but not always, like them (I loved Snowcrash and Diamond Age, was ambivilent about Zodiac, disliked Cryptonomicon, and loved the System of the World trilogy).

One thing I've found is that the time he takes in building up to the action is pretty consistently one quarter of the way in. The problem is that in a book like Anathem - a thousand page monster - this means it's quite some time before you get to the action.

In this case, it's still worth it. The long slow build-up does two things. First, the main character is part of a monastically-styled class in the book's world, and this long deliberate build lets the reader get immersed in the slow, pensive, pace that the 'monks' move and live. Secondly, It really takes the reader on a long and deep journey so that you find yourself - like the main character - gaping in wonder at how far you've come in the journey since the start.

And in that journey, well, it does go quite a ways. Picture somethings on the order of a Dune or Lord of the Rings; starting in Name of the Rose, but ending up in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The book also serves as backdrop for commentary on what I believe is Stephenson's distaste for the growing rift between the literati and the 'illiterati' in modern society.

As I said above, it's a long and arduous read. If you can get through long and deep sci-fi reads, though, you'll find a really great adventure here.

Anathem

Halting State's Sharpening Focus

I purchased Charles Stross' Halting State a while back but only got to reading it while on vacation last week.

It's a fun read. Not a great read, but a fun one, and one that should be required reading for those in our industry.

The book is a story of a couple reluctant heros that get wrapped up in an investigation of bank heist that unravels into a story of international espionage, etc, etc. On that basis alone, it's kind of a 'B' read. It's not a superb story as far as heist or spy stories, and doesn't have the page-turning action sequences of, say, Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash, though there are parts that almost get there.

However, what makes the book interesting, and makes Snowcrash a good point of comparison, is that the bank heist takes place in a virtual world, with a band of rogue players cleaning out a bank and then selling off the items for millions via online auctions. The heros' sleuthing takes place in both the real and virtual worlds.

Where the book succeeds, as Raph Koster pointed out a while ago, is in how well it nails all the details and issues around virtual worlds. To quote Raph:

Among the stuff that pops up, “namechecked” so to speak: PvP sploits. God mode. ORLY. Zombie flash mobs. Leveraging ARGs for real work. Impositional game design. VC bubble shenanigans. Cross-world avatar portability. Cons and cosplay. Discworld. LARPing. 4th edition D&D. Second Life. Mirror worlds.

... add to that Augmented Reality, cross-platform gaming, serious games, using VW's to launder money, etc, etc. Stross shows that he really gets it, and as great science fiction should, projects the possible implications that stem from the 'science'.

The thing that struck me most was this: If Stephenson's Snowcrash drew us a picture of the metaverse (and excited a bunch of people enough to run out and start VRML companies :-), then Stross, some fifteen years later, uses his book as a lense to sharpen that picture for us.

Highly recommended. Go Get it!

Diamond Age being made into mini-series!

BoingBoing points out that Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age is being made into a mini-series.

Insert sexual-arousal metaphor here.

Man do I love that book. I am so very excited.

I really hope they do it justice. A mini-series is the right direction given the amount of content needed to do the story right.

Hopefully, it performs well and will lead to them licensing the rights to The Baroque Cycle, which would then be made into a long-running series of, five fourteen-episode seasons, with each week's episode running for a contiguous eight hours. The whole thing would ship in a "crate set" because a box wouldn't do it. :-)