-
01 November 2008
Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:57:35 GMTAnathem
Neal Stephenson
Stephenson rocks once more. There’s such a great fantastical quality to his books, everything is stretched so close to absurdity but in such a way that you really just want to believe it. It’s great. This book makes me want a bolt, chord and sphere—how cool would it be if those were my three possessions?
Started it monday, finished it up on the soccer bus ride last night. That gives me a good burn rate of about 200 pages a day.
Stephenson’s bent here is almost spiritual. Where in his earlier books it was more techno–social (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Diamond age; at least as I remember them, rereads are now under consideration), and where the System of the World was historical and philosophic, here Stephenson takes his compelling and marvellous storytelling and wraps it around systems of existence and belief. There’s a very Emersonian transcendentalism (Emerson is even mentioned as an aside somewhere late in the book.)
Which is great, I love it when a book comes along that meshes with my insufficiently explored innate feelings towards some subject, here that of ‘god/religion/whatever.’
Nothing is more important that that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hum you in and come at you in so many ways. Fraa Orolo, 109
Why is religion such a universal in societies throughout history?
That’s right, people have a need to feel that they are part of some sustainable project. Something that will go on without them. It creates a feeling of stability. I believe that the need for that kind of stability is as basic and as desperate as some of the other, more obvious needs. But there’s more than one way to get it. We may not think much of the sline subculture, but you have to admit it’s stable! Then the burgers have a completely different kind of stability. Orolo in dialog with Erasmus, 205
I also love the formalized system of dialog, where it’s an objective of the theors to regularly argue with each other. If only people would actually do that! I’m generally a fan of arguing, and tend to do it just as often as I don’t. If only everyone else did as well…
I no longer respected that oath. Or at least, I no longer trusted those who were charged with enforcing the Discipline to which I had sworn. But I couldn’t very well say as much to these friends of mine who did still respect it. 231
Why do I hate politics? Why does going to church make me feel catatonic? It’s not that I hate democracy or that I think that believing in god in some unforgivably–backward and primitive notion; it’s more that both systems have steadily devolved in their lifetimes, leaving them (and their devotees) at the point where they garner at least as much of my disdain as they do my respect.
…the Convox was political, and made decisions by compromise. And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all. 573
I like the notion of introspectionist. 697
Stephenson posits the idea that google should ensconce itself as useful to the web by generating endless amounts of crap in different places on the internet, thereby requiring people to use it to actually find anything worthwhile:
Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to make more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap back out. They created syndevs whose sole purpose was to spew crap into The Reticulum. But it had to be good crap. Samman, 795
(Maybe google already came up with this, and that’s why they bought out blogger.)
Mystic vs. Poetic (Laterran):
The mystic nails a symbol to one meaning that was true for a moment but soon becomes false. The poet, on the other hand, sees that truth while it’s true but understands that symbols are always in flux and that their meanings are fleeting.
“Anyway, my point is that guys like Flec have a weakness, almost a kind of addiction, for the mystical, as opposed to poetic, way of using their minds. And there’s an optimistic side of me that says such a person could break that addiction, be retrained to think like a poet, and accept the fluxational nature of symbols and meaning.”
“Okay, but what’s the pessimistic side telling you?”
“That the poet’s way is a feature of the brain, a specific organ or faculty that you either have or you don’t. And that those who have it are doomed to be at war forever with those who don’t.” Erasmus and Quin, 883-4And in the second-to-last paragraph of the book, Stephenson nails exactly and precisely they way I’ve tried to see the world for a few years now:
Orolo said that the more he knew of the complexity of the mind, and the cosmos with which it was inextricably and mysteriously bound up, the more inclined he was to see it as a kind of miracle—not in quite the same sense that our Deolaters use the term, for he considered it altogether natural. He meant rather that the evolution of our minds from bits of inanimate matter was more beautiful and extraordinary than any of the miracles cataloged down through the ages by the religions of our world. And so he had an instinctive skepticism of any system of thought, religious or theorical, that pretended to encompass that miracle, and in so doing sought to draw limits around it. Erasmus, 889-90
-
01 June 2008
Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:05:47 GMTInterface
Neal Stephenson is awesome. His brand of
special, pure, joyful absurdity
shines through in this one as well as any of his others. It’s from back in 1994, a thriller dealing with a shadowy power structure and its exertion of power upon a presidential election. Brilliant, and yes you should read it. A few things that got me to tick the pages:“In the 1700s, politics was all about ideas. But Jefferson came up with all the good ideas. In the 1800s, it was all about character. But no one will ever have as mch character as Lincoln and Lee. For much of the 1900s it was about charisma. But we no longer trust charisma because Hitler used it to kill Jews and JFK used it to get laid and send us to Vietnam.”
Ogle had broken a six-pack out of a junky old refrigerator behind the “Oval Office” and set up the cans on the presidential desk. Aaron had pulled up another chair and now both of them had their feet up on the desk and beers in their hands.
“So what’s it about now?” Aaron said.
“Scrutiny. We are in the age of Scrutiny. A public figure must withstand the scrutiny of the media,” Ogle said. “The President is the ultimate public figure and must stand up under ultimate scrutiny; he is like a man stretched out on a rack in the public square in some medieval shithole of a town, undergoing the rigors of the inquisition. Like the medieval trial by ordeal, the Age of Scrutiny sneers at rational inquiry and debate, and presumes that mere oaths and protestations are deceptions and lies. The only way to discover the real truth is by the rite of the ordeal, which exposes the subject to such inhuman strain that any defect in his character will cause him to crack wide open, like a flawed diamond. It is a mystical procedure that skirts rationality, which is seen as the work of the Devil, instead drawing down a higher, ineffable power. Like the Roman haruspex who foretold the outcome of a battle, not by analyzing the strengths of the opposing forces but by groping through the steaming guts of a slaughtered, we seek to establish a candidate’s fitness for office by pinning him under the lights of a television studio and counting the number of times he blinks his eyes in a minute, deconstructing his use of eye contact, monitoring his gesticulations—whether his hands are open or closed, toward or away from the camera, spread open forthcomingly or clenched like grasping claws.
“I paint a depressing picture here. Be we, you and I, are like the literate monks who nurtured the flickering flame of Greek rationality through the Dark Ages, remaining underground, knowing each other by secret signs and code words, meeting in cellars and thickets to exchange our dangerous and subversive ideas. We do not have the strength to change the minds of the illiterate multitude. But we do have the wit to exploit their foolishness, to familiarize ourselves with their stunted thought patterns, and to use that knowledge to manipulate them toward the goals that we all know are, quote, right and true, unquote.” 92-92
Anyone who adhered, at least nominally, to any religion that was invented millennia ago by people who ran around in burlap and believed that the Earth was built on the back of a turtle—that is, any of the major religions—ran into little dilemmas like this on a regular basis. 141
“Positions change. People don’t. Earl Strong may or may not always be a so–called conservative populist. But he will definitely always be a pencil–neck Hitler wannabe with a face from Wal–Mart, as you pegged him.” 237
Now there’s a political insult.
-
30 January 2007
Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:45:16 GMTThe System of the World
Neal Stephenson
Stephenson wraps up his Baroque Cycle in high style. Read it.
And man do I wish Stephenson would’ve told what happened to precipitate Jack’s crowd-surfing episode.
-
16 January 2007
Tue, 16 Jan 2007 22:01:38 GMTZodiac
Neal Stephenson
Stephenson has his go at Captain Planet; kicks all kinds of ass.
I had to ride slow because I was taking my guerilla route, the one I follow when I assume that everyonein a car is out to get me. My nighttime attitude is, anyone can run you down and get away with it. Why give some drunk the chance to plaster me against a car? That’s why I don’t even own a bike light, or one of those godawful reflective suits. Because if you’ve put yourself into a situation where someone has to see you in order to be safe – to see you, and give a fuck – you’ve already blown it. 45
The big lie of American capitalism is that corporations work in their own best interests. In fact they’re constantly doing things that will eventually bring them to their knees. Most of these blunders involve toxic chemicals that any competent chemist should know to be dangerous. They pump these things into the environment and don’t even try to protect themselves. The evidence is right there in public, almost as if they’d printed up signed confessions and sprinkled them out of airplanes. Sooner or later, someone shows up in a Zodiac and points to that evidence, and the result is devastation far worse than what a terrorist, a Boone, could manage with bombs and guns. 57
I knew this, but never fully realized what it meant:
“Look, I’m no expert here,” Boone said, “but every environmentalist knows that a lot of water doesn’t have any air dissolved in it. Right? Polluted water, anything that’s got undecayed garbage or shit in it, doesn’t have air.”
“Right,” Kelvin said, “because the organisms that break those things down use up all the air in the process. The more sewage there is in the water – that is the higher the Biochemical Oxygen Demand – the less oxygen is present. 250
-
14 January 2007
Sun, 14 Jan 2007 19:24:39 GMTThe Big U
Neal Stephenson
Reading this book makes me want to learn both to play the organ and write machine code (As far as Stephenson is concerned, I remember somewhere in the beginning of Cryptonomicon a discussion of how the two are, in fact, identical). As good as I’d expect a Stephenson novel to be.
-
28 December 2006
Thu, 28 Dec 2006 19:14:10 GMTThe Confusion
Neal Stephenson
Volume 2, books 4 and 5 of Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, good as always. If I couldn’t claim Stephenson as my favorite author before reading it, I don’t have much choice after.
-
24 December 2006
Sun, 24 Dec 2006 13:55:37 GMTOdalisque
Stephenson continues with his epic, 3rd book of 8. Reccommended.
-
14 December 2006
Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:44:29 GMTKing of the Vagabonds
Neal Stephenson
Another Stephenson, supremely good stuff. The book ends in a real rut, can’t wait to get at the next one.
-
04 November 2006
Sat, 04 Nov 2006 16:11:48 GMTQuicksilver
Neal Stephenson
There isn’t really much that I can say. Here’s some previous stuff on Stephenson, who’s hands down my favorite fiction writer.
I’m pissed that the last 35 pages of Quicksilver are the first chapter from the next in the series. The ending just ran up behind me and bashed me over the head. Not that it was stunning (a fault lots of people find with Stephenson’s books), but there was still a good chunk of pages between my right thumb and forefinger that threw me.
The second I got done with it I hopped onto amazon to order the next two. It’s been awhile since I’ve really read at a good pace, much less stuff as good as Stephenson. They pull you through just like pulp/trash novels do, but after reading a Dan Brown or a John Grisham you feel almost guilty because reading the book doesn’t really get you anything. I’ve read a few, and they all just blur together. (If you want, you can switch the pronoun you for me in the rest of this…)
Stephenson won’t just blow you away for the few days it takes to get through the book (I read 80 pages thursday, ~250 yesterday, and 100 today), but you can actually tell one of his novels from another. Which is a plus. I take it as a sign that they didn’t just rot my brain.
If I had to describe Quicksilver (I can’t), I’d say it was history/science/fiction. All three about balanced. Its going on in mid 17th century england, featuring scientists at the genesis of the Royal Society in London. Daniel Waterhouse makes friends with Netwon, Liebnitz, and plenty of other bigwigs; not to mention sails through a flotilla of pirates in the second, temporally distant plot line. I’m not describing any more than that, you should read it.
-
04 April 2006
Tue, 04 Apr 2006 15:55:00 GMT Mother Earth Mother BoardKjell Olsen2132 days agoDelightful Neal Stephenson article on the laying of undersea cable, written about 10 years ago.
In 1870, a new cable was laid between England and France, and Napoleon III used it to send a congratulatory message to Queen Victoria. Hours later, a French fisherman hauled the cable up into his boat, identified it as either the tail of a sea monster or a new species of gold-bearing seaweed, and cut off a chunk to take home.
The rule of thumb for calculating revenue loss works like this: for every penny per minute that the long distance market will bear on a particular route, the loss of revenue, should FLAG be severed on that route, is about $3,000 a minute. So if calls on that route are a dime a minute, the damage is $30,000 a minute, and if calls are a dollar a minute, the damage is almost a third of a million dollars for every minute the cable is down. Upcoming advances in fiber bandwidth may push this figure, for some cables, past the million-dollar-a-minute mark.
It’s when a society plunders its ability to look over the horizon and into the future in order to get short-term gain – sometimes illusory gain – that it begins a long slide nearly impossible to reverse.
The collapse of the lighthouse must have been astonishing, like watching the World Trade Center fall over. But it took only a few seconds, and if you were looking the other way when it happened, you might have missed it entirely – you’d see nothing but blue breakers rolling in from the Mediterranean, hiding a field of ruins, quickly forgotten.They [Alexander Graham Bell, et al] electrified the reeds in such a way that they generated not only acoustical vibrations but corresponding electrical ones. They sought to combine the electrical vibrations of all these reeds into one complicated waveform and feed it into one end of a cable. At the far end of the cable, they would feed the signal into an identical set of reeds. Each reed would vibrate in sympathy only with its counterpart on the other end of the wire, and by recording the pattern of vibrations exhibited by that reed, one could extract a Morse code message independent of the other messages being transmitted on the other reeds. For the price of one wire, you could send many simultaneous coded messages and have them all sort themselves out on the other end.
The world has actually been wired together by digital communications systems for a century and a half. Nothing that has happened during that time compares in its impact to the first exchange of messages between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan in 1858. That was so impressive that a mob of celebrants poured into the streets of New York and set fire to City Hall.
-
03 November 2005
Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:44:00 GMTThe Diamond Age
Neal Stephenson
Another excellent Neal Stephenson. Something about his novels just grabs me. I don’t know if it’s his severe techiness or his concurrent storylines or what, but after finishing the three I’ve read so far I’ve just been floored at how they ended up.
The book goes on about subverting the accepted culture. It takes place in a moderately future world, where enclaves have taken the place of countries, set by phyles (phylums?) organized by cultural/religous affiliation.
New Atlantis, up with the chinese and japanese phyles in terms of wealth and power, is host to a very proper society inspired by Victorian ideals. Very proper, Atlantans are embarrassingly chivalrous, and the Confucian, familial piety ideals dominate the two asian powerhouse societies.
Lord Finkle-McGraw, a very high ranking international (interphyllial) official, wants his granddaughter, Elizabeth, to be influenced by something other then her Atlantan peers and society. He commissions a project, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, which tells an interactive story with the point being to teach more then could ever be learned in school. To subvert the culture, and provide Elizabeth with what Finkle-McGraw was disappointed to have failed to pass on to his children.
What’s missing from traditional culture in Stephenson’s fantasy world is subtlety, the ability for children to handle ambiguity. They have their beliefs, and for the most part they life their life with those indoctrinated feelings sincerely without much thought.
But those who rebel and cast out their beliefs are little better then those who live a small minded existence with their culturally indoctrinated morals. Contradiction and ambiguity. Finkle-McGraw himself sees the obtuse insanity of his own culture only to enforce it and hope he can reveal it to a select few through his primer.
I couldn’t make much of an argument against the book, I loved it. I read through it quick, and couldn’t believe it finished when it did. I like how Stephenson cuts his novels short before any sort of conclusion is reached, I don’t know if he’s leaving room for secondary books or just wants to leave room for the imagination to come into play. Both I hope.
I think what makes Stephenson’s writing so engaging is that it’s just swimming in ideas. All of his books jump off with a technological idea – it was VR in Snow Crash and Cryptography in Cryptonomicon, nanotech here. They proceed to move along fairly quickly with good depth, with two or three concurrent plot lines.
My notes on Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, the two other Stephenson books I’ve read. I don’t know whether to continue with Zodiac or the Baroque Cycle, but the college library unfortunately doesn’t have either.
-
27 August 2005
Sat, 27 Aug 2005 11:07:00 GMTCryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson
I’m really starting to love Neal Stephenson. Cryptonomicon is definitely as good as Snow Crash, which I loved also. It’s the longest book I’ve read in awhile, at 900 some pages, but I also read it faster then anything else – I started it monday night and was done by thursday morning.
-
01 August 2005
Mon, 01 Aug 2005 22:21:00 GMTSnow Crash
Neal Stephenson
Sweet novel by Neal Stephenson. Set in the near future, the US has fallen into a collection of corporations controlling everything from Suburbia and Religion to Pizza Delivery. The Metaverse becomes the global vessel for person to person interaction, and Hiro, the main character knows his shit about the metaverse. But when Da5id, Hiro’s close friend and co-conspirating hacker is infected with a deadly virus after watching a virtual video, Hiro knows something big is happening.
-
Also somewhat recently
