[davidw]

Is that still true? Honest question.

Cryptonomicon did such a wonderful job of capturing a certain something from the 1990ies. I haven't enjoyed his more recent books as much. Seveneves was depressing. Dodge had really bad reviews and I haven't bothered with it.

[q_andrew]

Snow Crash is parody literature, but the fantasy is built around very good predictions about the future. He coined the word "avatar" for virtual characters, and the book contains a direct inspiration for google maps.

[SllX]

Earth, initially. Keyhole cited Snow Crash as direct inspiration for their EarthViewer application, what became Google Earth post-acquisition.

[kragen]

No, Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar coined the word "avatar" for virtual characters in 01986, and Snow Crash wasn't published until 01992: http://habitatchronicles.com/2008/08/on-language-avatar-nyti...

[amyjess]

I was always under the assumption that they independently coined the word. At the very least, "avatar" wasn't well-known until Snow Crash came out, so it's possible Stephenson didn't know it was an existing word and came up with it for the same reasons as Farmer and Morningstar. It's also a near-certainty that the wider tech community only adopted the word "avatar" after reading it in Snow Crash due to the book's popularity, so even if he didn't independently co-coin the word, he's still the one who popularized it.

(if you're familiar at all with TVTropes, the latter is the difference between the concept of a Trope Maker and a Trope Codifier)

[kragen]

> I was always under the assumption that they independently coined the word.

I guess it's possible? I certainly hadn't heard of Habitat in 01992, or indeed until after I met Chip, and the correspondence with the Hindu concept is quite arresting. But then again, I never had a Commodore 64, and Neal Stephenson always loves to be plugged into everything that's trendy. Farmer and Morningstar gave a paper http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html at The First International Conference on Cyberspace in 01990, which seems like the kind of thing you would maybe go to if you were writing a novel like Snow Crash in 01990. But they say Habitat (or rather Club Caribe) only had 15000 users at the time.

> (if you're familiar at all with TVTropes,

I love TVTropes! If we're talking about the cyberspace avatar trope rather than the use of the word "avatar" for it, you could maybe trace that back to Vinge's 01981 True Names, as mentioned in the talk I linked above.

[bobsil1]

Assume you mean applied rather than coined. Avatar in Hinduism = form / skin / incarnation

[kragen]

Yeah, of course I didn't mean they invented the word, just a new sense of it. It isn't the literal sense from Hinduism because game players aren't gods, and because typically the characters they play in the games don't exist until the players incarnate in them, but it's clearly a metaphorical extension of the Hindu concept, as explained in the article I linked above.

[ben_w]

I really enjoyed Snow Crash; I felt that Seveneves was two completely different books that were coincidentally in the same universe, nether of which felt bad in isolation, but they definitely didn’t feel unified.

I wasn’t a fan of Quicksilver, but as that was the first historical novel I’ve listened to, and as it was award winning, I assume it must be more about my tastes than the quality of the writing?

[davidw]

I liked the second part of Seveneves, but the first bit felt really depressing, and more than a bit unrealistic.

I liked Quicksilver, but could easily see how it's not everyone's cup of tea.

[robbiep]

Apologies for breaking seveneves for you:

Why do they need to generate artificial Y chromosomes when there is a whole bunch of perfectly good ones in the last man alive who just died with them; and thousands upon thousands in the scattered genetic material in the frozen tin cans floating about in various orbits between earth and the shattered moon? And why does that have to lead to essentially speciation of the survivors?

[ben_w]

The tin cans heavily exposed to radiation? And in direct sunlight so more likely desiccated than frozen? And didn’t that guy just die of cancer? Though I was wondering why they didn’t start collecting semen and egg samples immediately after the total loss of the first samples.

Perhaps I’m misremembering, but I didn’t perceive the description as true speciation, more like socially defined racial groups.

[ravi-delia]

What about the first bit seemed unrealistic? I mean, besides the hand of God smacking the moon into bits. I loved the commitment to rock hard scifi, and the slow decay of relations on board resonated.

[davidw]

The fact that they could eke out an existence in such a challenging environment after so much went wrong just seemed a bit far-fetched.

[ravi-delia]

You know what, now that I think about it you're probably right. I think that the story just played into my feeling of a small team being able to carefully navigate where a large group takes on a mind of its own, and usually for ill. That's true in my experience for some things, but in space? With no backup? Probably doesn't carry over.

[progre]

"Seveneves was depressing" - there's an understatement. Quite interesting sci-fi in it I thought, but did anyone really think a story about the end of the world would be a fun read?

Dodge in hell was more micro level depressing, he starts of by killing one of the main characters from a previous book after all. But I found it enjoyable over all. I think he managed to convey what he wanted with the book, and unlike Seveneves it was a quite fun read.

[ravi-delia]

Seveneves is absolutely depressing, and so stressful! I loved it, but the agonizing sense of balancing on a wire doesn't end until they finally lock in on the peach pit. I can definitely see how it could cross the line from tense to unreadable, especially considering how jarring the third part is.

[2sk21]

I just loved Anathem, Reamde and Fall.

[ravi-delia]

I enjoyed Reamde a lot, some twists of fate left me cackling with delight. However, it felt much more meandering than other Stephenson novels. Is Fall better in that respect?

[davidw]

I liked Anathem and Reamde. DODO was ok, although it leaves you hanging a bit and apparently the sequel is even worse from that point of view, from the reviews.

[the__alchemist]

My favorites are The Diamond Age and Anathem, but thoroughly enjoyed Seveneves and Dodge.

I almost dropped Dodge 1/4 of the way in due to it being to dull. I thought Stephenson had lost his edge. Stuck through it, and loved it! It tackles a collection of related issues that are relevant today, and I think will continue to become more so in the near future, especially for the HN crowd. Ie his concepts of a post-truth-future, cultures emerging and isolating using controlled access to information etc. Speculative neuroscience too, ie how the brain constructs a cohesive model of the world.

Dodge seems to be the most polarizing Stephenson book.

[TheAdamAndChe]

Seveneves was spectacular, by far one of my all-time favorite books. To each their own, I suppose.