[lelandfe]

Any time he goes off on some wild tangent in his books, I assume it's because he just recently learned a lot about it and feels compelled to put that info somewhere. I remember Reamde spending a full two pages on the benefits of lashing tires to your fishing craft.

[privong]

> Any time he goes off on some wild tangent in his books, I assume it's because he just recently learned a lot about it and feels compelled to put that info somewhere.

Stephenson discussed this a bit in the Long Now launch event[0] for "Polostan" and more or less confirmed what you suspect. He also went on to say that he has learned to reel that in and avoid those "rabbit holes". He avoids such digressions in Polostan, in my opinion to the detriment of the book.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTK1vuv96Rc

[lelandfe]

Oh wow, this was just from a couple weeks ago. Nice one.

[bombcar]

This used to be relatively common, I think it's Les Miserables that spends an inordinate amount of time discussing the Paris sewer system.

[gavindean90]

Hundreds of pages

[lxgr]

Personally, that's exactly why I love his works! "Fictionalized Wikipedia" is an underappreciated genre :)