There Is No Antimemetics Division (2018)

I've read most of Stephenson's books, and loved many of them, but the only one I absolutely tell people to never read is the Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (despite the signed copy on my shelf). I haven't read it since publication, so the details are a bit hazy now, but I remember it feeling like a waste. The conceit is: What if there were a government organization that dealt with <cool scifi thing>, and we emulated that with high fidelity – complete with lots of reporting and bureaucracy . To me, it made <cool scifi thing> about as fun to read about as... tedious government bureaucracy.

It's nice to hear that other people really liked it. Definitely highlights the breadth of approaches and styles that Stephenson has.

>To me, it made <cool scifi thing> about as fun to read about as... tedious government bureaucracy.

This is also the problem with Charles Stross' Nightmare Stacks. The concept was kinda funny in 2004, but by book number 10 it just gets tedious. The reader cries out, What is the point of all this, and Stross answers with a shrug.

Let me tell you my "avoid at all costs" Stephenson book is Termination Shock. Woooooof. Compared to Reamde, for instance, it was nowhere near as interesting or clever for being a near-future setting. The story functionally goes nowhere, does nothing, and it takes a goddamn age to get there. It opens with 70 pages on feral swine hunting for chrissake. And the muddled "America as a failed technostate" idea was just more slog. Woof.

I learned about the Line of Actual Control, so say this about Neal, you always learn something.

But I loved Seveneves, for instance. Replace feral hogs with orbital mechanics but there was a pacing and thriller quality to it that was super compelling.

And Anathem is probably my favorite. It has such a compelling core conceit to it and the way that manifests is deeply interesting.

Snow Crash is brash and "edgy" and a bit eye-rolly (everyone is a pizza delivery driver?) but it is also one of the patron saints of cyberpunk and is a worthwhile read (though it suffers a bit from Neal's habit to literally crash land his books at times.)

And somewhere in the middle of the pack is DODO which is just odd and quirky and a bit out there but was still enjoyable, to me.

My problem is it goes nowhere and does nothing, and doesn't ever particularly rise to any compelling story arc along the way.

I was hoping for more drama? More conflict? Instead, hardly anything happens. And woo boy is it "trying to be too relevant" and it'll age terribly. Covid. Drones. Kashoggi. Deep fakes. It was all backwards looking, rather than forward facing. When good scifi or spec fiction works best is when it transports me to a new and interesting world, or crafts a universe that challenges the orthodoxy in a way that makes me pause and keep extending the thought experiment.

TS had none of that. It's just 70 pages of pigs, slogging through a hurricane remnant, a Dutch dam failing, a big sulfur gun to change the climate (maybe, mostly, we never really get into its impact or like some unintended Snowpiercer effect) and then deep fakes and way way way too long training in traditional Indian martial arts. And yet, through all of that, it really goes nowhere and does nothing.

I just finished Termination Shock last month! I thought it was super interesting, and I learned a lot about the LAC. Kind of funny to read as a Dutch person, too.

I feel like Stephenson's 'recent' novels are longer and more rambling, but that was exactly what I wanted after reading all of John Scalzi's works in a row.

Finished Anathem last week, that was also amazing.

I always think of this part from Wonderboys:

https://youtu.be/BrVl1hWrWBs?si=UPgOdjd6ujlJ1UKP&t=95