On 24/12/2014 9:50 PM, alister wrote:
what feels like 3 or 4 chapters in & it is still trying to set the scene, an exercise in stylish writing with very little content so far. even early scifi written for magazines on a per word basis were not this excessive (because if they were they would probably have been rejected or seriously edited).
My personal theory is that Stephenson polishes and polishes the first few chapters until the whole creative process really engages - the first chapter is especially overwritten - and then tears through the novel in an increasingly unrefined way, until it arrives at its anticlimactic conclusion. He was notorious for a while for not providing satisfying endings to his books.
Hopefully it will finally settle down & amend my current impression.
SNOW CRASH doesn't, I'm afraid, but Stephenson himself does as a writer. CRYPTONOMICON is a great geek read. ANATHEM is a fantastic piece of SF (possibly my favourite of his) THE SYSTEM OF THE WORLD is an amazing accomplishment and really shows that modern infotech didn't spring out of nothing like Venus from the foam.
-- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
