My first in this series of posts was about Iain Banks. This week it's Neal Stephenson. I think someone recommended Snow Crash to me. It's a cyberpunk story similar to some William Gibson, but nicely told and with cool ideas of a virtual world infected by a virus that could affect participants in the real world. I went back through some of his earlier books. Some of these are more straight thrillers. Some of those were originally published under another name, but re-branded when he became successful.
My favourite is Cryptonomicon which is the first of many really thick books. It's a tale featuring lots of cryptography in the second world war and the modern day. It's a pretty geeky book and that is fine with me. It features some historical characters such as Alan Turing. He used the ancestors of some of the fictional characters in his epic Baroque Cycle trilogy. I need to read this again as it's been a while. It's set around the dawn of science, but also talks about the development of finance. It's a good story too.
Anathem is more science fiction mixed with fantasy. Reamde is a techo-thriller featuring a massive multi-player game and some terrorists. I didn't enjoy this one so much, but it's certainly better than Dan Brown.
His last book was Seveneves, that I reviewed a while back. This is a really cool end of the world tale that works in some realistic space hardware.
There are a couple of other books I haven't read and he may be due for another soon. I'm sure I read somewhere that we was trying writing by hand to try and encourage him to write shorter books, but it doesn't seem to have worked. I recommend his books if you like some technology and science in your fiction. He can be a little lacking on character development and some of the endings are not great after all the build-up. But a book is a about the journey as much as the destination.
A good book is one you want to re-read and I wish I had more time to do so. I've read Cryptonomicon twice and would do so again.
