Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Stephenson

What Neal Stephenson work should I read next?

alms — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:54:15 -0800

I read and very much enjoyed The Diamond Age. What work(s) by Neal Stephenson should I read next? I recently purchased a remaindered copy of Cryptonomicon. Should I read that, or is there some other work (or set of works) by NS that I should get to next?

I doubt I'll read everything he's written, so I'd like to optimize what I do read.

That dude needs a publicist.

sourwookie — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 06:16:10 -0800

Just because we gotta ask every couple of years: Anyone know what Neal Stephenson is up to lately? Any new works on the horizon? As usual, nothing on his website, no press releases anywhere.

Looking for Cyberpunk Novels

govtrust — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 21:29:26 -0800

Looking for good cyberpunk books. (Authors I like but have already read: Gibson, Stephenson, Miéville, Gaiman, Dick.) Go, Hive mind, go.

Dinner with some nerd idols; what would you ask?

TochterAusElysium — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:54:22 -0800

How can I make the most of my dinner with Greg Bear, Neal Stephenson, George Dyson, and Donna Shirley? I'm attending an event with those luminaries, and I'm sort of at a loss as to what kinds of intelligent questions to ask (if I have the courage to ask - I'm pretty shy around well-known people).

I've read most of Stephenson's books (though I never could get through the Baroque Cycle); I know a little about George Dyson (more about his father), have read many of Greg Bear's books, and know very little about Donna Shirley.

My question(s): what would you ask in this situation? What are some good resources on these folks that I might look at before the event? I feel like this a special opportunity and I don't want to waste it by asking something stupid. Thanks, MeFi!

What would be a good way to calculate "fuck-you money"?

ElfWord — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:27:13 -0800

What would be a good way to calculate "fuck-you money"? I've been re-reading the excellent Neal Stephenson novel, Cryptonomicon. In it, there's a passage alluding to "fuck-you money", which has since come to be defined by UrbanDictionary as "any amount of money allowing infinite perpetuation of wealth necessary to maintain a desired lifestyle without needing employment or assistance from anyone."

The original passage from the book is as follows, reprinted from the publicly-available excerpt on the Cryptonomicon site:
"We look for places where the math is right. Meaning what? Meaning that pop. is about to explode---we can predict that just by looking at age histogram---and per capita income is about to take off the way it did in Nippon, Taiwan, Singapore. Multiply those two things together and you get the kind of exponential growth that should get us all into fuck-you money before we turn forty.

This is an allusion to a Randy/Avi conversation of two years ago wherein Avi actually calculated a specific numerical value for ``fuck-you money.' It was not a fixed constant, however, but rather a cell in a spreadsheet linked to any number of continually fluctuating economic indicators. Sometimes when Avi is working at his computer he will leave the spreadsheet running in a tiny window in the corner so that he can see the current value of ``fuck-you money' at a glance."

So then...
Assume I'd like to create the fictional spreadsheet Avi has created. How would I go about it? Which 'economic indicators' would be a good way of measuring this sort of thing?

Bonus points for:
a) Making it self-updating/providing instructions on how to do so.
b) Examples of the kinds of things this money could buy, or of people that have this kind of money.
c) Originality in choosing economic indicators.
d) Actually following through, making the spreadsheet/program, and making it publically available.

Crypto film rights

OmieWise — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 15:06:04 -0800

Have the film rights to Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon been sold? In general how does one discover the answer to such a question (what the kids call google-fu is weak with me)?

Stephenson's Baroque Cycle

Prospero — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 12:51:37 -0800

Does Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle undergo any stylistic changes in volumes two and three that will make it more readable? I'm about 650 pages into Stephenson's Quicksilver right now, and I'm wondering if I should continue straight through to The Confusion, or give the series a break (perhaps indefinitely).

I have a very high tolerance for multiple-volume literary works, inside and outside the SF genre, and I loved all of Stephenson's previous novels that I've read (Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon). But Quicksilver has what I consider to be some serious flaws, and it's not earning its keep for me right now--its narrative structure is pretty disorganized, and what precious little plot there is seems to be buried in page after page of trivia, which itself seems to have little rhyme or reason to its organization and is often something that I already know (the three pages devoted to an explanation of selling stocks short, for example). Members of various royal families appear for a few pages, speak a line or two of intrigue, and vanish with no character development. I'm beginning to feel that my time would be better served by reading a non-fiction work about the Baroque era instead.

So I guess my question is: if you were disappointed with Quicksilver, but not enough to stop reading the series, was The Confusion an improvement? Is the first volume Stephenson's way of winnowing the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, or does the narrative sloppiness (which isn't characteristic of his earlier novels) continue through the rest of the cycle? Am I at least going to get some original thoughts about the relation between scientific research and finance (which is what Stephenson seems to be flirting with, in his own highly inefficient way)? (Amazon's reader reviews indicate a dismal 3.5-star average for Quicksilver, vs. a 4.5-star average for The Confusion, but the number of reviews for Quicksilver is 229 vs. 47 for The Confusion, which indicates self-selection.)

What am I missing about Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver?

heather — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 09:18:13 -0800

Quicksilver. What am I missing? (more)