I adore Zodiac as well but am in a decided minority in that regard.

I managed to finish it in two days. Super entertaining.

Anywho, this visualization is cool to see after reading the book.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22816087-seveneves

I really liked Seveneves though. And The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. has been good so far!

FWIW my favorite Stephenson novel is still Anathem.

I'd rate Anathem and Snow Crash much higher than it.

Cryptonomicon is my favorite work of his.

Cryptonomicon did such a wonderful job of capturing a certain something from the 1990ies. I haven't enjoyed his more recent books as much. Seveneves was depressing. Dodge had really bad reviews and I haven't bothered with it.

I would also recommend "Seveneves", one of Neal Stephenson's most recent books. "Anathem" was also very enjoyable.

There were parts of Seveneves that I thought were spectacular, and a lot that I thought was silly, and most of which I hated reading. ;-)

https://blog.plover.com/book/Seveneves.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves

Right now I am reading 'Seveneves' recommendend by Bill Gates.

My concern is just from a general interest in spaceflight. More of a wish to protect a resource rather than a Chicken Little fear of the sky literally falling out.

This is my first (proper) science fiction book. I have been told that Foundation series is a must read. Any recommendations will be appreciated!!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves

Still, Seveneves < Anathem, in my jumped up not so humble opinion!

I've intentionally not read this teaser, but from he blurb I feel like I'm going to like Seveneves

I can't wait to grab my hands on it!

In conclusion: if you liked the launch loop idea but haven’t read Seveneves then go buy/download it right now!

I don't think I'm ever going to re-read it.

Seveneves, on the other hand, I absolutely loathed in basically every regard. My loathing for it makes it memorable enough to be my most hated book (there are plenty of books out there that are 'worse', but are also unmemorable -- Seveneves is viscerally memorable)

Consider the problem that the astronauts had when on the moon and the "prevent dust from getting in the lander". Not only do you have the worry of sharp, pointy dust now - but also radioactive dust.

While it isn't a science book... Seveneves has to deal with the problem of nuclear trust and dust and does so in a realistic way. Its a good book to read/listen to (if you acknowledge/expect the "Stephenson where did the ending go?!" problem)

One of the few books, that when I'm finished, I just want to turn it over a start again.

Covers a wide range of important and relevant topics in technology, biology/genetics, ethics. My only problem is it is too short! Could easily have been a triology like the Baroque Cycle (another favorite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle

To Kill A Mocking Bird (Insanely good)

True Grit (Insanely good)

The Little Friend (Good)

Priceless (Very good, about art theft)

The Secret History (Insanely good)

Ready Player One (Good, nerdy)

Shadow Divers (Very good, history nerd book)

Diary of Anne Frank (Very good)

Unbroken (Very good, way better than the movie)

With The Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa (Very good)

Seveneves (good, but I'm a Stephenson fanboy)

The Martian (Very good, but just watch the movie).

I read a bunch of other stuff, but that's what I found really "good" this past year.

I absolutely LOVE it when a scifi author gets that stuff right and it's great working it through in your head as you absorb the story they're weaving. Really added something to the book. Very much like Arthur C. Clarke's work - stuff that would work that way in real life.

Anathem and Seveneves are among my favorites. And I really liked the entire Baroque Cycle! (after consciously avoiding it for years).

* Children of Time / Children of Ruin (both really good)

* Remembrance of Earth's Past (even the fan fiction one is good)

* A lot of stuff from Alastair Reynolds (House of Suns being my favorite)

* Classics like Tau Zero, The Forever War etc.

* A Deepness in the Sky / A Fire Upon the Deep

Although not all of these are strictly considered hard scifi, I guess.

Btw, I love it when somebody asks this question every now and then on HN. Lots of stuff for one's (ever growing) reading list.

Absolutely recommend "Diamond Age" and to a lesser extent (but more fun) "Snowcrash". I started "Cryptonomicon" right after reading Singh's "The Code Book", and it just felt like Stephenson did a sub-par job with the subject material (perhaps especially because "The Code Book" isn't fiction, but almost reads like it).

Did start "Seveneves" when there was a free teaser out, but haven't gotten around to it yet -- it's on my list. I'm hoping it's a bit tighter than most of the stuff since "Diamond Age".

I almost dropped Dodge 1/4 of the way in due to it being to dull. I thought Stephenson had lost his edge. Stuck through it, and loved it! It tackles a collection of related issues that are relevant today, and I think will continue to become more so in the near future, especially for the HN crowd. Ie his concepts of a post-truth-future, cultures emerging and isolating using controlled access to information etc. Speculative neuroscience too, ie how the brain constructs a cohesive model of the world.

Dodge seems to be the most polarizing Stephenson book.

I can tell Stephenson enjoyed writing Act 2 as an act of fun semi-hard sci-fi, but I think it should have been in its own setting, not tacked on to a dark hard sci-fi survival novel.

Never got around to Titan. I really liked Seveneves. I think Sonar Taxlaw is the most perfect woman, next to my wife. Nothing wrong with referring to L2, L4, L5...

I called it a lasso because, if you look at the diagram, it literally looks like a lasso.

Arrgh! That would be like when my grade school teacher called the LEM the "moonwalker" because it looked like it could walk around on the moon.

Man, no kidding. It feels like a very inelegant info dump. While I realize those tend to show up in Stephenson books at some point or another, it's a rough way to start.

I liked a lot about Anathem but found Reamde unmemorable. I'd love to see a return to form.

(POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW)

Especially the sort of quantum-ex-machina "twist" near the end was kind of off-putting to me. Everything so far was very well crafted and researched, but this part was a lot like "yeah multiple universes or something", but I'm not sure if it even works that way, if true.

Also I found the constant back-translating of scientific discoveries and theorems with-a-different-name kind of tedious. I caught a lot of them, but many also not and I kept feeling like I was missing out on some cool references. Even though (IMHO) I have a pretty broad general knowledge of most important scientific/math theorems.

There were some other bits I didn't like but that's personal taste. I loved the humour in Snow Crash (so much better reading than Neuromancer) and the hi-tech thriller action stuff in Cryptonomicon. Anathem seemed kind of slow, building a whole world and such (as I said, matter of taste, I don't get quite as excited about world-building in fiction/fantasy books, unlike many people).

It's not easy: when you build "mysteries" into a well-built self-consistent world (and Stephenson's worlds are excellent in this regard), it becomes increasingly hard to reconcile them all. As soon as you allow yourself to explore emergent phenomena during a creative process, you run the risk of writing yourself into a corner. I tend to read most fiction with an approach of "imagine the stories you wish happened in this well-thought-out universe" rather than worrying too much about the way an author actually writes a plot.

- Apex [Nexus 3] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)

- Factfulness (Awesome, most important book I read this year)

- Prisoners of Geography (why nations act the way they do)

- Crux [Nexus 2] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)

- Debt: the first 5000 years (slog to get through but interesting)

- Nexus [Nexus 1] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)

- Digitocracy (super short story, super powerful message)

- Artemis (Not as good as the martian)

- Before Mars (Starts out great, fizzles out)

- Down and Out in Magic Kingdom (How reputation based social currency might pan out)

- Blood Sweat and Pixels (How games are really made)

- Masters of Doom (Awesome story of how the game was made and what it led to)

- Foundation [Foundation 1] (Prescient with where the world is, what might happen in reality)

- Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that can't... (Ok, not great, read it on blinkist)

- Ender's Game (Under rated, most fun I had reading this year, I know...)

- Neuromancer (classic, must read)

- Pre-suation (interesting and worth reading if starting a consumer facing business)

- The Three-Body Problem (Found it tedious, honestly. Interesting though)

- Radical Candour (A lot of common sense advice we take for granted and could do better with)

- Seveneves (Longggggg, but really worth it. Shame about the ending)

- The Virgin Banker (Really good read, how a bank came into being)

- Why information grows (Great read, could of been half the length, would recommend)

- Babylon Revisited (Meh)

- Money: the Unauthorised Biography (Simplistic history of money before and after coin. Good)

- Hellbent (Enjoyed it, good for a holiday read)

- Snow Crash (Classic, Awesome, read it)

- The little prince (must read)

- To Pixar and Beyond (A different viewpoint on Jobs)

I think Diamond Age was my favorite overall Stephenson story in terms of both story and neat scifi concepts, but all of them were enjoyable. I agree on Seveneves chars all being forgettable. Dodge (The most recent one) had perhaps the dullest start, but I really liked the Dodge, Corvis, and Daisy characters.

The first couple pages of Seveneves certainly does not impress, but maybe I'll like it better after reading the whole thing.

For non-sci-fi, my favorite fantasy book I've read recently was "The Lies of Locke Lamora" (and its sequels) by Scott Lynch. Another is "Dirty Jobs" by Christopher Moore, a bit on the Pratchett-inspired side of things.

I also recently finished Felicia Day's memoir, "You're Never Weird on the Internet," which I highly recommend.

> Yes, the novel ends and it's obvious that the characters' lives keep going. Lots of authors do that. Real life often doesn't have endings or clear resolutions.

The characters lives do end with the end of the book (unless there's a sequel). You can certainly imagine how their lives might proceed, but a satisfactory ending doesn't preclude that either. Drawing together the elements of a story, completing the arcs, creating some kind of resolution: these are part of the storytellers craft.

With Seveneves I thought he just ran out of steam. It felt like leaving a film ten minutes before the end and stumbling out into the daylight. Pretty dissatisfying at the end of a long book.

I’ve heard good things about Seveneves, but I’m a little hesitant to pick it up given that it’s huge and there are thousands of other books to read.

- Seveneves: A really great hard sci-fi. Very thought provoking ideas and excellent plot! Warning this is a heavy themed book. Also keep in mind that at about 3/4 in the novel there's a conclusion to the main story; the rest of the novel feels rushed and doesnt keep up; you won't miss anything if you just skip it.

- The Expanse series (starting with Leviathan wakes). A very good series. It has a light tone and mainly focuses on characters. Some books are better than the others. If you liked the 1st one then you wont regret reading the others. Not much philosofy of hard sci-fi ideas so probably near to your liking.

- Rendezvous with Rama: Probably my favorite Arthur Clarke novel. The plot may not be so interesting but the ideas presented make up for it.

- Red rising series: This is a great read, the plot feels something like a GoT of scifi; although the setting could also be considered a fantasy one. This is a plot intensive series but not many scifi philosophical ideas. Probably good for your linking.

- The three body problem trilogy: This is not so light-hearted; it is serious sci-fi presenting some excellent ideas that would blow your mind. Especially after I read the 2nd one (The Dark Forest) I kept it in my mind for a long time; thinking over the things presented there. This is sci-fi at its best.

Actually, Seveneves would be a kind of amazing long running serial if they just ran a chunk of anthologies during the portion of history the book skips between stabilizing the asteroid and recolonizing earth.

Particularly in regards to Greg Egan since his books are really out there. I personally recommend Permutation City and Diaspora which I found both amazing (although most of his books are also very good). Seveneves is still on my to-read list, from a lot of reviews I got the impression that the first part of the book is very good while the second part goes a bit downhill. I'll still probably read it someday.

Another recommendation that's a bit more mainstream is the Expanse series which seems to really try to portray some of the real effects of space flight and gravity effects while, again, also throwing some more "out-there and not so realistic" stuff into the mix.

- "Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison

- "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

These are beautifully written books-- true art. I read intellectually stimulating, non-fiction material every moment of my life. Fiction counterbalances that frenzied information consumption.

I also read 2/3 of SevenEves by Neal Stephenson. Although the first 2/3 were good, I can't recommend the book due to the last 1/3. Those who read the book will know what I'm talking about.

Gliders sometimes use water ballast to store more energy so they can stay up longer. Basically after getting towed to an initial altitude they use thermals and ridge soaring to gain altitude. After that it's all about converting altitude to speed and distance based on their glide ratio. Having a high mass apparently helps. Hopping from one lift producing area to another, you can cover great distances.

Currently this is pretty much a recreational activity because you are dependent on weather, sunlight, and other things that are hard to predict and detect. But kind of intriguing notion what you could do if you had a way to reliably find areas with good lift.

On a related note, here's a youtube channel of a glider pilot in Kansas that regularly posts awesome footage from his glider. Here's some awesome footage of him exploring some mountains and exploiting available lift from winds hitting the rocks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcd5Z46RGRU

I found the first two thirds of it to be pretty depressing to the point where I didn't really enjoy the whole book that much. I wish he'd just kind of jumped right into the "future world" bit and made some references to what had taken place when the moon blew up.

[1]http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2015/06/seveneves-an...

> The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.

If you're looking for something even harder there's one author to stands out. Greg Egan. Most of his books are created by modifying some part of relativity and seeing what kind of world would be the logical conclusion from that modification. From the blurb for his book "Orthogonal".

> In Yalda’s universe, light has no universal speed and its creation generates energy.

> On Yalda’s world, plants make food by emitting their own light into the dark night sky.

Every one of his books are this weird, and he has books worth of education material and graphics to help explain the mechanics of each universe he creates. He has also done some novel discoveries when it comes to superpermutations.

If you don't want to go quite that deep into it all, you could take a look at "The Martian". The movie is a fine piece of work, but the book is really amazing. It goes into a lot more details. Andy Weir, the author, even made sure the phases of Earth and Mars matched up so closely that you can figure out when the book is happening by inferring the travel times and communication delays.

Generally, you won't find much of this genre. Writing space opera (Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.) doesn't require too much. You have to have good characters exploring an interesting scenario, and then write it competently. Proper hard Sci-Fi on the other hand is incredibly difficult. It requires intimate knowledge of things like orbital physics and being able to infer what is and isn't possible within the next ~20 years. This is where most hard Sci-Fi is set because it grounds it the most. An analogous issue is that hard Sci-Fi often "expires". Stories written 30 years ago suddenly start sounding silly because technology developed in a new and at-the-time unexpected direction.

I love the foundation series, but it was written in a very different time. Don't expect well developed characters.

I haven't read Seveneves, but other stephenson novels tend to be him nerding out on some really big idea. If you like that sort of thing (and are ok with the author really going into the tech side of the idea) greg egan is really good.

Science fiction is a pretty broad field, with lots of different types of books that concentrate on different things, so its going to vary depending on what you like. At the same time, without more to go on, this thread will probably just be a list of every famous sci-fi novel ever (if that's what you're looking for, may i suggest picking some novels at random off the nebula award winners list? There are some exceptions, but most are quite good and its a little bit of everything)

But REAMDE and Seveneves were just terribly disappointing and a huge letdown to me. They both seemed shallow and flat compared to the depth of story in his other books.

I don't think I can think of any other author whose books I both adore and loathe.

Stephenson manages to show humanity in all its realistic messiness but still leave you proud -- on balance -- that humans mostly get our act together in a desperate attempt to preserve a seed of life and culture.

Maybe if I'd read Seveneves without ever having heard this comparison, I would have made it through to the part that makes you proud, but at this point I doubt that's possible.

Going to skip this one, and I'd suggest everyone else skip Childhood's End.

"A Deepness in the Sky" was REALLY good. The Forever War was good for the concept.

In short, yours looks like a great list I will come back to, thank you.

However, I do strongly dislike Remembrance of Earth's Past / The Three Body Problem - it's vastly overrated in my opinion and the characters make no sense. The best part of it was the intro to the first book which gave an interesting glimpse at history.

- George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Loved:

- Alastair Reynolds, House of Suns

- Andy Weir, The Martian

- Neal Stephenson, Seveneves

- Greg Egan, Teranesia

Liked:

- Arthur C. Clarke, 3001: The Final Odyssey

- Arthur C. Clarke, 2061: Odyssey Three

- Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Laws

- Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

- Jonathan Slack, Stem Cells: A Very Short Introduction

- John Scalzi, Fuzzy Nation (bought the audiobook for Wil Wheaton's narration)

- Ray Monk, Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center

- Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space

- David C. Cassidy, Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the Bomb

Found full of BS, did not finish:

- Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power

Textbooks:

- order of 10^3 pages of Open University textbooks

- Klauber, Student Friendly Quantum Field Theory

- Feynman & Hibbs, Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals

- Wald, General Relativity (5 chapters)

- Peskin & Schroeder, An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory (5 chapters)

Not as bad as I felt before making the list, but underwhelming in terms of quantity. I intend to read a whole lot more in 2016.

It is a moderately decent fantasy series, but the writing is kind of clunky.

Looking at the 2017 Hugo, I'd say Cixian Liu's "Death's End" was a much better novel than "The Obelisk Gate", and would have given it to that book.

For the 2016 Hugo I've read 3 of the finalist("Fifth Season", "Ancillary Mercy", "Seveneves"), but I don't think
any of them were all that great... guess just a weak year.

In no particular order...

Cixin Liu -- The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest. Good read, as you'll see on everyone else's list.

Neal Stephenson -- Seveneves. Really good but arguably his weakest in some time; I wish the first three-quarters of the book were shorter and the final quarter a book in and of itself.

Cal Newport -- So Good They Can't Ignore You. I found this longer than necessary but an excellent kick in the pants.

Marcus Aurelius -- Meditations. Feels like a good "life reference" rather than a straight-through read.

Roald Dahl -- Boy, Going Solo. These were fun when I first went through them years ago, and they still _are_ fun, but the lens through which I view live has become one increasingly allergic to entitlement, and boy, if you want entitlement, look to the Brits at the end of the imperialist era.

Ed Catmull -- Creativity, Inc. Read this for work. Enjoyable but ehh.

Peter Tompkins -- The Secret Life of Plants (unfinished). I tried but couldn't get past the rampant bad science.

Steve Martin -- Born Standing Up. This was a fun profile of a comic that I appreciate; if you're already a fan it's worthwhile, otherwise skip it.

Derek Sivers -- Anything You Want. You can blow through this in a day and you should.

Worth highlighting, my most influential read this year:

Tara Brach -- Radical Acceptance. I loved this. No: I _needed_ this. Rather than the many philosophy-influenced books you'll find in this thread that are really business books with new buzzwords, this is just about loving yourself and building on that to live life fully. This will not (at least directly) help you build a startup. This will (directly) help you build important relationships.

I feel like I should probably read Seveneves now, even though I know it's just a coincidence they're named similarly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17900992

Maybe the materials science would still be a deal breaker, but in theory it would be easier to build than a space elevator.

I have stopped reading Seveneves at the end of second act/part.

It has very interesting premises and nice world building. Stephenson throws all the right ingredients into a pot for an amazing story. Mass social pressures, countries at bring of wars but forced to work together, though choices to be made and there are not enough resources to save everyone...

...but the plots and characters are so poorly written that it actively took me out of the experience.

Most of the characters in the book are just 1 dimensional flags - driven by a singular purpose. They make such poor emotional decisions that the survival of the species depends on. And its not a random survivor 1803, its the leadership of the remaining humanity. Its almost comical when we get detail descriptions of the tech, and the space-station inner-workings, but the social fabric of it is paper thin and bland.

But the last nail in the coffin was the end of part two: the decision on the future of humanity decided via blackmail - do it my way or I'll blow us all up - what?!

If there was a handful of us and one person blackmail everyone to do something stupid ('because I want it this way - no debate, no pros and cons), I would agree to their demands and after they let go of the trigger I would bash their head in. The whole ethics goes out of the window when one crazy person can doom whole humanity concentrated in one place...

This could have been a great book, ends up being meh.

4/10 great setting, terrible plot

(Possible mild spoiler ahead)

[1] Basically: "the forest is full of hunters of unknown strength, so either stay quiet or kill all the hunters." I thought that Greg Bear's Forge of God and Anvil of Stars did a much better job on this aspect of Fermi.

Completely blew me away:

- Anathem by Neal Stephenson

- Accelerando by Charles Stross

- Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Liu Cixin

Great Reads:

- Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

- Glasshouse, Neptunes Brood & Saturns Children by Charles Stross

- Rendezvous with Rama by Isaac Asimov

- Hyperion by Dan Simmons

- A Deepness in the Sky by Verner Vinge

The two categories are pretty subjective, due to personal taste but also the fact that all of the concepts in the more recent books were new to me (whereas they may be quite familiar to those who had read earlier authors work). All are awesome.

Probably one of the most thought provoking pieces of scifi I've read.

I'll also recommend Accelerondo, and Seveneves.

I listened to this one in the car (10+ hours for books a week thanks to my drive). Maybe it was a rough week but I had to stop halfway through because it completely lost me. Maybe it gets better but having read the spoilers I really can't imagine how.

But hey, your mileage may vary.

For example, I've never given time to reading about gene editing, but after reading Change Agent I've been reading about gene editing and Crispr. I also have some minor understanding of the dangers and benefits of where that could take civilization.

I hadn't thought about what would happen in doomsday scenarios, like a large virus outbreak or an EMP blast, but Holding Their Own and One Second After exposed me to that.

Reading Seveneves exposed me to space travel and Lagrange points, I had no idea about these otherwise.

Authors like John Fante are great story tellers and he's such a joy to read instead of watching a tv series.

I wasn’t a fan of Quicksilver, but as that was the first historical novel I’ve listened to, and as it was award winning, I assume it must be more about my tastes than the quality of the writing?

This book looks like it might be a bit in the same spirit in the sense that our home planet is abused a bit. Part three of Seveneves is about the aftermath of essentially terra forming Earth in the distant future after it gets destroyed in part 1.

People think about other planets when it comes to terra forming but of course our home planet might be the easiest one to practice on and doing so might get a bit urgent as we seem to be destroying it. Great premise for a near future science fiction novel.

If you are looking for recommendations. Ian Banks can be a bit hard to read but can be very entertaining. Arthur C Clarke wrote some awesome science fiction. More recently, The Martian (Andy Weir) was great. And Andy Weir just published another book that's on my list to read soon. The expanse series of books (James S. A. Corey) is a good read. 2312 (Stanley Robinson) is also worth a look.

And of course if you at all enjoyed Seveneves, you might want to read the rest of what NS wrote. Anathem is great. Snow Crash, the Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon are classics at this point.

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America - Colin Woodard;
I learned much about early US history.

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman - Jon Krakauer

Find Me - Laura van den Berg

Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel

The Dog Stars - Peter Heller

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - Alfred Lansing;
I was fortunate enough to read this right before Seveneves, so the references made immediate sense. Endurance looks to be popular on this list/this year. How many were inspired by Seveneves?

Seveneves - Neal Stephenson

The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson

Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age - Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson;
I highly recommend this book. Like The Making of the Atomic Bomb, but for the transistor. Lots of background on John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain. I was unaware of the great legacy of John Bardeen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bardeen

The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes;
If you have not read this book, read it, just for the summary of discoveries that lead to the atomic bomb.

Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank

The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage - Anthony Brandt

The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard

The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen - Stephen R. Bown

I am looking for other books similar to Crystal Fire and The Making of the Atomic Bomb, that cover the history of scientific and technological discoveries. Any recommendations?

Clearly there are two styles of Stephenson books, and we like the opposite ones.

[edit]

Maybe I should try finishing Seveneves to see if I like the ending?

Cryptonomicon is fun, Baroque Cycle is great, Anathem is his best work (from a literary perspective), and Seveneves is 2/3rds awesome 1/3rd bad scifi pulp.

Snow Crash is how most people first encounter him. It's a warmed over cyberpunk book that repeats a lot of what Gibson did, but is also good.

The Diamond Age is one of the best pieces of speculative fiction written in the last 20 years except that it fails badly to have a coherent story with an ending that makes sense. Which is a shame considering the ideas in the book are so good.

REamde is shit and should never have been published. Dude was playing too much World of Warcraft at the time and decided to write a novel about playing too much World of Warcraft. Bad book. Avoid.

I have since dabbled a bit with Stephenson, and amazingly his other books fall along the same divide for me. Zodiac is amazing, the Victorian sci-fi series (Diamond Age?) are unreadable. One book, Seveneves, the first part is amazing Neal Stephenson, the second is lazy, naive and dumb Neal Stephenson. Super puzzling, almost as if he has (really bad) ghost writers.

I have since gone back to Snow Crash (could not finish it the first time), and with some overbearing, it is not entirely unlikable.

It was, for lack of a better description, a callous novel.

The only thing that somewhat frustrated me about it, as I suspect is the case for most people, is the fact that the last third of the book feels like it could (should?) stand on its own. That being said, there's enough room for Stephenson to explore in more depth some of the events leading up to the third act in subsequent novels... so here's hoping. I figure explaining why I feel this way would be a bit of a spoiler. Bill does enough to allude to it.

Anyway, thumbs up from me. I enjoyed every bit of it, and Bill's review does a good job of selling the book without spoiling it.

Dodge in hell was more micro level depressing, he starts of by killing one of the main characters from a previous book after all. But I found it enjoyable over all. I think he managed to convey what he wanted with the book, and unlike Seveneves it was a quite fun read.

While I agree that a major strike would be horrifically catastrophic, I think it's easy to underestimate the platform for life that exists on the Earth. Unless the biosphere is entirely wiped clean, it's always going to be easier for us to persist on Earth than in space, because this is where we evolved.

We don't understand our global ecosystem well at all. Think about one tiny aspect of human life--the gut bacteria. We are starting to learn that it is important, but we don't really know for sure where it comes from, what it does for us, and how changes in its makeup affect us. The Earth is TEEMING with bacteria, most of it unknown and unstudied. We have no idea what the long-term effects would be of removing ourselves from that permanently.

And if you can think of any risk to the Earth, it's greatly magnified for a spaceship. A comet might hit the Earth? Well even a small meteor will wreck a spacecraft. And there are a lot more of the small ones, and they are harder to see and track.

In the very long run, I hope we do figure all this stuff out and become a space-faring civilization. But in the short run there probably needs to be other reasons to try living out in space.

The two that I can think of are tourism and energy research. Tourism is a huge business and if you can imagine a luxury hotel in low earth orbit, well, it will need a staff and logistical support. As launch costs go down, this might start to make business sense.

For energy research, a multi-terawatt solar array in zero gravity might let you do all sorts of interesting things with exotic materials and high energies, like work on manufacturing antimatter.

Seveneves, Neal Stephenson

Astrophysics for people in a hurry, Neil De Grasse Tyson

[0] In particular, they did not (and physically could not) have launched a broad enough manufacturing capability for the remnants of humanity to have had a realistic chance of long-term survival. The practicality of the Seveneves themselves did was also at best dubious from a biological and other standpoints.

The most elegant SF stories IMO gloss over a lot of tech - Inception for example, never explains a single technical detail about the machines that power the dream world, instead focusing purely on the human interactions.

A counterexample is Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, which focuses heavily on tech and makes a good attempt at keeping it within the realm of physics while still describing interesting ideas - however much of the theme of the book is how technology develops as a product of its environment and how it builds on existing tech in a collective way, so it contributes to the story. Even so, it was criticized for being too technical (even though I enjoyed that part of it immensely).

Another example is 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson, which makes the mistake of focusing too much on the tech - in fact the whole plot is essentially a vehicle for the author to describe all the possible human habitats that could exist in space.

Do you like orbital mechanics?

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami (I love Murakami’s novels, recommend starting with Hard Boiled Wonderland though)

Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball - Haruki Murakami

The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammet (Surprising just how much San Francisco is in it)

The Postman Always Rings Twice - James Cain

Seveneves - Neal Stephenson (recommended)

Pattern Recognition - William Gibson

The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway (recommended, refreshing language)

Non-fiction:

Running Lean - Ash Muraya

Lean Customer Development - Alvarez

Talking to Humans - Giff Constable

Hooked - Nir Eyal (probably not need the book to get the thesis)

Sprint - Jake Knapp

Juno Beach - Mark Zuehlke

Anti-Education - Nietzsche

It took a new local library opening up, and a holiday, for me to finally get to Snow Crash. I suspect I might be reading a few more of his works very soon.

I don't think I've read any of the others, though I may have started Seveneves at some point, but I did read "The rise and fall of D.O.D.O." (just before Snow Crash in fact!) which I highly highly recommend as well.

http://coldewey.cc/post/26464791525/reamde-neal-stephenson-2...

I'm going to read a few reviews of Seveneves before I read it, Reamde burned me so bad. Although now that I know this huge plot point (spoiler warning!?!?).... I don't know which way that tips the scales.

Game of thrones,
Bernard Corwell books
Isaac Asimov

I've read these and I would put them in the same camp as the input books so I'm not sure exactly what it's supposed to be doing.

Nice idea but, unless I'm missing something, not the expected behaviour.

I would more have expected "the old man who climbed out the window and disappeared", Clarkson's biography and maybe a Jack Reacher type stuff (which I also enjoy but on the other end of the spectrum from the input books)

Personally I think both parts of the story are good. I think that it could possibly have been split into two different books to give the second part a bit more space. As it is now, the second part is a bit rushed, and ends quite suddenly (in classic Neal Stephenson fashion).

- Plugged -- Eoin Colfer

- Screwed -- Eoin Colfer

- Half {a King, the World, a War} -- Joe Abercrombie

- Also everything else written by Joe Abercrombie

- Seveneves -- Neal Stephenson

Sometimes it's not about how good the book is, but about the reader. That's the difference in the audio medium. Plugged and Screwed were books I only picked up because the reader of Half a King read them. They were stellar in audio form, but I don't normally go for those types of books in written form.

This can also up new avenues for how to spend time, outside of the multitasking case. I was staying with a friend a few months ago, and before bed we laid around for an hour listening to an audiobook that I wanted to share. It was like being a family in the olden days sitting around listening to a radio. Really great experience. I can't recommend it enough.

In that book, a character who is an obvious analogue for Elon Musk sponsors the development of a variety of asteroid mining robots, including a type that superficially resembles this thing. 'Siwis' are, unlike this real thing, modular, semi-autonomous, self-propelling, and meant for operating in zero-gravity.

But still... snake robot sponsored by Elon Musk, out of nowhere.

For Seveneves I think there's a combination of factors at play. Maybe he didn't know exactly how to finish it, and maybe (probably) he wanted to leave things open enough for a sequel. Mostly though, I think he was just trying to be subtle. There are a few moments through the climactic scenes that are very easy to miss but have a big impact on the plot line. Overall, I like that some authors have the guts to finish a book without wrapping up everything in a tidy bow (which can often be cliched and overwrought).

Conversely in many of his other books he's having fun describing the world early on but drawing it back together at the end doesn't work as well - Diamond Age is probably the clearest example. In the end the experience is very broadly similar but it seems to come from different causes.

    SP: Two-thirds of the way into your novel,
    Seveneves – in fact, on page 569 – you do
    something kind of crazy. The story suddenly
    skips ahead 5,000 years. What’s the idea here?

Also, I was occasionally distracted at the beginning when snippets of dialog from Anathem were reused in the form of exposition in Seveneves.

But, that said, I think the book is worth reading, especially the first 2/3's.

My personal, quick, rough ranking of Stephenson's bibliography:

    * Anathem
    * Snow Crash
    * The Diamond Age
    * Seveneves
    * Cryptonomicon
    * The Baroque Cycle
    * Zodiac
    * Reamde
    * The Interface
    * The Big U

    * The Cobweb
    * The Mongoliad

Much of Seveneves was depressing too but it all seemed very plausible. It was in what came next that seemed off.

  A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R. R. Martin
  A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) by George R.R. Martin
  The Confident Speaker: Beat Your Nerves and Communicate at Your Best in Any Situation by Harrison Monarth
  House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewsk
  To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
  Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender
  George Washington's Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution by Brian Kilmeade
  Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain by Steven D. Levitt
  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  Finders Keepers: A Novel by Stephen King
  The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I by Barbara W. Tuchman
  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
  Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson
  The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
  Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute by Emma Craigie
  The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
  Robopocalypse: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) by Daniel H. Wilson
  Robogenesis by Daniel H. Wilson
  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

  In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
  Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara 
  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

Also enjoyed Seveneves by Stephenson, and H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. The former is likely known to the HN crowd; the latter draws comparisons to T.H. White's classic The Goshawk.

Among non-fiction books, I enjoyed The Little Prover by Friedman and Eastlund. It was exactly what I expected, a gentle introduction into inductive proofs in the idiom established by The Little Schemer.

If you treat Seveneves as one book, that might annoy you. If you treat it as two books, published at the same time so you don't have to wait for the next one after you've finished the first, then it suddenly makes sense.

And if you're used to Neal's writing style, then you already possess the patience you need with almost every one of his books, because they usually start slow and build up a tremendous momentum over time, until they reach a frantic pace and then they just... stop ;)

Don't get me wrong, I love his books, but I'm all too aware that you simply have to get used to his style and "forgive" him for certain aspects of it. I know I can and do, but I also know people who can't.

(small spoiler follows)

One of the interesting gems I remember: the surviving humans looked back at the recordings of their ancestors, in particular about how their behaviour was affected by social networks - and collectively decided not to pursue that aspect of the Internet.

(This may actually be a plausible in-universe answer for why there's no Facebook in Star Trek.)

Still, I mostly enjoyed reading "Fall, or Dodge n Hell". Not as much as Cryptonomicon, mind you, and less than Seveneves; Anathem is stronger than any of these.

Although I have to work to get past the 100-page chunks that fill his book, it does not put me off reading about a book a year. Quicksilver is on my list, for example.

All of this is to say that he is a flawed writer, but that there is much to be gained by reading his work.

I'm trying to break through the initial wall in Anathem presently. I think part of what's impeding me is that I bought it in mass-market paperback format, and the binding on my copy is egregiously bad; it's shedding leaves like a Minnesota maple in September.

"Anyone who bothered to learn the history of the developed world in the years just before Zero understood perfectly well that Tavistock Prowse had been squarely in the middle of the normal range, as far as his social media habits and attention span had been concerned. But nevertheless, they called it Tav's Mistake. They didn't want to make it again. Any efforts made by modern manufacturers to produce the kinds of devices and apps that had disordered the brain of Tav were met with the same instinctive pushback as Victorian clergy might have directed against the inventor of a masturbation machine."

You see those kinds of choices being made at a cultural level all over the world. Developed countries where nobody uses leafblowers, or in-sink food waste disposals, or what have you. People understand how those things work, they just don't want the effects.

I'm two thirds of the way through Ramez Naam's Nexus trilogy ... and am now starting to think I have a literary fetish.

Part 1 & 2 are universe backstory. Like the Horus Heresy in 40k or the story of Lilith in Vampire.

Part 3 is just to advance the plot of the univers. Like the Dragonheart Trilogy in Shadowrun or when the clans get introduced in Battletech.

[1] http://arthur-johnston.com/essay/2015/10/03/seveneves.html