Zodiac: The Eco Thriller by Neal Stephenson Sangamon Taylor is a professional asshole, he is known as the granola James Bond, and he knows how to use your child’s aquarium to filter PCBs from his body. Zodiac: The Eco Thriller is Neal Stephenson’s second novel as well as a clear blueprint for its successor, the […]
Read MoreRyan Skardal´s rating: 3 | Neal Stephenson | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | | 2 comments |
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson Readers considering whether they should read Neal Stephenson’s breakthrough novel, Snow Crash, would do well to read the novel’s opening chapters about the Deliverator. Rarely has a sales pitch been so blatantly — and so masterfully — launched at the start of a novel. Even James Bond must envy such […]
Read MoreRyan Skardal and Stuart Starosta´s rating: 5 | Neal Stephenson | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | | 5 comments |
The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson In The Diamond Age, anything, no matter how trivial, could be made from diamonds drawn from molecular feeds. This will be the era in which humanity masters nanotechnology. On the one hand, this is a time of plenty and technological progress, but it […]
Read MoreRyan Skardal, Stuart Starosta and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3, 4 | Neal Stephenson | Hugo Award, Locus Award, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | | 8 comments |
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson “This code business is some tricky shit.” ~Bobby Shaftoe Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon is a lengthy historical fiction set during both World War II and the late 1990s with much of the action taking place in the Philippines. In the 1940s, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, colleague of Alan Turing, is hired by the […]
Read MoreKat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Neal Stephenson | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | | no comments |
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson [The audiobook contains Book 1 of the print edition of the Quicksilver omnibus. Book 2 is King of the Vagabonds. Book 3 is Odalisque.] I’m a scientist by profession and I love history. Thus, I’m fascinated by the history of science, especially the era of Isaac Newton et al. So, Neal […]
Read MoreKat Hooper and Ryan Skardal´s rating: 3.5, 4 | Neal Stephenson | Audio | SFF Reviews | | 5 comments |
King of the Vagabonds by Neal Stephenson King of the Vagabonds is the second installment of Neal Stephenson’s ambitious and epic Baroque Cycle. I was disappointed with Quicksilver, the first book, because, though it was a thorough and realistic historical fiction, it had neither a compelling main character nor a cohesive plot. Thus, it felt […]
Read MoreKat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Neal Stephenson | Audio | SFF Reviews | | no comments |
The Confusion by Neal Stephenson If Quicksilver, the first book in Neal Stephenson’s BAROQUE CYCLE, focused on events in England and continental Europe during the 17th century, The Confusion is Stephenson taking the time to provide a more global context. Or half of it is. The Confusion combines two novels from the cycle, The Juncto […]
Read MoreRyan Skardal´s rating: 5 | Neal Stephenson | SFF Reviews | | 1 comment |
The System of the World by Neal Stephenson The System of the World combines the final three “novels” — Solomon’s Gold, Currency, and The System of the World — of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. The novel’s title refers to the third volume of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Most people remember Isaac Newton today because […]
Read MoreRyan Skardal´s rating: 4 | Neal Stephenson | SFF Reviews | | no comments |
Anathem by Neal Stephenson In his “Note to the Reader” at the start of Anathem, Neal Stephenson writes “if you are accustomed to reading works of speculative fiction and enjoy puzzling things out on your own, skip this Note.” My advice is this: Don’t skip the Note. In spite of years of speculative fiction reading, […]
Read MoreRyan Skardal and Stuart Starosta´s rating: 0.1, 4.5 | Neal Stephenson | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | | 15 comments |
Reamde by Neal Stephenson After a decade of novels set in 18th century Europe and in alternate universes, Neal Stephenson triumphantly returns as a bestselling author to contemporary America. But he doesn’t stay in Seattle for long. Reamde wastes no time crossing borders, taking us — usually illegally — to Xiamen, the Philippines, and British […]
Read MoreRyan Skardal, Stefan Raets (RETIRED) and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4, 4.5 | Neal Stephenson | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | | 5 comments |
THE MONGOLIAD by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and others The series of books known as THE FOREWORLD SAGA was a grand experiment in collaboration and serialized storytelling involving more than half a dozen authors, including Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear. So far it includes three novels (individually titled The Mongoliad, Books One, Two, and Three) which relate the central tale […]
Read MoreBill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, Neal Stephenson | SFF Reviews | | 3 comments |
The Beast of Calatrava by Mark Teppo Mark Teppo’s The Beast of Calatrava is one of the “sidequest” stories associated with the FOREWORLD SAGA universe shared by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, and others. (Bill recently reviewed the novels in the series.) This story is set in the Iberian Peninsula during the Reconquista. The […]
Read MoreKat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, Neal Stephenson | SFF Reviews | | no comments |
The Assassination of Orange by Joseph Brassey The Assassination of Orange is another short (only two hours in audio) “sidequest” in the FOREWORLD universe shared by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, and others. Like the other sidequest I read, The Assassination of Orange is strictly historical fiction — there are no supernatural elements. It […]
Read MoreKat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, Neal Stephenson | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | | no comments |
Some Remarks by Neal Stephenson Some Remarks compiles eighteen short texts by Neal Stephenson. Aside from a couple short stories, this is a book of essays, interviews, and speeches. These short texts should please most Stephenson fans because they combine humor, insight, and exposition — in other words, these are infodumps gloriously freed from narrative. […]
Read MoreRyan Skardal´s rating: 4 | Neal Stephenson | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | | 5 comments |
SevenEves by Neal Stephenson Neal Stephenson doesn’t shy away from big concepts, long timelines, or larger than life events. His most recent novel, SevenEves, begins with the moon blowing up. Readers never find out what blew up the moon, because all too quickly humanity discovers that the Earth will soon be bombarded by a thousand-year rain […]
Read MoreKate Lechler, Stuart Starosta, João Eira and Kat Hooper | Neal Stephenson | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | | 18 comments |
Fall, or Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson Richard (“Dodge”) Forthrast, the famous and popular billionaire who created a much-loved video gaming company, unexpectedly dies during a routine medical procedure. Many years previously he had been duped into signing a contract that specified that his brain should be preserved until technology was developed that could […]
Read MoreKat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Neal Stephenson | Audio | SFF Reviews | | 2 comments |
Steampunk edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer Steampunk is an anthology of, well, steampunk stories, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. If you hurry, you can still get to this first anthology before the second one, Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, appears in mid November. Based on the quality of the stories in this collection, I […]
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Interface — (1994) As Stephen Bury. Publisher: From his triumphant debut with Snow Crash to the stunning success of his latest novel, Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson has quickly become the voice of a generation. In this now-classic thriller, he and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a shocking tale with an all-too plausible premise. There’s no […]
Read MoreTBR | Neal Stephenson | To Be Reviewed | | no comments |
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