Gotta love a book that starts part 3 with "five thousand years later"
― koogs, Saturday, 10 December 2016 06:26 (seven years ago) link
And he's just explained the name, and I totally missed it.
― koogs, Saturday, 10 December 2016 06:28 (seven years ago) link
New one Dodge is out next week, but is available on Kindle now. It's back in the Waterhouse universe, post Reamde.
― stet, Friday, 5 July 2019 17:11 (four years ago) link
been plowing through Seveneves which i don't really recommend as isolation reading given the emphasis on global catastrophe and dread. also it's not really that good. i just hit the big shift about 2/3 of the way through and i'm really not feeling it, kinda exposes a ton of his weaknesses as a writer as well as his increasingly dodgy politics. this book is shockingly comfortable with eugenics and genetics-as-destiny! there's even a character who invokes a "bell curve" type argument about race and intelligence that just goes totally unchecked by anyone else, as if it's trustworthy scientific information like all the other nerdy shit people spout off in his books. i guess if you're really into orbital mechanics it'd be a blast. but after devouring the Mars Trilogy twice over i'm ready for a lot more self-conscious politics in my books about spacefaring nerds.
― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 31 March 2020 16:30 (four years ago) link
I couldn't get past the first sentence of that book, which was laugh-out-loud hilarious and bad.
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 31 March 2020 16:33 (four years ago) link
The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.
I mean, this is like Daniel Pinkwater-level (and I love Pinkwater and would probably like Stephenson's books more if he wrote like Pinkwater, which he generally does not)
I think what I may end up remembering best about this book is the rather brassy choice on the back cover for one of the two review blurbs to be blatantly plucked from a savage pan:
"Fascinating . . . . Insights into the human character shine like occasional full moons." - Boston Globe
― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 31 March 2020 17:36 (four years ago) link
"Still, she couldn't help but flinch as the final few flynks snapped around toward them." (p. 617)
― Doctor Casino, Wednesday, 1 April 2020 03:58 (four years ago) link
gawwwwd the world-building in this final section is just so stupid, in the most blinkered, weird, nerd-author-can't-perceive-how-strange-he's-become kind of way.
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 3 April 2020 13:44 (four years ago) link
author-can't-perceive-how-strange-he's-become kind of way.
― Doctor Casino, Friday, April 3, 2020 2:44 PM
This can either be the best thing or the worst thing.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 3 April 2020 21:17 (four years ago) link
worst in this casewatched The Core last night and was struck by how much it basically is a dumb and sometimes fun version of this book
― Doctor Casino, Wednesday, 15 April 2020 16:45 (four years ago) link
the book is already dumb obv so what i mean is "less nerdy"