Comment by dochtman
5 years ago
I like much of Stephenson’s work, but Fall did not rank near the top for me. The parts in the virtual world get pretty boring, with little payoff.
5 years ago
I like much of Stephenson’s work, but Fall did not rank near the top for me. The parts in the virtual world get pretty boring, with little payoff.
There's definitely a trend of his at this point to cut forward to take a blurry look at future consequences of past decisions, but with a payoff that is basically opening the door on the real interesting possibilities, yet stops right at the threshold. Fun if you like musing about possibilities, but a bit frustrating if you're expecting a full arc from cause to conclusion.
I agree, the last third of the book veered off into stuff I didn't find very interesting. The first two thirds or so I found immensely interesting though which is why I still recommend it to people but you aren't wrong.
Stephenson went from “uncensorable machine gun schematics” in the 90s to “but what if someone posts fake news on Facebook?” in 2020. His newer books average a lot worse than his older books.
Having just finished that title, that's a bit of a poor reduction - that section is more one of his usual tangents, with some interesting consequences explored, but basically ends up being used to set up for the changes in technology required to support the rest of the book.
That said, he does spend a lot of time early on basically showing the transition his Shaftoe/Enoch/Dodge-verse must ultimately take; it's kind of an eschaton of many of his prior works.