Fall by Neal Stephenson

Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This starts as present-day scifi, meaning that you don't know which technology is real right now and which is still in labs and which is clever invention by the author.

The Stephenson moves the present "meatspace" world forward, step by step about forty years while building a parallel "bitworld" totally from scratch.

When characters die, their brains are scanned and the data is saved. The scans become more detailed and accurate as technology advances, and the characters come "alive" in the bitworld. The first such digital entity becomes a godlike figure there, creating the universe, with echoes of Genesis and Paradise Lost, as well as echoes of Dungeons and Dragons and of massively multiplayer videogames.

There are two instances of each of the main characters in the parallel planes of existence, with different names and backstories. And the bitworld versions can die again and be rebooted.

And miraculously, all this narrative complexity works. The bitworld is vividly described and battles among fantastic creatures with outlandish powers engage the reader's imagination, while the meatworld technological advances on which that world depends seem plausible if not inevitable.



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