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Fall, or Dodge in Hell

Neal Stephenson (Goodreads Author)

3.61 · Rating details · 7,009 ratings · 1,250 reviews

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Seveneves, Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon returns with a wildly inventive and entertaining science fiction thriller—Paradise Lost by way of Phillip K. Dick—that unfolds in the near future, in parallel worlds.

In his youth, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibil ...more

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ebook, 896 pages

Published June 4th 2019 by William Morrow & Co

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Jun 15, 2019 Jason Pettus rated it it was ok

Shelves: weird, contemporary, hipster, smart-nerdy, fantasy, sci-fi, religion

So to establish my bona fides right away, let me mention that I've read and loved all 16 novels that Neal Stephenson has now written in his life (yes, even his disavowed 1984 debut, the now out-of-print The Big U), and consider him one of my top-three all-time favorite writers currently alive and publishing new work. So what a profoundly heartbreaking thing, then, to finish his latest, the 900-page virtual-reality morality tale Fall: Or, Dodge in Hell, and have to be forced to admit to myself, "You know ...more

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Jun 06, 2019 Liviu rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2019_release_read, read_2019, genre-fantasy

After a great start, the book bogs down into gibberish that is neither sf (see P Hamilton Void series for that), not portal fantasy (see M Stover) nor theology (lacks any moral dimension); 5 star for the first third, 1 star for the last two thirds and a huge, huge disappointment after such an awesome start

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Jul 02, 2019 Will Byrnes rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, fiction, science-fiction, computers-ai, brain-candy

“I’m a go-between. On the one side is Elmo Shepherd, who believes that brains can be simulated—and that once the simulation is switched on, you’ll reboot in exactly the same state as when you last lost consciousness. Like waking up from a nap. On the other side is Jake, who believes in the existence of an ineffable spirit that cannot be re-created in computer code.”
“What do you believe, Enoch?”
“Jake’s opinion is based on a theology I do not agree with. But like a lot of theologies it can do duty as a cracked mirror or

...more

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Jun 12, 2019 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi, worldbuilding-sf, mindfuq, 2019-shelf

This is a very hard book to review, but one thing is absolutely true:

I'm absolutely blown away by this book.

Ameristan! Lol MOAB! lol

This is definitely one of Neal Stephenson's better books. Just for the ideas and the great twisting of several tales in one, I'm already looking forward to a glorious re-read. He does lead us down a few winding paths that eventually turn out to be VERY important to the whole, and I admit to laughing out loud several times when the important bits bit me ...more

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Jun 19, 2019 Manuel Antão rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2019

If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.

April 1st: "Fall, or Dodge in Hell" by Neal Stephenson

Is it April 1st already? Or is this one of the worst attempts at writing serious SF!? When I was doing UNIX for a living, I fondly remember a running joke that went like this.

Unix erotica? Here are some examples of inputs and responses from the Unix C Shell.

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Jul 26, 2019 Kemper rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2019, sky-cake, sci-fi, cyber, lawyers-guns-and-money

If I wasn’t hoping that death is just an endless, dreamless slumber before then I sure am now.

Richard ‘Dodge’ Forthrast made billions with the video game company he founded, but money doesn’t help him when a routine medical procedure goes sideways and leaves him braindead. However, Dodge once signed up with a cryonics company to have himself frozen after death, and that old legal agreement becomes the impetus for his friends and family to pour resources into tech that eventually can ...more

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May 22, 2019 Eric rated it liked it · review of another edition

So I had some issues with this book, overall I liked it, but I found it was easier to separate into the good and the bad:

The Good:
- One of his more readable books, so no heavy technical nonsense like in cryptonomicon
- Features the Waterhouses, the Shaftoes, the Forthrasts and Enoch Root
- Topic of discussion is really cool as its all about the afterlife
- Ameristan is the most hilarious thing

The Bad:
- As usual, its way too long, just under 900 ...more

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Jan 26, 2019 M. marked it as later · review of another edition

Where have I seen this before...

We Are Legion - We Are Bob (Bobiverse #1) by Dennis E. Taylor

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.

Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into co/>

We ...more

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Jul 25, 2019 Heidi The Reader rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy-and-sci-fi, fiction

"Not only can we defeat entropy, but the universe, in a way, wants us to use our powers as conscious beings to make things better. And part of that is defeating death." pg 50

I finally finished Neal Stephenson's latest book, an opus about the nature of reality that uses mythology, archetypes and technology as the instruments of that examination. Coming in at a hefty 896 pages, it will most likely be the longest book I read this year.

"Far from being a source of frustration, this comfort/>"Far ...more

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Jun 01, 2019 Bentgaidin rated it did not like it

'Fall, or Dodge in Hell' is a book that's hard to talk about because I find it basically fractally bad -- at any level I look at it, there's an interesting idea shot through with some fatal flaw, and so if I let myself I could go on at far too much length about any one of its problems. At the highest level, it's a story about uploading human consciousness and the creation and organization of virtual realms, told with a tech-bro's certainty in technology and obliviousness to anything else, plus a 'Fall, or Dodge in Hell' is a book that's hard to talk about because I find it basically fractally bad -- at any level I look at it, there's an interesting idea shot through with some fatal flaw, and so if I let myself I could go on at far too much length about any one of its problems. At the highest level, it's a story about uploading human consciousness and the creation and organization of virtual realms, told with a tech-bro's certainty in technology and obliviousness to anything else, plus also the casual misogyny; then there's the story told about the uploaded, that attempts to be biblical without an understanding of morality, and fantastic without ever surpassing the level of 80s Tolkien imitators. It's too bad the book wants to be Paradise Lost, instead of Frankenstein; there would be a really good metaphor in something like this, pieced together from various half-envisioned ideas, and brought to life as a monstrous whole that its creator cannot control. That's not to say you couldn't enjoy reading this -- the certainty and declarativeness of the writing can carry you through a lot if you don't think too much about it -- but it would be best if you've never read these ideas before, or if you're looking for something to reinforce your particular technological eschatology, or if you're a teenager with time on your hands.

On the other hand, let me offer some alternatives that have done better service to these ideas. First, Peter Hamilton's 'Void Trilogy': if you want long-spanning future history and an ever-expanding realm of uploaded consciousnesses, this has you covered, in spades. Alternately, Elizabeth Bear's 'Grail': it's much shorter, full of excellently realized characters, and deals thoughfully with the ethics of different ways of being human minds. And finally, Matthew Stover's 'Heroes Die': if you want a fantasy adventure in a world where modern people insert themselves to create epic drama without regard for the other inhabitants; it's only tangentially similar, but even its dystopian capitalist hellscape is more well-realized than the "realistic" political events going on in 'Fall.' So yeah, there's a lot better stuff you could be reading instead -- don't spend your time on this unless you have to. ...more

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Jul 16, 2019 Peter Tillman rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: at-bg-pa, fantasy

Neal Stephenson has written some great books over the years. This isn’t one of them — but it’s pretty good, except for his total lack of writerly discipline. 885 pages! A good editor would have blue-penciled half of these — including 3/4 or more of the boilerplate fantasy-quest stuff, most of which I skimmed or skipped. Gah.

The techie stuff, as usual, is well-researched, interesting and thought-provoking. Though my WSOD took a serious beating at (basically) all the rich people on the ...more

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Jun 16, 2019 Lindsay rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

A loose continuation of the author's other contemporary novels (Cryptonomicon, Reamde) sees brain-scanning and uploading become a reality along with a digital afterlife modeled on Paradise Lost. The story follows Richard "Dodge" Forthrast just before he dies, the events preceding his uploading and then the fate of the digital world he finds himself in while the real world changes around the existence of life after dea ...more

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Mar 05, 2019 Lisa Wright rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: loved-it, quirky-sci-fi, recommending

Richard "Dodge" Forthrast, the creator of the world's most popular video game, dies suddenly, unexpectedly, and without updating his will. So his heirs are obligated to cryogenically freeze him or find a way to upload his mind to a computer. So begins this fractal of a novel filled with computer science, mythology, eschatology, corporate dirty tricks, life, death and what might come after. Stephenson's digs down through layer after layer of what-ifs. Themes appear, disappear, and reappear. A wil ...more

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Jun 21, 2019 Radiantflux rated it it was ok

Shelves: science-fiction, audiobook, fiction

77th book for 2019.

After an initially interesting start, the book rapidly dwindles into a bit of a snooze fest with a digital afterlife strongly reminiscent of a MMORPG like World of Warcraft, which made little sense when looked at carefully. Greg Egan and Ian M. Banks have explored ideas about digital afterlives in far more interesting ways.

For those who like Stephenson's early books, this one can be skipped.

2-stars.

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Apr 11, 2019 Martin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction

I devoured this book immediately after receiving it. Absolutely top shelf Stephenson. This novel is absolutely overflowing with ideas and questions, any one of which would make me put the book down and have a bit of a think for a while. The amount of research and the presentation of knowledge is tremendous but not overwhelming. This is a book I will return to in a few months or so. Very highly recommended.

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Jun 12, 2019 Campbell rated it liked it

Well, this is different. It's not at all what I expected (a fault, I admit, of my own Creation), given its connection to Reamde. It's a Giant, shambling, shaggy dog mess of a story and completely all over the place.

The first third Mr Stephenson was in technology heaven, riffing freely on all manner of deep questions concerning death, the continuation of consciousness, the digitisation of the (for want of a better term) 'soul' and all that jazz.

Then there comes a point where, over th ...more

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Jun 13, 2019 Bruce rated it did not like it

I can't even begin to describe how excited I was to get this book and start reading. Not only that but once I got started I was totally and deeply engrossed in what was perhaps the best writing and story Neal Stephenson has come up with yet. A culmination and continuation of my favourite books and characters, I couldn't put it down and had a hard time trying not to stop people on the street and contact everyone I know to say "have you read this book? it's fantastic, it's amazing, it's fun and pr I can't even begin to describe how excited I was to get this book and start reading. Not only that but once I got started I was totally and deeply engrossed in what was perhaps the best writing and story Neal Stephenson has come up with yet. A culmination and continuation of my favourite books and characters, I couldn't put it down and had a hard time trying not to stop people on the street and contact everyone I know to say "have you read this book? it's fantastic, it's amazing, it's fun and probably one of the most important stories out there" But boy am I glad I did (resist).

From the get go this social thriller sits on the edge of the world we live in and are gradually inhabiting. The astoundingly credible, and historically likely, scenario that kicks off the story is well worth the read. Again he hits the nail squarely on the head and is able to strike directly at the large and extremely important stories that are underpinning our current lives.

But somewhere a little less than halfway through, the book tanks big time! In the turn of a page it jumps from the best recent writing available to the most ponderous, foul smelling and unreadably trite crap that I have ever come across.

When I hit this point, (and you won't fail to miss it) it is so bad I could not bring myself to read it in it's entirety. I slogged through several pages and then had to skip several chapters to return to something readable. It was like throwing up in the back of your throat. The taste and sensation didn't completely go away even though the writing returned to something more befitting his best books. And like a bad case of food poisoning, this plotline returned in 'book 2' to consume the book and render it a nausea inducing, headache pounding, revulsive wasteland of stench, urgency for an end and helpless fear that it would continue unabated. I put the book down two thirds finished and hours later still feel intensely ill towards it.

I don't know what it is that has nurtured the idea that by giving us a blow by blow account of a computer game we suddenly have some ground breaking and important literature. In this case a mashup of minecraft and the most stupidly simplistic retelling of the early chapters of the bible. I mean what could be more fun than hearing someone tell you about their minecraft game they played last nite, right? Block by fucking block.

Ready player one was like this and just as bad. What apparently was supposed to make this book better was that it made hackneyed reference to the tale of Genesis with a special quality of storytelling only available to fifteen year old boys who have just come across the idea that maybe the characters in our stories are aliens. There is a definite reason Paradise Lost is not on everyones' top ten list of great reads. This book didn't help.

Don't get me wrong, Neil Stephenson is an amazing and increadibly important writer. The initial part of this book is all the proof one needs. But someone should have come down hard on him before this oozing piece of liquid excrement hit the press. The stench is strong with this one. Sorry :( ...more

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Aug 23, 2019 Tomislav rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I think Neal Stephenson must mean something different than the rest of us by the word “novel.” Always, his works are sprawling monstrosities, more akin to several braided novels in one. When it works, it is superlative, and well worth any diversions into side stories or obsessions with details.

The initial setting of “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell” is a familiar one of obsessive/compulsive software game developers, who have become rich as a side-effect of their uncontrollable geekiness. Then enter the I think Neal Stephenson must mean something different than the rest of us by the word “novel.” Always, his works are sprawling monstrosities, more akin to several braided novels in one. When it works, it is superlative, and well worth any diversions into side stories or obsessions with details.

The initial setting of “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell” is a familiar one of obsessive/compulsive software game developers, who have become rich as a side-effect of their uncontrollable geekiness. Then enter the profiteers. (view spoiler) It is several novels’ worth of set-up, whose purpose is apparently merely to enable the final magical quest story. For those of us who were expecting something the stature of Stephenson’s sophisticated “Crytonomicon”, that simplistic story is less interesting than the set-up itself.

Now, I'm well aware that there many readers who do enjoy magical quests. For such a reader, the idea that it is all built over the top of a technological platform mostly unseen by the participants, may be an intriguing one. Although, of course, it has been done before. Within that fantasy trope, I may not be a particularly discriminating judge, hence I am not warning away all readers by use of the lowest rating. But for readers like me, it will be a big disappointment.

With regard to the broader Stephenson canon, we have incidental contemporary representatives of the Waterhouse and Shaftoe families, and a significant appearance of the recurring character Enoch Root. I note the sudden disappearance of Enoch Root, implying that our “real” world could be a simulation created in some more foundational world, as yet unexplained.

I read Neal Stephenson’s latest novel “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell” in kindle format. I have previously read a half dozen of his other novels, and particularly liked Cryptonomicon and Anathem. While “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell” is set in time after Reamde, it is not a direct sequel. I have not read “Reamde.” ...more

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Jun 15, 2019 Oleksandr Zholud rated it liked it

This is a SF novel about digitalizing consciousness.

The author, Neal Stephenson, often writes books, which in paper version can be used by powerlifters. 896 pages, over 31 hours of audio! Just like late Robert A. Heinlein he is in urgent need of an editor, who will cut the manuscript in half without losing all the great ideas. To answer a question whether other books (Reamde, Cryptonomicon) should be read to enjoy this one, No.
< This is a SF novel about digitalizing consciousness.

The author, Neal Stephenson, often writes books, which in paper version can be used by powerlifters. 896 pages, over 31 hours of audio! Just like late Robert A. Heinlein he is in urgent need of an editor, who will cut the manuscript in half without losing all the great ideas. To answer a question whether other books (Reamde, Cryptonomicon) should be read to enjoy this one, No.

Richard “Dodge” Forthrast is a Silicon valley billionaire, who founded Corporation 9592, which made a successful massively multiplayer online game TRain. Now he lives for fun, investigating different questions of interest for him, from how sleep works to a common source of Norse and Greek myths. One day he goes though a routine medical procedure, which unexpectedly leaves him in coma. In his living will, there is a remnant of the late 90s, just before the dot-com crash, hype among suddenly wealthy geeks to save their bodies for a resurrection in a sufficiently advanced future. Nothing new here, other SF authors used the idea to ‘send’ their protagonists on an adventure, from The Door Into Summer to We Are Legion to name just two. However, if in other books this is just means to an end, here we have pages and pages on how to do it and what we’ll get at the end.

The first half of the book is great, one gets a lot of interesting ideas, like for example that scanning brains alone probably won’t work if we recall that from hormones made by our bodies to chemicals produced by bacteria in our guts, there are tons of out of brains stuff, which affects (determines?) us and our decisions. The initial creation of a bitworld, made subconsciously based on allusions to Norse and Greek myths and the Old Testament is pure gold. However, as with most of his other novels, story bogs down around 2/3 through the book and starts to wander aimlessly.

A five star start with a two star finish.

it’s one thing to simulate a brain. It’s another thing to talk to it. We forget this because our brains are hooked up to bodies with handy peripherals like tongues that can speak and fingers that can type. As long as those work, you can always get some idea of what’s going on in a brain. But a brain in a box doesn’t have those. Which is probably another reason that no one has tried this yet.”
***
Pluto, well aware of his own social ineptitude, had obviously pored over an etiquette manual before showing up, and so, during his rote interactions with Zula and other immediate family members, had acquitted himself well if bizarrely, addressing them in high-Victorian grief speech straight out of whatever scanned and archived Emily Post book he’d memorized.
***
“So, Martin Luther was running a false-flag operation for the Pope,” Phil said. “In that case—” But he broke off as he felt Sophia stepping on his toe, under the table.
He looked down at her. Having caught his eye, she panned her gaze across the entire scene, asking him to take it all in. Reminding him that this wasn’t Princeton. This was Ameristan. Facebooked to the molecular level. “Professor Long,” she muttered, “the Red Card.”
It was a reference to one of their teachers at Princeton who had gone so far as to print up a wallet card for people to keep in front of them during conversations like this one. One side of the card was solid red, with no words or images, and was meant to be displayed outward as a nonverbal signal that you disagreed and that you weren’t going to be drawn into a fake argument. The other side, facing the user, was a list of little reminders as to what was really going on:

Speech is aggression
Every utterance has a winner and a loser
Curiosity is feigned
Lying is performative
Stupidity is power
...more

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Jul 01, 2019 Nick rated it did not like it

TL;DR: This is fundamentally a novel about people with morally obscene amounts of wealth fighting over who gets to be what kind of god in a digital afterlife. It does not engage substantially with any of the questions you might expect to arise in a world where people's consciousnesses can be saved and restarted after natural death.

Before I started this book, I read one review which said that Neal Stephenson had graduated from science fiction to "philosophical adventure novels," ⁹TL;DR: This is fundamentally a novel about people with morally obscene amounts of wealth fighting over who gets to be what kind of god in a digital afterlife. It does not engage substantially with any of the questions you might expect to arise in a world where people's consciousnesses can be saved and restarted after natural death.

Before I started this book, I read one review which said that Neal Stephenson had graduated from science fiction to "philosophical adventure novels," in which the action occurs against the backdrop of big, important ideas. I would say that accurately describes some of Stephenson's work (though I reject the suggestion that a book with big ideas is somehow not the province of science fiction). But I would most certainly not agree that 'Fall, or Dodge in Hell' is a book of big ideas. On the contrary, I would say that 'Fall' replaces philosophizing with data dumps while steadfastly refusing to engage with most of the ideas at its core.

In brief, the book is about a very rich man (Dodge) who dies suddenly. His will, signed years earlier, stipulates that his brain should be preserved by the best technology available, with the goal that at some point in the future medical science will be capable of restoring him to some form of life. Another very rich man with aspirations to immortality (Elmo Shepherd) uses this to compel Dodge's family to use his vast fortune to develop the technology to digitize the contents of the brain, so that it can be brought back to life inside a digital simulation. It works--Dodge comes back to life inside a computer and builds a new world (the Land) through a process that draws on many creation myths ("let there be light," a 'serpent' in a garden bringing forbidden knowledge, etc). As more digital souls are brought online, a battle breaks out to decide whether Dodge or Elmo will shape the afterlife.

Part of the problem of the novel is that it jumps around a great deal, introducing new characters or letting old ones die offstage, which makes it hard to remain invested emotionally in the story. When Dodge's family first learn about his will, their immediate instinct seems to be to try to find a way out of it--they don't like the idea of his disembodied head being locked in perpetual deep freeze. But the decision they make, to throw all of Dodge's wealth into developing more advanced preservation technologies, happens offstage. Despite the very strong competing interests within the family, we don't see this discussion; just the results of it. It's a wasted opportunity to explore some of the concepts around identity, and existence, that the novel purports to be concerned with. Characters frequently appear in the Land, and we're only later told that they are the reincarnations of people who have died out in the real world. It makes for a very choppy read that might have better lent itself to a collection of short stories, rather than a door-stopper of a novel

Another issue that's never considered is whether it makes any sense that people would want this kind of an afterlife. After the first handfull of 'early adopters' go online, the company running the digital infrastructure starts taking subscribers: rich people, instead of buying life insurance, can pay premiums to ensure that when they die their brains will be digitized. This is despite the fact that the 'souls' running in the afterlife are either unwilling or unable to communicate back to those of us on earth, and we can only imperfectly observe what they're doing, though what they do tends to be the kind of thing you might do if you were reborn into a world designed by someone who played too much World of Warcraft. But by the end of the book, we're told that most people who die opt to join the digital afterlife, and that more and more of the solar system's resources will be used to add computational power. So the fact that you might be reincarnated as a latrine cleaner, or that you might be kept in storage until the powers that be decide they have enough processor cycles to boot you up, apparently doesn't dissuade people from signing up.

But the thing that made me most angry about this book is the sheer moral obscenity of the the way it talks about wealth. Any character of importance in this book has a net worth in the tens of millions; everyone else is beneath the author's notice. Despite the fact that the near-future America of the setting is collapsing from within, no one ever suggests that their vast fortunes might be better spent making the world better for people currently alive and in need, rather than in building an afterlife for the deceased ultra-wealthy. No one ever suggests that in a world where the oceans are boiling, maybe generating more power to run bigger computers is a social evil, rather than a good. None of the living characters ever once stop and ask why it is they owe their lives to preserving the continued existence of people who have lived and died in utmost privilege. I guess when you're a peon, nothing matters more than your Lordship's upkeep.

This is fundamentally a novel about the richest people who have ever lived deciding that they deserve more still, and that we, the reader, should be deeply invested in the battle to decide which group of rich assholes gets to shape the next life. If that sort of thing sounds good to you, then have at it. Personally I despised it. ...more

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Jun 24, 2019 Maine Colonial rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, dystopian, favorite-authors, novel

This is a mix of techno-thriller, Creation/Gods myth and quest fantasy. I liked the techno-thriller, especially because it features Zula Forthrast and Corvallis Kawasaki (from Reamde, though you don’t need to read that first), Zula’s daughter Sophia, and several other full-fledged and interesting characters.

As the book description says, tech billionaire Richard “Dodge” Forthrast dies suddenly, his brain is preserved and, when turned back on, he (and others in the same circumstances) ...more

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Jun 14, 2019 Nooilforpacifists rated it it was ok

Shelves: science-fiction, fantasy

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book is a death spiral into boredom. It starts off with a technological bang, and ends as a whimper of a Monty Python farce. “Seveneves” held my attention longer, and I hated that.

The idea is good—and a masterful triple entendre. A Seattle multibillionaire named Dodge dies, and his will turns out to demand cryogenic freezing of his body—or whatever better technology is available at date of death. Dodge’s brain is scanned, destroying the organic material in the process, but preserving the b ...more

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Jun 17, 2019 Rob rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, audio-book, own, author-male, 20xx-laser, read-2019

Executive Summary: This book starts out quite strong, but as it goes on it becomes essentially two interconnected stories and I liked one of those stories a lot more than the other. 3.5 stars.

Audiobook: Malcolm Hillgartner did a solid job with the narration. I checked and he's the same narrator as Reamde so I appreciate the continuity. He does some voices, but nothing that really blew me away. Audio is a good option, but not really a must listen.

Full Review
Neal Stephenson has been one of my favorite aut/>/> ...more

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Jun 11, 2019 Greg rated it it was ok

Fall is occasionally exceptionally poignant, when Neal Stephenson chooses to engage with his near-future real world, with the wide implications of AR, automation, post-truth, culture-divides and even the implications of running an after-life simulation.

Most of the time, it's bogged down in it's own self-mythology created from the patrons of the transhumanist afterlife, with a few "I kid you not" moments of old-gods resembling greeks being ousted by judo-christian replacements souls complete wit ...more

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Jun 07, 2019 Suddenly Life rated it it was ok

You have to really be a fan of Stephenson's style to like this book. What's his style like, you ask? Well, one of the most prominent tips given to writers is "Just write!" and Stephenson takes it to a new level with this book. Writers usually do re-writes, where the senseless rants get turned into plot-related developments. Stephenson seems to have had no such stage in writing this book. The amount of nonsensical, plot agnostic, kind of babble between incidents is truly astounding for the author ...more

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Sep 04, 2019 Charles rated it it was ok · review of another edition

A shambolic crossover science fiction/fantasy in which two rich, white guys with differing schemes of death theology battle in a post-death MMORPG-like environment called Bitworld.

Reading Neal Stephenson novels have gotten progressively more difficult for me. It’s not that these books are bad; it’s that they’ve become these weighty tomes. Frankly, they really don’t have to be. I’ve come to feel that the author doesn’t know when to stop. In the last decade his books could easily and been better off e ...more

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Jun 21, 2019 John rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Rounded up from 4 1/2 stars. I loved this book & found it thoroughly engrossing. It’s sad to ponder but probably true that giving humanity a reboot into a digital universe would probably result in reformed superstitions & prejudices with the few using this to rule & the many falling back into subservient roles. Neal Stephenson in fine form.

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May 29, 2019 Richard Derus marked it as to-read

Watch Neal Stephenson discuss the successor volume, not sequel!, to REAMDE with Nancy Pearl!

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Jun 10, 2019 Steven Mastroyin rated it liked it · review of another edition

I'd like to give a little more than 3 stars but it's hard.

Generally though, 5 stars for meatspace, 2 stars for Bitspace. This seems to be the general consensus of reviews, and while I hate to agree with consensus, it's hard to find fault. I suppose like others I completely missed the point because the stories of Bitspace I found to just be so uninteresting, derivative, and boring. I guess the idea that the human mind would not be able to escape the trappings of human experience is in I'd like to give a little more than 3 stars but it's hard.

Generally though, 5 stars for meatspace, 2 stars for Bitspace. This seems to be the general consensus of reviews, and while I hate to agree with consensus, it's hard to find fault. I suppose like others I completely missed the point because the stories of Bitspace I found to just be so uninteresting, derivative, and boring. I guess the idea that the human mind would not be able to escape the trappings of human experience is interesting, but I don't feel it was really explored. It was kind of like the entire point of Bitspace was to recreate the creation myths of the past. But, I was just so completely overwhelmingly bored. The long middle chapters about the journey of Adam and Eve I had to just start skipping entire paragraphs of text for want of literally anything interesting happening. The final act which people have mentioned being bad I actually at least found more fun to read, if still also pretty rote and kind of lame.

I don't really want to go about too many spoilers, but I was really disappointed in what he chose to explore,and I feel it left a lot of questions. So, some spoilers ahead.

First, if everyone in meatspace is privy to the events in Bitworld, WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO GET UPLOADED?

Second, what was El doing other than being a "bad" god? He seemed to have almost literally no plan. I get it, he wanted the resources for himself, hence enslaving so many souls to low cycle drudgery or just hibernation in the hive. But, it really doesn't make a lot of sense. In the real world he talked so much of what he would want to do absent the bounds of physical laws...and then his vision is just to become a dictator? This is really weak sauce. Probably the worst villain of any Stephenson book.

Third, the entire idea of a quasi-eternal life should be upending the physical world. And yet, we only get very narrow views of what is going on with the characters, who make less and less sense as the book goes on. I understand that this may be part of the point. But I didn't like it.

Fourth, we have a subtitle "Dodge in Hell" but get almost literally nothing about Dodge's experience other than his ability to create. I don't know, I thought maybe we would have more about his journey and the journey of awakening consciousness.

The only enjoyable thing about the entire finish is the idea that Meatspace in this book was actually always another bitworld, and it was bitworlds all the way down going back who knows how long. But even this is pulled from like, three lines of the book and I'm probably over-extrapolating.

I love Stephenson generally and I like his prose. I really like seveneves, I loved REAMDE, etc. I don't need him to write exceptionally complicated claptrap to be satisfied. But, I think he really missed here. ...more

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Sep 10, 2019 David Yoon rated it liked it

I was nervous going in. Stephenson doesn't write small, tidy books - but from the start I was happy to amble along with his big, writerly brain. I loved this near future world where the entire town of Moab is obliterated by nuclear detonation - except not really. The natural progression of fake news and internet hoaxes, this staged event predicates the dismantling of the internet. We move from there into a drastically changed country divided between the Moab truthers living in fundamental "Ameri ...more

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About Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

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Neal Stephenson is the author of Reamde, Anathem, and the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World), as well as Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

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“I would say that the ability of people to agree on matters of fact not immediately visible—states of affairs removed from them in space and time—ramped up from a baseline of approximately zero to a pretty high level around the time of the scientific revolution and all that, and stayed there and became more globally distributed up through the Cronkite era, and then dropped to zero incredibly quickly when the Internet came along.” — 3 likes

“The living stayed home, haunting the world of the dead like ghosts.” — 2 likes

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