Results tagged “Cyberpunk” from One Hour to Read

Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

I don't know if I've picked up more on nanotechnology or if I just took my time when I read but this Neal Stephenson book made more sense when I read it this time around as well. At this rate, I'll be ready to have another run at the Quicksilver series

The best part of Stephenson's writing for me is the ensemble cast.  There are always a dozen people to follow around and everyone has at least three agendas on the go.  I also love to watch the way that all of the storylines converge.  This is another book with a tangible sense of pace that picks up as everyone draws closer to the endgame, always a good thing in my books.

I've been having a bit of a binge on my reading right now so I'm a little tapped out for commentary.  I'm also a little hungry for breakfast and, as I don't have a Matter Compiler in my kitchen to fill my order, I need to go and actually do something about breakfast.

I like to read Neal Stephenson because I feel smart when I read Neal Stephenson. I feel smart and cool, much cooler than I actually am.  I get to roll out my cyberpunk cred (earned back in my teens when I went through a wicked bout of insomnia that lasted for a few years and battled it with copies of Omni magazine.)  I  A friend gave me a copy of Cryptonomicon when he learned that I had been a code freak as a kid and from that point I was hooked.

I have read Snow Crash before.  With any other book, that would mean maybe a couple of hours reading but Stephenson's writing is pretty dense.  I noticed that I paid more attention to the hacker religion mythology sections and they made sense (yeah, I'm confessing that sometimes the book defeated me, I'm thinking that it had something to do with my skimming habit). Maybe I'm getting philosophical in my dotage ;D but it all hung together for me this time. 

I adore the hero... Hiro.  Hiro Protagonist, samurai hacker.  I saw a guy getting out of the pool at the Y yesterday that could have been him (you know, if he wasn't fictional).  Hot.  He's not that far off of my age in the book and he's finally starting to feel like a grown up.  It was like watching him put away childish things.

It'll probably be a few years before I read this one again but I've started another one of Stephenson's books on the right now.  It was a confusing one for me too.