A few books

[pavanne]

I am in New York again, and as usual up at jetlag-o'clock and avoiding prep for my panel later. I am insanely perky now after going out at 5am to get coffee, but expect this to fade rapidly when I actually need the energy, so am coasting for a bit.

Some books I have read.

Comments

[naath]

pingers> AIUI the deepest parts of the ocean were supposed to never have dried up entirely, so they were living in water the whole 5000 years. And, er, also heavily implied at the end that there was rather more planning than "this sub commander decided to Just Do It" (must have been, military submarines are single sex...).

The diggers being all "this is OUR PLANET, FUCK OFF" is seriously ignoring the 'oy, but we FIXED IT FOR YOU' aspect here... surprised no-one even mentioned that.

The whole race thing is SUPER WEIRD. Like, they have excellent DNA skillz, they could have done LITERALLY ANYTHING and they went for THIS? Maybe this is Stephenson being "humans iz stupid sometimes"?

[pavanne]

Yes, I think 'humans iz stupid' is a pretty good summary but it just seemed like they were being randomly stupid for no particular gain! I can't argue that this is unrealistic, but it seemed to be an overstated point, particularly after the first bit had so many sensible, smart, self-sacrificing characters.

[cartesiandaemon]

Oh cool, I'm glad you tried Witch Watch.

I thought about the same as you did about Seveneves, but I think his recent are not Stephenson's best. They're all annoying in ways that bother some people and not others, but I like Snow Crash and Diamond Age (if you like fairly accessible cyberpunk), Cryptonomicon (if you like thick books about maths geeks), and the Baroque Cycle (if you like very very thick books about 17th century maths geeks). And maybe Anathem (if you like alternate-world philosophy-bullshit maths geeks who live in monasteries)

[pavanne]

Oh, I did read Anathem. It was OK (I recall it as being picturesque but not much of a story). I might look at some of your suggestions, thank you!