Stephenson's Quicksilver Slated For March 7th

Swampper writes: "New Neal Stephenson novel Quicksilver is available for pre-order from Amazon UK. It's due out on March 7th. There is also another Stephenson book on the horizon; Interface. It will arrive May 2nd." Actually, Interface was previously offered through the psuedonym "Stephen Bury" Note the discussion of this book and others on the Cryptonomicon site.

Amazon UK has had this for a year now...

[Nilatir]

Amazon.co.uk has had Quicksilver in their data base for a year now. I'd want more info then just a pre-order from Amazon.

What about The Cobweb (2nd Bury book)?

[kubrick]

I already have Interface, but never saw the second Stephen Bury book for sale anywhere here (serves me right for not living in the US, I guess).

Is that flagged to be re-issued as well? Given that copies of Zodiac have popped up again here recently, I'd imagine The Cobweb would be stocked more widely with the Stephenson name on the cover.

I'm looking forward to Quicksilver, of course -- all that detail combined with amusing narrative :)

What a waste

[GCP]

I keep waiting for somebody to take the breathtaking implications of things like nanotech, hacking matter, hacking biology, quantum computing, AI, the Internet, etc., and weave them into a breathtaking, serious novel.

[flame suit on] Instead, all we get are comic books. William Gibson is just goth mood music in print with a little tech thrown in for effect. In person, he admitted as much, but said that was fine with him. It was all about the style, nothing deeper.

Stephenson starts to get imaginative regarding tech, then throws it all away with goofy comic book plots. Lots of ideas I thought were clever enough to build intelligent novels around -- but no such luck.

(All I've read of his have been Snow Crash and Diamond Age, but that left me uninterested in trying again. Maybe Cryptonomicon is different....)

And don't get me started on Speilberg and AI!

The implications of what we can reasonably assume we'll be able to do within a few decades are mind blowing. Surely there must be someone who can bring it to life, to put us there and make it feel real, without wimping out and turning it into just a big joke.

I don't think I have the talent to do it myself, but I can't believe that nobody else does either.

Instead, we have a wasteland of black leather and sunglasses, of elves and trolls, of light sabers and aliens that all look like humans with lumpy heads....

Where is the "2001" for our age?

Thoughts On N.Stephenson's Real Concerns

[peripatetic_bum]

I just had re-read his books recently (except Zodiac and Cryptonomicon, but I read Cryptonomiocon recently enough to remember it well) and I have to say that (in reply to the "what a waste" post among others) that N.S and William Gibson's and actually many other really good SF writers main concerns have never really been about the technology itself. It is true that whats gets them noticed is the exciting imagery that the describe new possibilities of tech but really what I have noticed and what keeps peopoe coming back is they are really concenred with the effect of all this tech, and they are concerned with it in a surprisingly humanistic way (which makes it very surprising to me that they are held in great regard by geeks as elite 'tech' type writers)

I'll stick with Neal S. for now, but having read his most all his book, you can detect even way back in Snow Crash that Neal believes that what technology is really doing is making it clear that what really makes people different is not race (remember, the Protangonist, "Hiro" is a black/asian) not race, or genetics, but the culture that they acquire (the software that is written into the bio-Hardware, if you will).

In a A lady's Illus. primer I was surprised that this book really was a modern versioin of many philosophical tracts that were popular in the 18/19th centuries. IN A.L's.I.P, N.S. is really concerned with what is key about education, what is key about a culture that makes it successful. While his grip on his understanding culture seems to be (from reading) kind of unsophisticated, I have to give them man extreme props for even trying to tackle what seems to be the most contentious issue of our times. He directly attacks "cultureal relativity", "the dumbing down of society", "The real reason for poverty", and in both A.L's.I.P and in "..The Command line" Essay, he tries to describe what is about cultures and even sub-groups of the cultures (Hacker, vs, End_user, for example).

What I am trying to say that Neal is using tech as a way to strip away the mere happenstance that makes people a certain way and is trying to understand fundamentally what is going on with culture and where it is heading.

I look forward to his new book, and will not be surprised if I see these same themes play out, once again.

I would appreciate hearing you comments on what you guys think Neal's real themes are ( and no they arent about what new tech thing is coming up, btw :)

Thanks for reading