r/nealstephenson

I read (or rather, listened to the audiobook of) Reamde awhile back and loved it. Decided I should do a more "legacy" Stephenson novel next and went with Cryptonomicon (again, audiobook - not ideal, but I never have time to actually *sit* and read these days).

I got about halfway through and then got stuck. Unlike Reamde, which had an incredibly propulsive narrative despite its many subplots, Cryptonomicon feels really aimless so far in terms of plot. We've got a WWII Marine doing Marine shit and not really putting much thought into it, a WWII cryptologist breaking codes cuz he's a cryptologist, and a present-day startup co-founder who's trying to break into the Philippines' fiber optic market.

In other words, just a bunch of dudes doing their jobs - albeit with a lot of reasonably entertaining detail and commentary. Now, I'm not an especially impatient reader. I'm fine with wonky thematic or narrative digressions; often I love them. Again, I thought Reamde was a blast, and it wanders all over the place.

My problem is it's totally unclear to me what the *conflict* is supposed to be in each of these storylines, and therefore the narrative overall. Apart from, you know, beating the Nazis - but again, that's just Shaftoe and Waterhouse doing their jobs.

This book seems to be widely beloved, so i'm probably outing myself as a total ignoramus here. What am I missing??

Years ago (decades?) I read Crytptonomicon and Snow Crash. It feels like a lifetime ago, but I remember enjoying them, especially Crytptonomicon. I remember buying The Diamond Age but never finished it.

Then came work, marriage, kids, pets. I've continued reading, but it feels like life pushed me towards literary fiction, and away from sci fi and fantasy.

I know he's released a lot of work since then. I read a snippet from Anthem, but can't say it caught my attention. The Baroque Cycle looks like too big of a commitment to reacquaint myself with his work.

So the question is simple: which book would you recommend to help me jump back in? Thanks in advance.

Any poo flingers feeling interested in a book by the man who coined "Metaverse" in a book satirizing cyberpunk tropes so perfectly that it deserves the status of being where "Metaverse" originated? Hiro Protagonist is a bro. In a trench coat. But it's totally the coolest.

What I really want to talk about is a technology from "Fall - or Dodge in Hell". Journey through Ameristan with me. Visit the brochure kiosk next to the flaming cross. Reinvent civilization with Egdod. It's an epic tale of the grandest proportions.

Yet, its most relevant modern day concept are Pluto's APEs. Autonomous Proxies for Execration - poo-flinging apes of the programmer art variety - are bots who spam everything everywhere with defamatory content about someone.

Overwhelmingly.

Accusing them of everything - of being a whore, of being a fascist prude, of being a gold digger, of being a bank robber. Obviously none of it real. But it's designed to drown out conspiracy theories on the internet. If there are a hundred posts about Maeve and each one is blatantly false, why would my angry uncle's opinion matter? I'm going to filter out that name and go on with my life.

A Braden - of Maeve Braden - is a single post, blog, video, or tweet that defames and attacks the target. A kilo Braden is a thousand posts. A day? They insinuate faster times than that, but there's got to be a limit before you are just DDOS'ing Twitter's servers, right? Someone could do the math for it.

In the book it's a specific campaign to affect the internet Crazytown population from doxxing and tormenting a main character - Maeve Braden. Pluto created the APE system and drowned out the Crazytown content with floods of antagonistic content all targeted at "Maeve". It was powerful. In Maeve's name Pluto broke the internet, and the whole story points out some uncomfortable weaknesses in our own systems.

Anyways. What kind of kiloBradens could we hit with today's technology?

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