Has Neal Stephenson become too accessible?
Has Neal Stephenson become too accessible?
September 18, 2011
By Andrew Leonard
Salon
The blurb on the back of my review copy of Neal Stephenson's new novel, "Reamde," described it as "his most accessible novel to date." I frowned when I read those words: Accessible? This was supposed to be a good thing?
In my house, the arrival of a new Neal Stephenson novel every few years (or, in the case of his epic three-volume "The Baroque Cycle" masterpiece, every six months) is always an occasion for great celebration -- as well as an associated dramatic collapse in work productivity. That's been the case ever since I fell in love with "Zodiac: An Eco-Thriller" in 1988 and was enraptured, along with almost every other science-fiction geek, by "Snow Crash" in 1991. A large part of the allure is Stephenson's uncompromising inaccessibility, his marvelous, sui generis ability to marry complexity, ambition and profound geekiness into a riveting narrative.
Let's review, briefly, Stephenson's last three offerings. "Cryptonomicon" wove the entire history of the modern computer, from Alan Turing onwards, into a wild yarn featuring Nazis, gold and Linux geeks. "The Baroque Cycle" trilogy raised the stakes impossibly further: He covered the story of the Enlightenment, including the birth of science and the evolution of money. With pirates and harem girls! Most recently, in "Anathem," he structured his tale around fundamentally gnarly questions of existential discourse that have been bedeviling the smartest human minds for thousands of years.
Rare indeed is the writer of speculative fiction who can tell a ripping yarn that simultaneously explores the deepest roots of technology and philosophy. That's what fans like about Neal Stephenson. And that, I have to say, is not what we get from "Reamde." Ripping yarn? Sure. Massive ambition? Not so much. How the universe works? Zip.
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