alt Hacker NewsI recommend his older stuff to anyone else looking to check him out: Snow Crash is an undeniable classic, Diamond Age was absolutely incredible, and even Zodiac and In the Beginning Was the Command Line are both very good (although the last one is obviously more for computer people).
His newer stuff is very ... verbose. It started with Cryptonomicon (not sci-fi and WAY longer than it should have been) and by the time he got to Anathema he was so full of himself he not only wrote a giant text ... he wrote it in a made-up sub-language he created (and expected you to learn) just to enjoy the story.
He's one of my absolute favorite authors ... or at least he was for the first half of his career.
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Polostan went down very easy. only read Anathem, Snow Crash, Reamde, Fall;, and Cryptonomicon. Plolostan was a novella compared to those. finished in a day or two on vacation and im a sorta slow reader
i like Polostan and generally recommend it. looking forward to the sequel in a few weeks. havent read anything Stevensons said about Polostan but if i had to guess id say it targets a YA audience instead of a high school/undergrad audience
amazing none of his books have been adapted. they play out like movies in my head, albeit a lot of men participating in the socratic method and waving at white boards
Anathem was my favorite book by him. It has a lotta re-read value, I appreciate the work he did to make it feel like a complete, fleshed out world. But different folks have different tastes, and that's ok.
I also liked Seveneves, but it should have ended 2/3 of the way through. There was a point that would have made for an excellent ending (which is something Stephenson famously struggles with IMO), but then he forced in another 1/3 of a book that didn't engage me and which felt like it just petered out.
Anathem is written in English. There's just some made up words that are generally easy to figure out the meaning of.
Anathem, please reconsider. Do you remember the part about Artificial Inanity? Right before the entire book is revealed as an elaboration of Everett's MWI? It's right up there with Snow Crash's reflection on Jaynes' Origin of Consciousness.
The “made up language” is directly tied to the plot and overall themes, and leads to an “aha” moment.
Cryptonomicon definitely differs from Stephenson’s first phase but he’s had other phases since then. I’d lump that into the Shaftoe/Waterhouse small universe alongside the Baroque Cycle; some of the same names show up in REAMDE. (Sort of how there’s universe/character overlap between Snow Crash and Diamond Age.) Anathem has a similar vibe, though IIRC no character overlap.
These were indeed verbose. Some folks love it, some not as much. Then there was a deliberately semi-utopian near-futurism phase (Seveneves, whatever one it is with the cloud-seeding gun in West Texas) and now we’re into some historical fiction (Russian spy stuff).
Might be worth dipping in a toe again to see if any of these fits your fancy. Stephenson didn’t just swap to Cryptonomicon and stop there.