I loved Diamond Age. My favorite Stephenson book, by far. But the ending, the resolution of all the action, was such a letdown. Such meh. I find that this is often a problem with cyberpunk.
Do you think that's a Neal Stephenson issue? Don't get me wrong, I love his writing, but I found this to be the case with Fall too. I can see it becoming tiring if one is writing 400+ page books.
Definitely a Stephenson issue. It's a meme for sure, but there is some truth in it. Nowadays when I re-read any of his old works, I tend to stop after getting about 80% through. That said, I do think that these incredibly complex narratives are extremely hard to wrap up neatly. GRRM has this issue as well.
That's the problem with letting characters act how they would actually act, and make decisions that make sense for them. Those decisions often don't end in a way that's concise and brings closure.
I think he tried to sidestep this issue quite a bit in Seveneves in a fairly clever way. To me personally (and I know there are others who disagree), the third act felt the weakest. Despite that it did bring closure to the story. There was no finality to the characters themselves - it skipped over all of that, but there was closure to the story.
One thing I'm curious on the other end of the spectrum - who does HN think writes good endings to complex scifi stories?
My memory of the scifi I read in my youth (50 years ago!) is hazy. But I do remember that Arthur C. Clarke's short story, The Nine Million Names of God, had a spectacular ending. Also, Ray Bradbury's The Sound of Thunder.
Gene Wolfe. Somehow resolves or explains every seemingly random occurrence throughout the story, even if the first person narrator is extremely unreliable and doesn’t make the connection
And he is literally an inverted Stephenson; it can be a slog getting through the middles of his books, where Stephenson really shines. It took me a half-dozen tries to make it through The Book of the New Sun.
I remember some books from his "Latro in the mist" series, where the last pages have at least as much action as the rest of the book. Very strange pacing, but it is memorable and it works.
“Book of the New Sun”, beginning with Shadow of the Torturer, is his major work but can be unapproachable at first. The narrator/protagonist is a terrific character, but a IMO difficult one to spend time with.
The Fifth Head of Cerberus is also a great entry point. It’s a set of three interconnected novellas that, for my part at least, were more immediately engaging than BotNS. It’s got all the Wolfe-isms you want: unreliable narrators, unconventional settings, and puzzle-box stories that slowly open themselves.
Despite what the parent comment said I'd still recommend Shadow of The Torturer, the first book in the Book of The New Sun series. If you like the idea of being immersed in a world that you don't fully understand, but gives you the impression that there is a richness of lore behind every minor detail, then you'll enjoy it.
Iain M. Banks. Many of his endings are tragic, or at least bittersweet, and have some sort of a twist in them, so slightly YMMV. But they do always bring closure, and "then almost everyone dies" is an entirely reasonable ending if the characters were on a suicide mission all along.
The introduction of the mule spoiled it for me. Up until that point suspension of disbelief worked well and the world seemed very real, the introduction of a supernatural element didn’t fit the previous tone of the story IMHO
Seveneves is IMO the worst Stephenson story I read so far. No good sign if you stop reading midway. Although the first act was nice.
I recently found my love for Greg Egan again. Incandescence is currently way up on my list of hard scifi novels I absolutely loved. I'd love to read more of this kind...
I think it's a cyberpunk thing. There's all this action, and it is fascinating and absorbing. It's all leading up to some major reveal and then -- the reveal is disappointing.
There is the concept of a MacGuffin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin. It's the thing that sets a story in motion, but is actually irrelevant, beside the point. Like the Maltese Falcon in The Maltese Falcon. The important point is something else entirely, usually about human nature.
What The Diamond Age, and much cyberpunk do, is introduce the MacGuffin, but then they stick with it, forgetting that the MacGuffin is just a plot device. They mistake the plot device for the plot itself, like the whole point is to retrieve The Maltese Falcon. The MacGuffin is a point from which the story takes off, not the point of the story.
The best sci-fi stories are ones that you could relatively easily translate to fantasy, or even just "normal world" - because it is extremely difficult to write an engaging story that is "only the MacGuffin" - it can be done, but it is quite hard (and often appeals to a particular niche audience).
Since I read all of the books, but forgot what a Horcrux even is, I don't think so. Because I would not have had forgotten the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. A central element that gets referenced often.
I don't know if Harry Potter has a MacGuffin at all, maybe the wands and magic in itself?
It had a few of them, more or less, but they're all basically just "quest items" and less "pure" MacGuffins- the philosopher's stone in the first book, for example.
I don't think Horcruxes count - it's introduced way later in the series where we're already very deeply invested in all the characters, and instead of disappearing, it becomes the center of the attention for the rest of the series.
This is funny, both Fall and Diamond Age are Stephenson novels I haven't managed to get through, but of the ones I've read (and enjoyed!), the endings have been as follows:
Remade - massively stretched my suspension of disbelief.
Cryptonomicon - pretty bad.
Snow Crash - No memory, I might have blocked it out?
Anthem - maybe ok? There are two though so that's cheating.
Seven Eves - That one might have been ok, but it's possible I also blocked it out. The second half was a bit strange tbh.
To be clear, I'd still recommend all of these books. Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite pieces of fiction of all time (up there with LOTR and Three Body Problem), and Anthem is in the mix. Stephenson just sucks at endings I guess.
> Snow Crash - No memory, I might have blocked it out?
The Snow Crash ending is IMO fine. Nothing amazing, but it wraps things up okay. It's just kind of typical action story beat-the-clock type thing, so it's not as memorable as really anything else in that book, though it is exciting.
> Stephenson just sucks at endings I guess.
Yeah, pretty much. He does beginnings and middles _so_ very well though that I never mind.
p.s. read Zodiac sometime if you haven't, it's one of his few books I noticed you didn't mention and it's a fun read.
I really enjoy Stephenson novels, and Three Body Problem seemed pretty popular around here. But I really disliked the Three Body Problem (I only read the first book). I think this might be my own fault, because I had convinced myself this book was the same story as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremis_(Doctor_Who) but in the end it wasn't, and I felt the story would have been so much better if it was.
There are at least two of us. I loathed Three Body Problem with a flaming passion. There was like a decent 30 page sci-fi story surrounded by ~300 pages of incomprehensible frittering around.
Folks have told me they liked the later books better, but I’ve never felt the urge to try them.
Since 3 body was first published in 2008 and Extremis in 2017, I think you mean to say "I convinced myself that Extremis was the same story as 3 body"... maybe it's irrelevant, but precedence can matter sometimes
Yes, that is what I should have said (and it was also what I was thinking at the time, since it is not uncommon for sci-fi episodes to take plots from other stories. https://www.escapistmagazine.com/star-trek-strange-new-world... is another such example).
>> Seven Eves - That one might have been ok, but it's possible I also blocked it out. The second half was a bit strange tbh.
I found Seveneves both endings (Parts I and II being one book, Part III being another) of Seveneves to be extremely satisfying. I found the Part II ending beautiful and melancholic, and the Part III was exciting - felt like a setup for a sequel I hope gets written!
Seveneves is a serious novel with many serious/tragic moments, but one funny moment that still sticks with me is in Part III. To avoid spoilers, I will describe it as when faction A is observing faction B making an approach to faction C, which faction A also hopes to contact. What faction B has improvised using available equipment as part of their approach is hilarious (and, really, totally makes sense).
Definitely Stephenson. He has a tendency to write one-and-a-half books where the main drama resolves, then a lot of new context appears full of fresh challenges for our protagonists, and then the book ends.
I barely remember the actual story in cryptonomicon, but his tangents on who fucked who in Greek mythology, how to eat cereal with a beard, how to assemble a Linux distro with such an obtuse user interface as to defeat Van Eck Phreaking, or Plato's cave are absolute gold.
Seems like a lot of people agree, but also some people don't care about endings at all. The real world doesn't normally have endings and it has 0 diminishing effect on what I enjoy about those types of books, some people actively like the lack of an ending. I don't particularly want a reveal, or some big moral point, or even closure. Make me feel something and then have it just end suddenly and leave me wondering wtf I just experienced.
> I loved Diamond Age. My favorite Stephenson book, by far. But the ending, the resolution of all the action, was such a letdown. Such meh. I find that this is often a problem with cyberpunk.
I wouldn't know about Stephenson in general, but I found that to be the case with Diamond Age: the setup was cool and intriguing, but the actual development and resolution was very disappointing.
I don't think this is the case with all cyberpunk and cyberpunk-adjacent works of scifi.
I remember thinking the same thing of a few Gibson novels. What do you recommend that doesn't fall flat at the end? That actually has a point leading to a good ending?
Well, I cannot think of proper cyberpunk now, but I found The Windup Girl to be good in both world-building but also an oddly satisfying finale. It does lose some steam for some of the story arcs though (the titular windup girl is the least interesting character, in my opinion!).
Also, the Murderbot series is pretty solid (note: it's a single story arc misleadingly sold as separate short books; don't fall for it). It's not awe inspiring but it's fun throughout the whole deal. More about action than big ideas though.
I think cyberpunk is possibly more suitable for short stories than full fledged novels? I like Gibson's stories more than his novels.
I thought of another example of a cyberpunk-adjacent work that is all setup/interesting world and disappointing payoff: Altered Carbon. At least the show, anyway.
That's a Stephenson problem. He loves the world building, the engineering problem solving, but gets stuffed when it's time to end the books; which given his writing style, is totally understandable. I don't want the books to end either!
In the first half, the Nell is just a sweet, innocent, vulnerable child, which ratchets up the tension tremendously any time she is in danger.
By the end, she’s tough and capable, so Stephenson tries to increase the pressure with intrigue and conflict. But, I was simply more invested in Nell herself than the fate of her world.
I didn’t hate the ending, but the first half was definitely more gripping.
I didn't even know this was a thing, but I definitely felt like Diamond Age just sort of ended mid-sentence. It's got all the elements of a great ending. I suspect it's something in the cadence, like if a symphony just ended with a V-I "BUMP DUMP!" without any sense of "everything is resolving into a tight knot." Instead, he lays out all the thread, everything is there, and there's just not really any way to wrap it up without being trite.
For an author with a similar style who does do endings, I'd say look at Heinlein. But this is all kind of besides the point, because Young Lady's Primer was basically my favorite book at the time I read it, and is still in the top of my personal charts. Sure, it doesn't have an ending or even a coda, but it just doesn't matter, because the mass of thread is beautiful without being tightened or tied off.
What is the point of the book? It's a fascinating world he created, but all the action is about nothing. It's so inconsequential compared to everything else going on. The problem starts way before the ending. See my comment about MacGuffins elsewhere in this discussion.
You can write off swaths of books and entire genres by asking "what is the point" but that aside even if someone offered an answer would it change the way you feel about it? No.
I'm fine if a story doesn't have a point, or if it leaves things unresolved. The problem with Stephenson (for me) is that the book is written as if it is leading to some shattering conclusion, and then it just doesn't. It fizzles right at the point that you are about to discover the long (because it's Stephenson) sought resolution.
I would have preferred the Diamond Age if it just was about that world, but without all the kerfuffle about the big secret. Nell wanders off into the sunset, or whatever.
Novels with a meandering world-building focus (e.g. LotR) are like a polar opposite and the most boring genre fiction in existence.
> as if it is leading to some shattering conclusion, and then it just doesn't
This sounds like another way of saying the story was fast-paced and engaging, and you didn't find the conclusion to feel like a "climax" with explosions. That's ok (notwithstanding that there was a big fight and all), but I think in "idea-driven" books like this it's just as well to leave things ending either strangely / unexpectedly, slightly unresolved or whatever. It's hard to put a bow on a story that can't really have a happy ending. Weird stories should have weird endings.
