(urth) OT: Anathem

brunians at brunians.org brunians at brunians.org
Tue Sep 16 20:17:00 PDT 2008


Swanwick is great.


.


> Greetings:
>
> Like Swanwick, got bored with Sterling, Gibson is getting increasingly
> borderline with me.
>
> As for Stephenson, it's a split. I couldn't get through Snow Crash (but
> bought it recently to try again) and haven't tried Diamond Age.
>
> Cryptnomicon caught my attention and I read it in a day or so when I was
> supposed to be attending a conference.
>
> I loved The Baroque Cycle. I've bought it in hardcover, trade paperback
> (to bring on vacation) and in electronic format (twice, the second time to
> get it in a more "universal"--for me--format, to be able to use it in
> multiple eBook readers).
>
> But what of Dos Passos?
>
>
>
> F.P. Kiesche III  "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book.
> Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on
> being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman
> Empire.) Blogging at The Lensman's Children and TexasBestGrok!
>
> --- On Tue, 9/16/08, Dave Lebling <dlebling at hyraxes.com> wrote:
> From: Dave Lebling <dlebling at hyraxes.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) OT: Anathem
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2008, 8:12 PM
>
>
>
>
>
> I'm a fan of Wolfe, Stephenson, Gibson, and Pynchon. (Not to
> mention Sterling and Swanwick -- have we ever discussed Swanwick here?)
> Anyway, "Go figure."
>
>
>
> Pynchon's most accessible novel is "The Crying of Lot 49." It has many
> of the themes he elaborates on in later novels (conspiracies, weird
> sex, technology, drugs, paranoia, nerdulent infodumps), but is short,
> funny, and to the point. "Gravity's Rainbow" is an incredible novel,
> but it's a hard slog for most people (you can tell the ones who gave up
> because they only talk about the "Banana Breakfast" scene, which occurs
> very early in a very long novel). I liked "Mason & Dixon" but found
> it overlong, and haven't managed (so far) to get past the first hundred
> or so pages of "Against the Day." "V," though, is readable and (again)
> comparatively short.
>
>
>
> I like Stephenson a lot, and am reading "Anathem" now (and avoiding any
> potential spoilers). Like most Stephenson novels, it's starting
> somewhat slowly. I have read "The Baroque Cycle" twice and enjoyed it
> even more the second time. This is not unlike how I approach most of
> Wolfe's work: I've probably read "The Book of the New Sun" six or eight
> times at least, and still find new stuff each time. I disagree with
> Adam Thornton's comparison of "The Baroque Cycle" and "Gravity's
> Rainbow." Superficially it is accurate, but in practice "GR" is
> profoundly pessimistic and while it is vaguely about "how the present
> came to be" (and for Pynchon, that means the technological,
> deracinated, conspiracy-theorist, dehumanized present), "BC" is
> optimistic and about how the modern world and worldview was born and
> propagated (in a fairly short space of time in the 1600s). Thus, in
> spite of its setting and ostensible format ("historical novel"), "BC"
> is an SF novel, whereas "GR" is a modern or post-modern "mainstream"
> novel.
>
>
>
> I am looking forward with anticipation to "An Evil Guest." (My wife
> discovered it inside our storm door as I was typing this message -- no
> doubt it fell from space in a leaden casket).
>
>
>
> To further broaden the topic, I just finished "House of Leaves," by
> Mark Danielewski (sp?), another doorstop of a book, full of
> typographical foolery and unreliable narrators. It was creepy and I
> enjoyed it.
>
>
>
> -- Dave Lebling, aka vizcacha
>
>
>
> David Duffy wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, Adam Thornton wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 15, 2008, at 9:25 PM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:
>
>
>
>
>     I've had other people say similar things to
> me, but I don't see it as all
>
>
> *that* good. But then I don't really like either Pynchon or Gibson
> either.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Seriously: the Baroque Cycle is _Gravity's Rainbow_ only set after the
> 30 Years' War rather than after WWII.
>
>
>
>
> Speaking of which: how many other hard-core Pynchon fans are there
> here?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Well I just finished _Against_the_day.  I avoided M&D as too long
> (read all his others), but got sucked in by the first chapter of
> _AtD_.  I like and have read everything of Stephenson's, but I was glad
> to reach the end of the Baroque Cycle ;)
>
>
>
>
> Turning back to Wolfe, Pynchon is interested in a lot of the same
> things -- I think here of power and violence and pulp literature (_atD_
> has a few Lovecraftian episodes as well as all the edisonades/westerns)
> and a hard science background that is deliberately held lightly -- but
> slightly different politics...and more on-screen sex...and his puns are
> probably better.
>
>
>
>
> David Duffy.
>
>
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