Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

After what seems like a rather dull opening, but which turns into something absorbing and engaging, the book shoots off in part two with a piece of perfect Stephensonian chaos and thrills and sly satire, and it's still only setting the stage for the epic to come. When it begins its bible/Silmarillion mythbuilding riff my heart sank a bit, no way would this sustain interest, but it does, culminating in a Quest, of all things, straight out of DnD, and it all works, it all makes sense and it's all brilliant and readable and incredibly enjoyable and oddly life-affirming.

Stephenson's new novel is a monumental work of science fiction that morphs into fantasy and back to science fiction. At the beginning, which takes place in a not too distant future, Dodge, a wealthy guy who has been successful developing computer gaming software, is on his way to a medical procedure. He dies that day, and his will stipulates that he must undergo a cryogenic process, or whatever the most advanced technology would be to preserve him. We are introduced to the most important people in his life as they wrestle with how to best satisfy his wishes. The upshot is doing a scan to digitize his brain. As this process becomes fine-tuned, it becomes increasingly common, with the result that a virtual world develops inhabited by the show more beings who have been digitized. Chapters then alternate between the people Dodge has left behind and the new world that has evolved. As the novel progresses, the new world dominates and takes on the feel of a highly developed fantasy world, with its own communities and characters and conflicts and magic. For this reader, the narrative became bogged down in the extensive world-building with its confusing geographic details. I was eager for more of the "meatspace" plot, and found that it was tempting to skip the lengthy descriptions. show less

I enjoyed this one much more than Reamde, and it was so much fun to visit some old friends again with some of the characters from Cryptonomicon. That the two worlds are connected was something that I hoped for when I read Reamde, but that I couldn't pick up on.

I loved the fate that they gave Enoch. I loved the world that they built together. But the time spent in Bit-World with Adam and Eve grew a bit long for my tastes. It's brilliant bit of world-building, but at times seems like it's more focused on the world building than on the characters themselves. The language seemed to mimic an almost biblical rhythm, which was completely appropriate for the circumstances, but had the effect of removing me from really wanting to be involved.

I show more was more interested in the modern world of earth, with the strange religions and the information stream editors than I was in the bit-world that they had created. show less

883 pages. Word processing has a lot to answer for. This is not one story but several. Dodge's last morning. An SF story of copying and rebooting minds, Dodge's being the first, in the cloud as spearheaded by his niece Sophia and his friend, and executor Corvallis which includes a sort of post-data-apocalyptic road trip through Ameristan. Then there is the creation story and the story of the fall, semi-inverted and interleaved with the original SF narrative. Then we get to watch as new Adam and Eve meet a charming worm and have to face the consequences. Then, with a few "meatspace" interludes we are off on a classic Quest with the repulsively charming Corvallis/Corvus.
Don't worry about spoilers up there, there's lots of other stuff. But show more while it is as easy to read and smoothly paced as almost all of Neal Stephenson's writing, it is facile surface stuff. Really, the adversaries are kind of six-of-one blah blah. Hierarchies are really all that's on offer. Who would pay to be a beedle? Who wouldn't have their estate sue if they were instantiated as one?
Also, the orientation is so completely US & Western Europe in spite of Corvallis's Asian ancestry and Zulu&Sophia's Eritrean origins. Not even a nod to Russian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, or Southeast Asian money, which would very likely not have gone into Dodge's after world, but it's as if these whole parts of the world are not worth mentioning. show less

Neal Stephenson is one of the most engaging writers I know, and also one of the most idiosyncratic. Fall is simultaneously an engrossing story and an often frustrating read. I've read criticisms that this novel is a rip off of Milton, and I can see how one might come to that conclusion, but there is more going on here despite characters named Adam and Eve, El, and Sophia. Stephenson is using mashups of different religious traditions (consider the Raven character and the Pantheon) to reflect on the nature of reality, the nature of death, the question of alternate universes. Ultimately, I called this science fiction because the enabling premises are tropes of that stream of fiction, but this novel is unclassifiable in genre terms. A very show more worthwhile way to pass the time until it's time to go out into the word again. show less

This is a very hard book to review, but one thing is absolutely true:

I'm absolutely blown away by this book.

Ameristan! Lol MOAB! lol

This is definitely one of Neal Stephenson's better books. Just for the ideas and the great twisting of several tales in one, I'm already looking forward to a glorious re-read. He does lead us down a few winding paths that eventually turn out to be VERY important to the whole, and I admit to laughing out loud several times when the important bits bit me on the butt. :)

All told, it's the hundreds of wonderful details, ideas, technological problems, and the nature of our world of Lies and Truth in the Miasma (Stephenson's term for the future of the Internet) that make this an extremely memorable book, but show more it's the depth of the themes that go well beyond the obvious Milton's Paradise Lost that make me grin like an idiot.

My favorite is the whole perception-as-reality by way of Philip K Dick, hitting all the big points AND even throwing the scholars a bone by setting up a fantastic Manichean Heresy (Real God and the Flawed God and the temperance of Sophia.) (And for you PKD fans, look no further than Divine Invasion.

The other obvious theme connecting it to Paradise Lost is actually a subversive red herring. There's a big twist to this that makes it a lot more like PKD, including the paranoia, the corruption, and the faulty memories.

I came into this kinda expecting a single viewpoint adventure like many old SFs that take on uploaded consciousnesses and/or Hell, but you know what? This is so much better. We have many viewpoints, great adventures, and very little actual Hell except in a (you brought this with you sense). Kinda awesome when you think about it. No cheap theatrics, only an in-depth issue revolving People doing what People always do. Character-driven, with a lot of added juice.

Like several ages of mythology run by high-speed processors in the ultimate game of Life (as an afterlife), skirting the edges of a technological singularity, and wrapping it all up with a reality-based hackathon by way of a Gamer's Ultimate Quest.

I think I see the point, here. For all of us future afterlifers, let's MAKE SURE THE GAME DESIGNERS retain control over it. Please? No one wants to live an (after)life CONTROLLED BY THE BEAN COUNTERS. :)

The book has some great mirroring going on, rooting itself in near-future meatspace with tons of corporate intrigue, funny/nasty worldbuilding that put the quality of Truth on trial. The whole SF of tackling perception-as-reality is taken to new heights and multiple threads that keep twining and intertwining in really great ways. And then it takes on HUGE significance in the digital realm. Nasty significance. :)

Lordy! The Moab disaster (in more ways than one) is the very thing that sparks the Heaven 2.0 disaster! I loved that! The whole mad-god theme is great! And perfectly in-line with regular corporate madness, too. :) Why shouldn't we bring all our usual messes into the afterlife? We are, after all, only human, even when some of us become gods, angels, or incarnations of DEATH. :) lol

I had such a fun time with this, I can't even begin... or rather, I have begun, but I could keep going on forever.

Like I said, it's a really hard one to review. :) It has a lot of great depth to it that is rather MORE surprising than I ever gave it credit for, and this is coming from an avowed fanboy of Stephenson. I definitely like it more than Seveneves and Reamde. I'd have to re-read Snow Crash and Diamond Age again to see where it ranks by those. :)

I will always have Anathem as my primary love, tho. :)

BUT I think I will have to nom this one for next year's Hugo. Just for its sheer audacity and richness. :) show less

Fall is like The Diamond Age: lots of interesting things happening in Meatspace, an increasingly boring story developing in Bitworld/Primer. Bitworld is supposed to make us wonder whether we're living in a simulation, Plato's Cave, can you bend the spoon, etc, and it does all of that competently, on top of raising a bunch of other really great questions (like what political order in a digital society could look like). But it could be hundreds of pages shorter, especially towards the end. Also, I hate the cheap attempt to connect the different Neal Stephenson's fictional universes to make people buy the other books. Screw Enoch Root and the Shaftoes, they had no place in this story. Finally, Ameristan feels like a silly nod to current show more anti-tech, anti-social media alarmists; it doesn't really help move the story forward. All that said, Fall is still worth it - and still better than 90% of what's out there -, though almost exclusively because of the Meatspace story, especially in the first 1/3 or so of the book. show less