Neal Stephenson’s New Novel — Part Tech, Part Fantasy — Dazzles
Straw poll: Who thinks we’re living in the Matrix?
On the one hand, are we really to believe a single human is responsible for the body of work — entertaining, brilliant, immense — that Neal Stephenson has produced over the past quarter-century? Turning out thousand-page novels every couple of years? It seems much more likely that a computer is behind all of this.
On the other hand, have you read Neal Stephenson? His mind is capable of going places no one else has ever imagined, let alone rendered in photorealist prose. And he doesn’t just go to those places; he takes us with him. The very fact of Stephenson’s existence might be the best argument we have against the simulation hypothesis.
His latest, “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell,” is another piece of evidence in the anti-Matrix case: a staggering feat of imagination, intelligence and stamina. For long stretches, at least. Between those long stretches, there are sections that, while never uninteresting, are somewhat less successful. To expect any different, especially in a work of this length, would be to hold it to an impossible standard. Somewhere in this 900-page book is a 600-page book. One that has the same story, but weighs less. Without those 300 pages, though, it wouldn’t be Neal Stephenson. It’s not possible to separate the essential from the decorative. Nor would we want that, even if it were were. Not only do his fans not mind the extra — it’s what we came for.
In this particular case, the extra stuff is also kind of the point. The mind-melting density of detail in Stephenson’s work can sometimes overwhelm or bog down the narrative, but in “Fall” it is very much in service of the book’s subject: reality, and how it might one day be simulated. How those simulations could be iterated and upgraded over time, through technological progress and at great financial cost, to an arbitrary degree of verisimilitude. How the resources of our “Meatspace” civilization would increasingly become inputs and raw material for the creation and improvement of a digital civilization (“Bitworld”), gradually sucking all of humanity into the Matrix in the process. Exploring the implications and possibilities of this, on a grand and granular scale, plays to Stephenson’s strengths. This is a case of author and substance and story and style all lining up; a series of lenses perfectly arranged to focus the power and precision of Stephenson’s laser-beam intellect.
The world-famous billionaire Richard “Dodge” Forthrast made his fortune developing T’Rain, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), much like World of Warcraft. In his later years, Dodge has settled down somewhat, attending to his gaming empire, while also managing to enjoy time with his family. (Pause here to note: Although “Fall” features several characters who have appeared in the Stephenson universe, including the Forthrast family, it is not a sequel to 2011’s “Reamde” and can be read as a stand-alone work.)
One morning, while undergoing a simple medical procedure, Dodge suffers an unusual complication that causes him to stop breathing. By the time doctors are able to get him on a ventilator, he is brain-dead.
Dodge’s last will and testament, written years earlier and semi-forgotten, sets off a chain of events (legal, familial, financial) that eventually lead to Dodge’s brain (or more specifically, its “connectome,” the totality of its data and structures and connections between every cell therein) being scanned and turned into digital information, which is then uploaded into the cloud until such time as technology improves to the point where Dodge’s consciousness is able to be restored — whatever that means.
Years go by. Technology, as it tends to do, improves. Dodge is eventually brought back to life, or a kind of virtual afterlife, in the “Bitworld” where he exists as ones and zeros. Initially inchoate, Dodge’s mind evolves, along with the digital environment he creates around him, a kind of information-age Genesis story that Stephenson describes evocatively.
From there, Stephenson begins to leap forward in time, in fits and starts, the story eventually spanning several decades. Along the way, he manages many sharp bits of social satire. An elaborate DDoS attack exploits the filter bubbles through which reality is mediated for large portions of the population. A portrait emerges of an America divided: the United States enclosing within it another nation, Ameristan, the borders of which are “not a line on a map,” impossible to demarcate and having “no official reality” but nevertheless all too real in effect. A country in which those with means can afford to hire personal “editors” whose “sole job was to filter incoming and outgoing information,” while those who can’t afford the privilege are more likely to have unfiltered exposure to “flumes … of porn, propaganda and death threats, 99.9 percent of which were algorithmically generated.”
For a good long while in the middle, the novel alternates between realms, digital and analog. Early choices, or sometimes relatively arbitrary initial conditions, end up shaping future events and technologies. In this case, the cosmology, topography and even the theology of an entire universe — Bitworld — affect Meatspace, and the two realms are linked in a feedback loop of cause and effect, resources and outcomes (dollars, computing power).
Without spoiling too much, the last quarter of the book, itself the length of a fairly decent-sized novel, reads like high fantasy — expertly written fanfic of some long-running swords-and-wizards epic. Or an exhaustive transcript of every turn, saving throw and dice roll of the most elaborate Dungeons and Dragons campaign of all time. Has Neal Stephenson flipped genres, mid-book? What is this fantasy doing in my science fiction? Although the action lags a bit in this final section, narratively it is the inevitable (if surprising) endpoint of the story that began all those years ago when Dodge died. No matter how far afield it might seem, it’s all of a piece, derived rigorously from Stephenson’s initial premises. This is hard sci-fi, but it goes so far in its speculative extrapolation toward that end of the spectrum that it hits the end, goes through and comes back around the other side. The result is a story that touches on society, technology, spirituality and even eschatology, a far-reaching attempt at a grand myth that is breathtaking in scope and ambition.
by Charles Yu, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Matthieu Bourel
Straw poll: Who thinks we’re living in the Matrix?
On the one hand, are we really to believe a single human is responsible for the body of work — entertaining, brilliant, immense — that Neal Stephenson has produced over the past quarter-century? Turning out thousand-page novels every couple of years? It seems much more likely that a computer is behind all of this.
On the other hand, have you read Neal Stephenson? His mind is capable of going places no one else has ever imagined, let alone rendered in photorealist prose. And he doesn’t just go to those places; he takes us with him. The very fact of Stephenson’s existence might be the best argument we have against the simulation hypothesis.His latest, “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell,” is another piece of evidence in the anti-Matrix case: a staggering feat of imagination, intelligence and stamina. For long stretches, at least. Between those long stretches, there are sections that, while never uninteresting, are somewhat less successful. To expect any different, especially in a work of this length, would be to hold it to an impossible standard. Somewhere in this 900-page book is a 600-page book. One that has the same story, but weighs less. Without those 300 pages, though, it wouldn’t be Neal Stephenson. It’s not possible to separate the essential from the decorative. Nor would we want that, even if it were were. Not only do his fans not mind the extra — it’s what we came for.
In this particular case, the extra stuff is also kind of the point. The mind-melting density of detail in Stephenson’s work can sometimes overwhelm or bog down the narrative, but in “Fall” it is very much in service of the book’s subject: reality, and how it might one day be simulated. How those simulations could be iterated and upgraded over time, through technological progress and at great financial cost, to an arbitrary degree of verisimilitude. How the resources of our “Meatspace” civilization would increasingly become inputs and raw material for the creation and improvement of a digital civilization (“Bitworld”), gradually sucking all of humanity into the Matrix in the process. Exploring the implications and possibilities of this, on a grand and granular scale, plays to Stephenson’s strengths. This is a case of author and substance and story and style all lining up; a series of lenses perfectly arranged to focus the power and precision of Stephenson’s laser-beam intellect.
The world-famous billionaire Richard “Dodge” Forthrast made his fortune developing T’Rain, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), much like World of Warcraft. In his later years, Dodge has settled down somewhat, attending to his gaming empire, while also managing to enjoy time with his family. (Pause here to note: Although “Fall” features several characters who have appeared in the Stephenson universe, including the Forthrast family, it is not a sequel to 2011’s “Reamde” and can be read as a stand-alone work.)
One morning, while undergoing a simple medical procedure, Dodge suffers an unusual complication that causes him to stop breathing. By the time doctors are able to get him on a ventilator, he is brain-dead.
Dodge’s last will and testament, written years earlier and semi-forgotten, sets off a chain of events (legal, familial, financial) that eventually lead to Dodge’s brain (or more specifically, its “connectome,” the totality of its data and structures and connections between every cell therein) being scanned and turned into digital information, which is then uploaded into the cloud until such time as technology improves to the point where Dodge’s consciousness is able to be restored — whatever that means.
Years go by. Technology, as it tends to do, improves. Dodge is eventually brought back to life, or a kind of virtual afterlife, in the “Bitworld” where he exists as ones and zeros. Initially inchoate, Dodge’s mind evolves, along with the digital environment he creates around him, a kind of information-age Genesis story that Stephenson describes evocatively.
From there, Stephenson begins to leap forward in time, in fits and starts, the story eventually spanning several decades. Along the way, he manages many sharp bits of social satire. An elaborate DDoS attack exploits the filter bubbles through which reality is mediated for large portions of the population. A portrait emerges of an America divided: the United States enclosing within it another nation, Ameristan, the borders of which are “not a line on a map,” impossible to demarcate and having “no official reality” but nevertheless all too real in effect. A country in which those with means can afford to hire personal “editors” whose “sole job was to filter incoming and outgoing information,” while those who can’t afford the privilege are more likely to have unfiltered exposure to “flumes … of porn, propaganda and death threats, 99.9 percent of which were algorithmically generated.”
For a good long while in the middle, the novel alternates between realms, digital and analog. Early choices, or sometimes relatively arbitrary initial conditions, end up shaping future events and technologies. In this case, the cosmology, topography and even the theology of an entire universe — Bitworld — affect Meatspace, and the two realms are linked in a feedback loop of cause and effect, resources and outcomes (dollars, computing power).
Without spoiling too much, the last quarter of the book, itself the length of a fairly decent-sized novel, reads like high fantasy — expertly written fanfic of some long-running swords-and-wizards epic. Or an exhaustive transcript of every turn, saving throw and dice roll of the most elaborate Dungeons and Dragons campaign of all time. Has Neal Stephenson flipped genres, mid-book? What is this fantasy doing in my science fiction? Although the action lags a bit in this final section, narratively it is the inevitable (if surprising) endpoint of the story that began all those years ago when Dodge died. No matter how far afield it might seem, it’s all of a piece, derived rigorously from Stephenson’s initial premises. This is hard sci-fi, but it goes so far in its speculative extrapolation toward that end of the spectrum that it hits the end, goes through and comes back around the other side. The result is a story that touches on society, technology, spirituality and even eschatology, a far-reaching attempt at a grand myth that is breathtaking in scope and ambition.
by Charles Yu, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Matthieu Bourel
