Neal Stephenson - Where to start?

[Jo498]

I am thinking about the Cryptonomicon as this is the most famous one? Anything against that?

And are some people familiar with the German translation? (Would probably easier for me to get cheaply and faster to read, it's a doorstopper...)

[williamjm]

Cryptonomicon was the first Stephenson book I read and it seemed to work well enough as a place to start. I liked it a lot, although like every Stephenson book I've read it does have some flaws.

[Night's_King]

I had no problem with the German translation. I really like the German language in general, because it feels more exact than English, but I really hate it when almost every english name is translated (Like Jon Snow = Jon Schnee or King's Landing = Königsmund), and I don't really remember that it was done in the Cryptonomicon. So the German translation should be very okay. (Could still be that I'm wrong...)

[Yersinia]

I started with Snow Crash, which is a really fun read and shorter than Cryptonomicon, iirc. No idea if there's a German translation.

[3CityApache]

I started with The Baroque Cycle and then Anathem. Loved especially the first one. But I admire Stephenson almost unconditionally, so I'm not the best person to ask.

[thistlepong]

Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon. If you start with REAMDE, you'll be disappointed by the flabby endings of all the rest.

[red snow]

I've only read "anathem" but I really enjoyed it. That said, I haven't read anything else by him so maybe it isn't the best start point? The only reason I've put it off are because (there's a biq queue) and all of us books are huge to the point of being intimidating.

[Seiche]

Another vote for starting with Snow Crash. It's loads of fun even if you don't get excited about cyber punk in general and it demonstrate's Stephenson's ability to weave a story around a big idea in a way that is more than just clever. As Yersinia mentions above, it's shorter than some of his other works.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Anathem is one of my all time favorite books. It's dense but thoughtful and has prompted more non-fiction reading form me than any other single work.

[all swedes are racist]

Yeah, Anathem was the first one I read, it was just released and I had a lot of recommendations of Stephenson in general. Cool idea, but I didn't exactly love it. I'd say its probably his "driest?", at least of what I've read. Didn't stop me from reading the entire monster in less than two days.

It was some time later I finally got around to reading Snow Crash, and I finally "got it", the Stephenson love that is. Right off the bat, that books a firecracker. I'd say start with that and Diamond Age, then move onto Cryptonomicon/Baroque Cycle.

[red snow]

Anathem is one of my all time favorite books. It's dense bit thoughtful and has prompted more non-fiction reading form me than any other single work.

It definitely got me a lot more interested in quantum physics. I also liked how the story seems to be pretty random for a large chunk but comes across as rollicking good fun. I've heard that's true of his other books too.

[Yersinia]

Yeah, Anathem was the first one I read, it was just released and I had a lot of recommendations of Stephenson in general. Cool idea, but I didn't exactly love it. I'd say its probably his "driest?", at least of what I've read. Didn't stop me from reading the entire monster in less than two days.

It was some time later I finally got around to reading Snow Crash, and I finally "got it", the Stephenson love that is. Right off the bat, that books a firecracker. I'd say start with that and Diamond Age, then move onto Cryptonomicon/Baroque Cycle.

Snow Crash has a particularly strong opening. I was hooked from the first chapter. When I tried reading it out loud recently, I was even more impressed.

[Jo498]

I do not need any history or science lessons (already have a physics degree, although it's been a while...), so such aspects would not be major factors for me.

Thanks for the comments; a real life friend of mine recommended Cryptonomicon, so I will have a look if I can find this in the library.

@night's king: I have no general problem with translations, but I usually try to read English books in the original language (as it is the only foreign one I am fluent enough in to read longish books) and many translations are not very good. The translators are paid very poorly, so they have to work fast and frequently passages are translated rather unidiomatically (so you can easily tell what the original English phrasing had been) which usually bugs me.

[Night's_King]

@night's king: I have no general problem with translations, but I usually try to read English books in the original language (as it is the only foreign one I am fluent enough in to read longish books) and many translations are not very good. The translators are paid very poorly, so they have to work fast and frequently passages are translated rather unidiomatically (so you can easily tell what the original English phrasing had been) which usually bugs me.

I think there's a great difference between older and recent translations. It's true that most recent translations are rather poor, but some translations of older books are really, really great. On the other hand: I read books that were originally written in another language than english almost always in german (since I only speak a little spanish and no other languages than german or english fluently). I tried to read Murakamis 1Q84 in english and it sucked really hard.

[Jo498]

I tend to agree that older translations are often better (and probably there is still quite a difference between translation of genre fiction and "highbrow" literature), but Stephenson would be "newer". OTOH there are also older translation with terrible mistakes or awkwardness. I remember a review of a newer German translation of Nabokov's "Pnin" (probably in the 90s) where it was pointed out that an older translation had had no clue about the american school/university system and there were clunkers like translating "high school" as "Hochschule" (i.e. college/university) and college students and (post)graduate students were confused as well.

And I had a translation of Steinbeck's "Cannery Row" which was decent overall, but the translator had rendered "Halloween" literally as "Vorabend-Allerheiligen" or something like that. As Halloween with its customs was probably almost unknown in 1950s or so Germany there was not much he could have done, but it still sounded really silly as this word does not exist.

I never checked with the original, but the German translation of "A clockwork Orange" sounded pretty good to me, with the pseudo-russian jargon of Alex and his droogs conserved very well (there was no glossary, so it was sometimes not so easy to figure out the meanings).

Finally, I remember to have argued back and forth about the translation of names in a Tolkien discussion group in the mid/late 90s. Then it came up again with the Harry Potter Books and now with ASoIaF (I never read any of the latter in German). There are arguments for both positions, but to me they sound awkward if I know the original names. Older German translations have almost all the names in Huxley's Brave New World translated which is actually rather funny.

[Wilbur]

I strongly recommend In the Beginning...Was the Command Line as a lovely appetizer to Stephenson's work that is inexpensive to obtain and can be consumed in one bite. It is a terrific and very accurate read on the relative corporate cultures at Microsoft, Apple in the 1990's, NExT and/or Be Inc., and the countercultural underground of the Linux world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Command_Line

(If you like ITBWTCL, I then recommend Accidental Empires by "Robert X. Cringely", which is another dead-on recounting of the rise of Silicon Valley.)

For the main course, Cryptonomicom. is the best starting place in my opinion. The Big U is juvenile, Zodiac is not a whole lot better, The Diamond Age is a little mannered for modern tastes (and sort of Bruce Sterling-ish), not every likes the Enuma Elish or the Epic of Gilgamesh as much as I do and thus not every reader appreciates the background of Snow Crash, and The Baroque Cycle benefits from having already read Cryptonomicon. Interface and Cobweb are nice reads but are more techno-thrillers and, sadly, too close to real life to be totally enjoyable. Anathem is not something I would have enjoyed until I had read the rest of his works.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Wilbur,

I read Anathem cold. Loved it.

Is he going to put out another book anytime soon?

[Iskaral Pust]

Snowcrash and Diamond Age are shorter reads and an easy intro, but not his best works. Cryptonomicon would be my suggested starting place because it's a very good read (albeit still with flaws). I wonder how well the humor around Lawrence Pritchard and Bobby Shaftoe translates to German, culturally more than linguistically. But that's probably more subjective than broad cultural in any case.

Anathem and the Baroque Cycle are great books. Not the easiest entry point, but I would move on to them if you enjoy Cryptonomicon. The Baroque Cycle shows the ancestors of many primary and secondary characters from Cryptonomicon.

Enjoy.

Edit - I was unimpressed by REAMDE and his latest work was a big group collaboration that I did not bother reading. I'm hoping for a return to form.

[Jo498]

If the humour is strongly dependent on cultural references, this is probably the bigger problem and would be one regardless of the language. I read most English books without major language problems (found my way through the impossible slang and swear words of Welsh's "Filth" and the idiotic "asian" of "Pygmy", although I have no inclination to go there again), but there are of course huge amounts of American (and also geeky) culture I have no clue about. Stuff about the corporate cultures of software or hardware firms in the '90ties will be lost on me, as will be almost everything regarding superhero comic books, baseball or rock or rap music...

[Reny of Storms End]

Anathem was the first Stephenson book I read as well. I absolutely loved it, and part of the reason why was I had never studied the philosophies discussed and they fascinated me. I then decided to read Snow Crash and really enjoyed that as well. I have Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and Reamde on my to read list. I haven't looked into the Baroque Cycle yet, but probably will.