Neal Stephenson - Where to start?

[Wilbur]

I am at the stage of my life where I try to concentrate my energies on really important stuff. Reading. Trips to the library or a book store are wasted effort if I get a small book. I get them by the pound now and for that Stephenson's later works fill the need admirably.

Well said.

[SerArthurHeath]

Quicksilver is where I started and it worked for me. Anathem is brutal, I'd get used to his style first, but Snow Crash or the Crypto are both great books to start from too

[DanteGabriel]

I am a huge Stephenson fan. I think I read Snow Crash in one feverish, completely enthralled weekend, staying up through the night to keep turning pages.

I'll echo those who've recommended Snow Crash and then Diamond Age to start. There is even a very small hint of connection between the two, as an elderly character in Diamond Age briefly mentions her youth as a skateboard thrasher.

There are much meatier links between Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle. The ancestors of Cryptonomicon characters are characters in Baroque. The origins of place names and institutions from Cryptonomicon show up in Baroque Cycle. It definitely hits my worldbuilding sweet spot. That's no lie about Quicksilver being a slow starter though. It's something like 400 pages before a Shaftoe even appears. I think it also helps if you have some historical knowledge about the eras involved -- scenes with William of Orange and various historical figures get a little added zing.

I have not yet read Anathem or Reamde, as I was a little fatigued with his writing style, which I felt had grown overindulgent and in need of editing. But if people liked Anathem, I'll give it a go some time.

If you become a big fan, The Big U and Zodiac are fun reads. The Big U is a complete mess, as he seemed to want to stuff as many cool ideas into it as he possibly could, but it seemed to me that the creative seeds of his following books were all contained within it. Zodiac is kind of an outlier, in that it is the least sci-fi-ish of all his books and it actually has a reasonably straightforward narrative structure with a competently managed climax and resolution -- which were problems with the rest of his oeuvre.

[3CityApache]

Zodiac is kind of an outlier, in that it is the least sci-fi-ish of all his books

Actually Reamde is not sci-fi at all, and by the way - there are probably no other two Stephenson's books that are further from each other than Anathem and Reamde. But I loved both, even if the latter is a bit too long and tends to be too predictable.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3CA,

Reamde while a thriller has some interesting science and technology concepts in it including the interconnnectedness that MMORPG games have plus using those games to launder money which I had never heard about before.

[3CityApache]

Yeah, sure, but still I wouldn't call it sci-fi-ish even, as DanteGabriel put it. Anyway, there's few writers I admire more than Neal, so I'd probably read anything he'd produce and I advise you guys doing the same thing.

[polishgenius]

So I just finished Reamde. It starts off really interesting with the game bits (I don't play MMORPGs myself but I always find it entertaining reading about the things people get up to in them) and the hacking but once all the shooting kicks off, it gets steadily more shit. By the end I really didn't care at all about 90% of what was happening.

A shame, because Snow Crash and Anathem are brilliant books and I was hoping for more along those lines. I guess I'll get on Cryptonomicon or Quicksilver next, but I think I'll take a Stephenson pause for a while as I read Anathem and re-read Snow Crash in relatively quick succession and probably need a lengthier break from his never-conventional writing style.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

His book for the Spring sounds really interesting. I've pre-ordered Seveneves.