Aside from Project Hail Mary which I assume every /c/sciencefiction subscriber is going to read what have you been reading or plan to read?
Here is last months post. What are you Reading? (August 2023)
Snowcrash: pleasantly surprised by the quality of the world building, which I love.
Hugely disappointed by The Diamond Age after Snow Crash. It really lost the plot.
Had the same feeling reading Snow Crash directly after Zodiac. Found that I need to read sth different between his books to be able to switch tracks in his world building.
Admittedly, Diamond Age is less fast paced than Snow Crash, with more parallel development and longer threads, which makes it difficult to keep track. But I love it.
I have enjoyed all of his works. The Baroque Cycle took me a few tries to get into before I stuck it out; great read but man is it long and dry at times. Anathem was challenging because of the new lexicon he introduced.
My favorites are snowcrash, seveneves, termination shock, and cryptonomicon in roughly that order.
It’s amazing how many things he’s predicted (or noticed and predicted would become mainstream) over the years.
Bitcoin, metaverse, the importance of cryptography in modern IT, monetized streaming video, …
