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Comment by gibspaulding | Hacker News Reader

This is funny, both Fall and Diamond Age are Stephenson novels I haven't managed to get through, but of the ones I've read (and enjoyed!), the endings have been as follows:

Remade - massively stretched my suspension of disbelief.

Cryptonomicon - pretty bad.

Snow Crash - No memory, I might have blocked it out?

Anthem - maybe ok? There are two though so that's cheating.

Seven Eves - That one might have been ok, but it's possible I also blocked it out. The second half was a bit strange tbh.

To be clear, I'd still recommend all of these books. Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite pieces of fiction of all time (up there with LOTR and Three Body Problem), and Anthem is in the mix. Stephenson just sucks at endings I guess.

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> Snow Crash - No memory, I might have blocked it out?

The Snow Crash ending is IMO fine. Nothing amazing, but it wraps things up okay. It's just kind of typical action story beat-the-clock type thing, so it's not as memorable as really anything else in that book, though it is exciting.

> Stephenson just sucks at endings I guess.

Yeah, pretty much. He does beginnings and middles _so_ very well though that I never mind.

p.s. read Zodiac sometime if you haven't, it's one of his few books I noticed you didn't mention and it's a fun read.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out!

I really enjoy Stephenson novels, and Three Body Problem seemed pretty popular around here. But I really disliked the Three Body Problem (I only read the first book). I think this might be my own fault, because I had convinced myself this book was the same story as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremis_(Doctor_Who) but in the end it wasn't, and I felt the story would have been so much better if it was.

There are at least two of us. I loathed Three Body Problem with a flaming passion. There was like a decent 30 page sci-fi story surrounded by ~300 pages of incomprehensible frittering around.

Folks have told me they liked the later books better, but I’ve never felt the urge to try them.

Since 3 body was first published in 2008 and Extremis in 2017, I think you mean to say "I convinced myself that Extremis was the same story as 3 body"... maybe it's irrelevant, but precedence can matter sometimes

Yes, that is what I should have said (and it was also what I was thinking at the time, since it is not uncommon for sci-fi episodes to take plots from other stories. https://www.escapistmagazine.com/star-trek-strange-new-world... is another such example).

>> Seven Eves - That one might have been ok, but it's possible I also blocked it out. The second half was a bit strange tbh.

I found Seveneves both endings (Parts I and II being one book, Part III being another) of Seveneves to be extremely satisfying. I found the Part II ending beautiful and melancholic, and the Part III was exciting - felt like a setup for a sequel I hope gets written!

[although I would love a prequel to Part III]

Seveneves is a serious novel with many serious/tragic moments, but one funny moment that still sticks with me is in Part III. To avoid spoilers, I will describe it as when faction A is observing faction B making an approach to faction C, which faction A also hopes to contact. What faction B has improvised using available equipment as part of their approach is hilarious (and, really, totally makes sense).

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