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Comment by finnh | Hacker News Reader

I suspect Neal Stephenson has stopped composing on paper, given the precipitous decline in quality since Seveneves (or thereabouts; opinions may vary).

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I think "Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell" was still pretty good. [0] I haven't been able to finish Termination Shock though. Too much "big rich guy will come save us" in the early parts for me.

[0] Though maybe that's just the hilarity of finally finding out who/what Enoch Root is after 4 books and many thousands of pages.

Yes, I thought 'Fall' was okay, and definitely better than the second half of Seveneves. I also liked the way the Enoch Root conundrum was solved, although I'm not sure 'hilarity' is the term I'd use.

His real turkey, to me, was The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O [0], although he wasn't the sole author.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_D.O.D.O.

I think DODO really suffered with Neal's style of not explaining things to the reader that works well in things like Anathem but less well in a slightly madcap time travel story. I wonder if it would flow better on a second read where you had more info about what was going on, I remember spending a lot of time trying to figure out what was supposed to be happening and where the story was going and coming from.

For Seveneves the roughest part for me was actually the end of act 1 with all the mistakes you could see a mile off and act 2 had a lot of really fun stuff I won't mention for spoilery reasons but the adaptation of the whip and chain stuff that came up win act 1 was honestly a lot of fun for me.

> act 2 had a lot of really fun stuff I won't mention for spoilery reasons

Yes, there was some superb world building (notably the space habitats and transportation, as you suggest) in act 2 but (unfortunately) I felt that the plot didn't match it.

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