David > Recent Status Updates

Another roadtrip with the wife, another "Stories from Among the Stars" podcast from Macmillan Audio.

Annnd now we get an info dump on CryptNet...

Ok, the thief wheel was pretty cool.

My wife loves to make fun of Mara's head monologues, lol.

I see now why Stephenson has Hackworth check out for a decade at the hands of the Drummers' 'sites: he needs him around for the coming of age of the Primer gals.

Another cassic Stephenson: "Fiona..., so self-conscious about her still linear figure, still devoid of the second derivatives that add spice to life."

The Drummers' disturbing ceremony calls to mind a similar (though less incendiary) scene in Oryx and Crake, complete with technicolor "glow sticks", lol.

So far so good, this is classic, heady Stephenson, and I'm loving it: steeped with visceral metaphor and mathy similes, a future extrapolated (sometimes farcically) to 11, and moderately paced before the spine crease, with different character groups set up to converge at some point and all tied to the titular primer, which is not so much a Macguffin as a mirror darkly.

OMG Hackworth's imagined ingredients for the bottle of McWhorter's Original Condiment.

I love how, in all earnestness and reverence, Judge Fang refers to KFC as The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel. Because of the Colonel's Confucian goatee.

Lol, I just love Neal's math-inflected prose. If you're going to skewer your target with 3 figurative spears, might as well make 'em orthogonal and go for the nerd cred: "Spear number three; now Hackworth's pounding heart sat at the origin of a bloody coordinate system plotted by Lieutenant Chang, conveniently pinned and exposed for thorough examination."

To my dear imaginary followers: may your holiday gifts be wrapped in freshly compiled "thick, glossy mediatronic paper bearing animated Christmas scenes: Santa sliding down the chimney, the ballistic reindeer, the three Zoroastrian sovereigns dismounting from their dromedaries in front of the stable."

Didn't get in as much Thanksgiving reading as I wanted, lol.

What a word: gallimaufry!!

Starts off almost exactly like Snow Crash with a visceral first page, and I'm all in.

Heck yeah, JollyBaby!!

Lol, "blorp".

“This is the part that’s my job.” Heck yeah!!

OMG this construct. "Aylen did not make it clear that she didn’t like the fact that I was invited. It would have been easier if she had, because then I would have known where I stood, and if I should be an asshole or not."

Murderbot:scifi::DS9:TNG --> 'Pin-Lee had promised, “Don’t worry, I’ll preserve your right to wander off like an asshole anytime you like.”) (I said, “It takes one to know one.”) (Mensah said, “People, please. I’m scheduled to mediate arguments between teenagers on my next commcall home and I need all my patience for that.”)'

Did I mention this is daaaark? The way the story is told thru both pictures and two narrators/storylines is fantastic.

Chap 7 is just as good. Wells is a master of combat scenes, and what she does with Murderbot here, splitting software from hardware, is just brilliant.

Dammmn, chapter 6 was intense. Murderbot's 1st person POV really narrows the depth of field here. Wells is a master.

Lol: "Her brow was furrowed. 'Did you tell them I sent you?'
'No, I impersonated my client. My imaginary client. That I impersonated.' I was caught in a loop for a second there."