The Duellist: Neal Stephenson Interview
The Stephenson voice is not quite the Stephenson voice. Not the Stephenson voice from books like Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon, anyway – and perhaps I was stupid to think it would be. In the novels, I love Stephenson’s glibness, his knockabout nature, his choppiness when dealing with the intricate ideas he bases his narratives around. He’s breezy in the face of vast forces, and the worlds he creates stutter outwards in a weirdly panoramic sort of present tense. There’s some Gibson in there, but there’s also a touch of Pynchon, too. And there’s quite a bit that’s just Stephenson, of course: happy with mineral complexity when others are menaced by it, able to see the chaos of difficult systems raging behind even simple things – and to spot the order lurking beyond the chaos, too. Read more…
