Sometimes you just want to have fun with a good book. Here’s a ranking of the books of Neal Stephenson by how much fun I had reading them. This page will be incomplete until I finish adding a short description of what makes each book fun as I finish reading and ranking each book… Currently, we have a description for each book reviewed to date: Reamde, Fall, or Dodge in Hell.
- Reamde: A Novel The story in this novel could happen today and every plot twist amplifies the intensity! From the casual family reunion on an Iowa farm to the epic rolling battle across the mountain ridges of British Columbia and Idaho, Stephenson sets up a cast of colorful Russian gangsters, Chinese Hackers, spies, computer gamers, a terrorist cell, and random people dragged into this vortex. A satisfying roller-coaster of action.
- The Baroque Cycle
- The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer
- Cryptonomicon
- Snow Crash
- The Cobweb (with J. Fredrick George)
- Ananthem
- Zodiac
- Interface (with J. Fredrick George)
- SevenEves
- Fall, or Dodge in Hell: a Novel
The sequel to the joyous Reamde, The Fall studies a possible future of death and how the internet could become the end of civilization as we know it. While much more mind-bending and meaningful, the tone and the characters are so weighted down by grief that reading the book feels more like work than fun.
Awaiting Ranking (ie: unread):
- Atmosphæra Incognita
- The Big U
- The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.: A Novel (with Nicole Galland)
- In the Beginning…was the Command Line (non-fiction)
- Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing (non-fiction)
Not Included in the list are several team projects that include Neal Stephenson. These projects are still fun, but Stephenson’s specific style of writing and story structure is not strongly felt in these projects.
- The Mongaliad (with Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland, Cooper Moo, Mark Teppo) – This is a side project with a group of other authors. This series is more of a pseudo-historical fantasy series set during the Mongol Empires’ attack on Eastern Europe. While I greatly enjoyed these books, Stephenson’s impact is less pronounced.
- Cimarronin: The Complete Graphic Novel (with Mark Teppo, Charles C. Mann, Ellis Amdur, Dean Kotz, Robert Sammelin) – A comic graphic novel of a ronin samurai convinced by a rogue Jesuit priest to help smuggle a Chinese princess to seventeenth-century Mexico… Yeah, its as weird as it sounds. Still good though.