Good News for Neal Stephenson Fans!

heck, i read 'the big u' way back when that was all he had on the shelf... ;0 i understand it's not his favorite by now, but it was a fun enough little read then.

My friend also thought it was a great example. It gave me NO information whatsoever. Perhaps it might have if he'd explained the meanings of the symbols in the equations.

In any case, I'm a little too pragmatic in some ways. So during the whole bicycle scene I found myself shouting "Fix the ##%^# bike, you moron!"

Come to think of it, this the first I've heard anyone relate that example to prime numbers. Is that what that function is for? The book never said.

Yeah, that whole section was to illustrate the concept of numbers that are relatively prime ( not prime numbers ). Two numbers are relatively prime if their greatest common divisor is 1. The concept is important in group theory and number theory and so also in cryptography ( a majorl theme of the book ). Compare Stephenson's explanation with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relatively_prime and I think that he can be forgiven

In the book ( I don't have my copy with me ), I think that he is talking about repeating patterns of numbers and their implication in decoding Enigma messages.

It's not that hard to gloss over (yada yada yada) the mathematical bits to get to the good bits (the intertwined plots).

Hey! For some of us ( maybe just me ) the math bits *are* the good bits, lol.

When I saw the title of this post I assumed it was to announce that he is coming into SL for a discussion and to give away stuff. I was looking for SnowCrash in my local library but it's always checked out! Must be a lot of SL players where I live!

I had the same thought.

In re the SciFi Channel-----is there any animal (mammal, reptile, insect, fish.....) for which they HAVEN'T made a movie starring Craig T. Nelson?

Yes, but I hear they are being saved for Matthew McConaughey.

I expect he'd be glad to get the work.....

I love Snow Crash but there is a real problem now getting a good copy of the book. The original hardcover was amazing and so was the trade paperback that used the same typesetting. The cover of those two was just superb. But the original hb now fetches over $1000.00 second hand and the pb is getting harder to find.

Apart from that, later printings of his books — the mass market pbs — are unreadable trash: badly designed, badly printed. I wouldn't want to own them.

btw does anyone know whether Snow Crash predicted SL or whether Philip Linden had read it and thought, "yes I can make that happen". Whichever is the case it was an amazingly visionary work.

I thought SL was inspired by Snow Crash.

This discussion reminded me of how I heard of the book. I read somewhere about a CEO who read the book on vacation and when he came back he called a meeting, threw the book on the table and said, "This is our mission statement."

It struck me as a very bizarre statement, but CEOs aren't paid for their intellectual wattage... they're just paid.

Still, I wondered how someone could make such a statement. I read the book and was more mistified than ever.

About a month back, a friend sat near me at a party and, in a low voice said, "I have to tell you about my latest addiction..." and he described Second Life.

I said, "Have you ever read Snow Crash? It sounds a lot like that."

Just now I was googling to see whether the CEO in question was Philip Linden, because then it would all make sense, but I couldn't find the reference.

I did find this, though:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/philip-rosedale-answers-your-second-life-questions/

Question in interview to Philip Rosedale:

"Q: Have you ever read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson? I don’t know much about Second Life but it sounds similar to the Metaverse in the fiction novel.

A: When Snow Crash came out, I was already really intent on the idea of creating a virtual world like Second Life — I had been thinking about it and doing what small experiments I could since I was in college. But Snow Crash certainly painted a compelling picture of what such a virtual world could look like in the near future, and I found that inspiring."

SL use to more closely resemble the Metaverse but there were aspects of it that just didn't work out.

*Makes note to search the boxes in her attic for her barely read copy*

Thanks for the heads up.

i loved SNOW CRASH

I started another one of his books but then it got stolen and i CAN NOT REMEMBER the title

can anyone help

it had a guy who had a gun implated into his forehead, click your teeth and it fires...

whats that book called?



and,...the diamond age, that one lost me quick.....not nearly as cool / exciting as snow crash

Heh... that was The Diamond Age actually, and was the very first part of a minor character who gets killed in the first chapter or so. His daughter is the important character.

Ummmm I'll happily remove that unwanted rubbish from your attic lil lady!

Thanks Jesse, I think that answers my question pretty well (though I must confess, I'm sceptical).

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/09/neal_stephenson_answers_o.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890

For all you Neal Stephenson fans, here's an interview with him that was posted on the Make Magazine blog. He answers some questions about his books and some other projects that he's working on.

bizzare, i read teh 1st few chapters in the store then went home and downloaded teh audio book

perhaps my audio book copy was 'not in order' and hence started me in the middle and is why i was so confused, in the audio copy the dood with the gun in the head was never there in teh 1st 3 hours i listened to

True. A lot of the Snow Crash influence was gone before my time, but when I first got here, in May of 2007, there was still a "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong", a sort of casino/freebie store/dance club modeled after the one in the book, and you could join Uncle Enzio's ("You've Got a Friend in the Family" Mafia. I actually ran into one or two avatars with the last name "Protagonist" (aside: "Hiro Protagonist" is the greatest EVER name for a protagonist, and I fell in love with Stephenson the moment I saw it.) You could even buy a replica of that badass chain gun that features so prominently in the book's later bits.

Inspired by, perhaps. It's not very much like anything in Snow Crash... it's more like The Other Plane in Vernor Vinge's "True Names". Which was remarkably prophetic... he had n00bs wearing bad bulked-out avatars and the real "wizards" wandering around as dogs and tinies and robots.

I finished reading "Anathem" last week. People who didn't like the mathy parts of other of his books aren't going to care much for "Anathem" which explains such wonders as Hilbert space, using cleverly disguising language. It's also heavy on philosophy, again using concealing "made up" language, including Plato's Theory of Forms and even, god help us, Husserl's Phenomenology. Oh, and quantum mechanics.

I'm hoping some builders much better than me are moved to build a concent, along with the giant clock.

And the Lorites totally need to exist in every conceivable universe: "Lorite: A member of an Order founded by Saunt [< Savant — Wm] Lora, who believed that all of the ideas that the human mind was capable of coming up with had already been come up with. Lorites are, therefore, historians of thought who assist other avout in their work my making them aware of others who have thought similar things in the past, and thereby preventing them from re-inventing the wheel."

Well, to be fair, the world in Snow Crash was pretty much free of technology limits. Practically all restraints were imposed by the creators or similar. While LL does impose random restraints to the SL experience, most are from current technology. When I reread it, the first thing you notice are the crowds. Yeah, like that will happen soon.

The Snow Crash metaverse would be fun to step into for a while. The RL of Snow Crash, not so much. You'd have to keep cleaning the firing pins of your M-16, and you best have three or four (pins, M-16s, either one). OTOH, it looks as if we are closer to achieving the RL lately than the SL...