Neal Stephenson > William Gibson

I know William Gibson has been voted Godfather of Cyberpunk by general acclimation, but fandom really needs to do a better job of spreading the word on other worthies. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, has been a heck of a lot more engaging than Neuromancer was. The only reason I can figure out is that some people have a beef with Stephenson’s endings, but I think it’s pretty clear that he’s just bored with working out the obvious endings of things. In Cryptonomicon, he describes one of his 40’s era protagonists as being bored with actually cracking codes after the impossibly-difficult math has been conquered. A descendent feels the same way - having laid a problem bare, the later Waterhouse reasons, the rest is just making license plates. I know most authors project themselves on their characters to some extent, but this is a pretty candid admission, in my opinion, of how Stephenson feels about endings.

There’s a chapter in Snow Crash, in the middle of the book, where Hiro Protagonist (yes, unfamiliar readers, that’s what he names a main character) is in a viscious, and vividly-described, battle with a cluster of murderous racists and a contingent of shoot-first Enforcers. After describing, blow by blow, how Hiro gets out into the open and onto his motorcycle, Stephenson ends the chapter with “after that, it’s just a chase scene.” And really, that’s what it would be. The meat of the book is clearly his idea that Sumerian mythology is rising again in modern times; the action serves a purpose, but it’s not the purpose of the book.

Or, look at it this way. Gibson has been known to start his books with incredibly tough-to-read chapters in order to weed out diletante readers. In an opposite maneuver, Stephenson says “you’ve read this far, you’re smart enough to know as well as I do what happens next.” The point is this - I had to come across Neal Stephenson through the random surfing of information that defines my days. Why the hell didn’t anybody tell me about this guy? And this, naturally, begs the question - who else should I be reading? I know, that’s a hugely-broad question, but the topic today is the territory mined by Gibson, Stephenson, etc… so keep it in the playing field, please.