Neal Stephenson’s career to this point can be split into roughly two halves: In the first half, he possessed a vibrant style of satirical SF which – while still rough around the edges – developed quickly with laser-like prose, memorable casts of characters, high octane plots, technical savvy, and vividly imagined settings. In the second half of his career, all of these things have been perfected – but Stephenson also developed a tendency towards bloat (although the quality of his prose tends to keep you engaged) and an unfortunate habit of writing books without ends (although the plots-without-resolution remain high octane right up until the very last page).

And poised right at the pinnacle between these two halves – possessing all of their strengths and none of their shortcomings – is Snow Crash, which is almost certainly Stephenson’s finest work to date.

Saying that Snow Crash is a fantastic novel – a jewel whose facets have been cut with breathtaking precision – is easy enough. Trying to explain what Snow Crash is, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult.

On this reading of Snow Crash (this is the second time I’ve read it), I found myself being strongly reminded of Philip K. Dick. It took me awhile to figure out why, but once I did it was like a lightbulb going off above my head: Snow Crash is satire.

But, more than that, Snow Crash is a satire on three completely different levels: First, and most obviously, it’s a satire of the cyberpunk genre as popularized by William Gibson during the 1980’s. Second, it’s a satire of the modern world. Third, it’s a satire of a future world.

It is this last, and most remarkable, accomplishment that reminds me so strongly of Dickian classics like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Like Dick, Stephenson not only creates a fully-realized future, he presents that future in a stylized fashion. At first glance, the result seems surreal. But a closer look reveals a reality made all the more tangible and believable as a result of the uniquely skewed point of view.

People talk about the fact that Heinlein wrote science fiction stories as if they were just fiction stories written by authors in the future. I would argue that Dick took this to the next level by writing his stories as if they were written by future authors with stylistic flair, and that Stephenson has taken this to yet another level by layering the technique.

And looking at Snow Crash through this new lens, the opening sequence of the novel – which had previously seemed to me, despite its hilarious effectiveness, to be oddly out of synch with the rest of the novel – suddenly came into sharp focus. This opening sequence is nothing more than a pizza delivery, but Stephenson presents it as a matter of life-and-death – neatly satirizing the self-important style of classical cyberpunk tales: “When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway – might want his car, or his cargo.”

But if you take a closer look, the sequence is satirizing life in the modern world as much as it is the stylings of Gibsonesque cyberpunk: “Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall, your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free, shoot the driver, take his car, file a class-action suit. The Deliverator has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes. Oh, they used to argue over times, many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners, red-faced and sweaty with their own lies, stinking of Old Spice and job-related stress, standing in their glowing yellow doorways brandishing their Seikos and waving at the clock over the kitchen sink, I swear, can’t you guys tell time?

“Didn’t happen anymore. Pizza delivery is a major industry. A managed industry. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University for four years just to learn it. And they had studied this problem. Graphed the frequency of door delivery-time disputes. Wired the early Deliverators to record, then analyze, the debating tactics, the voice-stress histograms, the distinctive grammatical structures employed by white middle-class Type A Burbclave occupants who against all logic had decided that this was the place to take their personal Custerian stand against all that was stale and deadening in their lives: they were going to lie, or delude themselves, about pizza; no, they deserved a free pizza along with their life, liberty, and pursuit of whatever, it was fucking inalienable.”

And, of course, beneath it all, Stephenson is laying down the first building blocks in the foundation of his setting.

The whole, ten-page sequence is a tour de force of talent. It is the work of a writer who has mastered his craft, and with supreme confidence proceeds to suck you into his story and his world.

And it’s just the beginning, because this superb layering of satire and world-building is just one of the most basic delights the novel has to offer.

Snow Crash also reminds me of Kenneth Hite. Hite writes a column called “Suppressed Transmissions” for Pyramid, an on-line magazine published by Steve Jackson Games. Every two weeks Hite mixes up a potent brew of Kabbalism, tarot symbolism, grail mythology, Nazi mysticism, Illuminati conspiracy, Tesla science, and a dozen other types of secret history – serving up the result as an idea mine for roleplayers everywhere.

In similar fashion, the central plot of Snow Crash hangs upon Sumerian myth cycles, comparative linguistics, memetic theory, and cyberpunk tropism. I draw a direct line from H.P. Lovecraft and Charles Forte, through Robert Anton Wilson, and end up with Stephenson and Hite.

Snow Crash is also, arguably, the moment of crystallization for the post-cyberpunk genre. It was the first massively popular work to break away from the narrow bandwidth the cyberpunk genre had possessed since Gibson first crystallized it in 1984 with Neuromancer, and demonstrated that the genre was a form which was not necessarily tied to a specific content of plot or theme. On top of that, Stephenson shed many of the technological trappings of cyberpunk that had more to do with science fantasy than science fiction, and rooted those that remained in much firmer soil. (Stephenson’s Metaverse, for example, is a believable extrapolation, whereas Gibson’s cyberspace doesn’t rise above the level of metaphorical handwaving.)

(Antecedents, of course, exist for Snow Crash’s moment of crystallization. For one example, check out my reaction to Lawrence Watt-Evans’ excellent Nightside City. Similarly, Gibson’s crystallization of the cyberpunk genre as a whole had a number of antecedents.)

And, last but not least, despite a complex setting resting upon the monomolecular cutting edge of science fiction, Snow Crash is also written as a mainstream technothriller. Stephenson never expects his readers to be familiar with the tropes of science fiction, but instead explains every extrapolation from the modern world. It is a further testament of Stephenson’s mastery that these descriptions never become tedious to the hardcore fan, instead existing as an entertaining and stylistic patter that never slow the book down. For example: “The computer is a featureless black wedge. It does not have a power cord, but there is a narrow translucent plastic tube emerging from a hatch on the rear, spiraling across the cargo pallet and the floor, and plugged into a crudely installed fiber-optics cable. The cable is carrying a lot of information back and forth between Hiro’s computer and the rest of the world. In order to transmit the same amount of information on paper, they would have to arrange for a 747 cargo freighter packed with telephone books and encyclopedias to power-dive into their unit every couple of minutes, forever.”

So what is Snow Crash? I dunno. It’s identity lies somewhere within a gestalt; it’s a masterpiece that can be discussed in facets, but never as a whole.

And it’s all bundled up in a tight little package with all of Stephenson’s remarkable gifts as a writer: Masterful and compelling plotting, a remarkably detailed world, and a cast of characters drawn with enough breadth and depth to make most authors drop their jaws with jealousy. And then there’s Stephenson’s prose, which can be relished as a main course all by itself. You can see some examples of it above, but the entire book is peppered with memorable passages and quotable lines. Every page seems to hum with a distinctive beat and rhythm, propelling you from one chapter to the next in a compulsive, addictive reading experience.

This isn’t the best SF novel of the past fifteen years. But it’s definitely in the top ten.

GRADE: A+
Neal Stephenson
Published: 1992
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0-553-56261-4
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Gardens of the Moon is the first volume in Steven Erikson’s Malazan Empire series. I was drawn to the series after hearing roughly a dozen different people heap mighty amounts of praise upon it. Although it was still shockingly unavailable in the United States , I managed to obtain the first three paperbacks from www.amazon.ca. (Tor has now acquired the rights to the series and will be releasing Gardens of the Moon sometime this summer.)

I think Gardens of the Moon can best be described as “epic fantasy with the dial cranked up to 11”: The dragons, empires, and wars are all bigger. The cast of characters is larger. The intrigues more convoluted. The elder races more alien. The magic more powerful (and its forms more mysterious). Even the world is too big for the map (and its only one of many).

And I mean all of that in the best possible way.

No, seriously, I do. Erikson has invested his world with some truly amazing depth and a truly astounding scope, and it’s perfectly delightful to behold.

For example, Erikson manages to detail a complex, interwoven set of magical systems – yet, at the same time, his magic feels magical. He manages to sidestep the trap of making magic nothing more than an alternative physics, but he also doesn’t cheat by simply drawing a curtain across its workings.

Another remarkable thing about Gardens of the Moon is the history. Its so thick that it seems to ooze right off the page. And its not just the world which has received this lavish attention: Every single character has been gifted with a rich backstory that, once it becomes apparent, gives them a life and vitality and reality all their own.

I could rave on for quite some time in this vein, because Erikson has truly created a marvelously complex and lovingly detailed world: A work of art with few equals.

Unfortunately, not everything about Gardens of the Moon is so deserving of praise. The book is, to put it bluntly, very rough around the edges. Where Erikson succeeds so brilliantly at evoking a world and creating a compelling plot, he frequently falls down when it comes to prose and (most importantly) basic storytelling. And what is perhaps most frustrating about these latter flaws is that you can see, here and there throughout the book, that he is capable of so much better.

It was nearly 150 pages before I began to have something resembling a firm grasp on what was happening. Erikson dumps you right into the middle of a complex society, history, cast of characters, and action – and then skips around like a rabid rabbit, flashing forward and backward in time, between characters, and across continents.

To be perfectly clear here: It’s not simply starting you in the middle of things which is the problem here. I don’t have any problem with starting a story in media res. But Erikson never stops. No narrative thread is held onto for longer than a couple of pages. You’re constantly flipping between the literally dozens of POV characters and are never allowed a chance to focus your attention on anything.

Adding to this problem is Erikson’s concerted effort to withhold information from one end of the book to the other: Unnamed characters do cryptic, unexplained things to other characters (who are frequently no more than a name on the page); false cliffhangers are created through selective description; motivations are often left unexplained until hundreds of pages after the fact.

Which leads to another problem: There are significant spans of the novel where characters stop doing things for any particular reason and start doing them because, well, that’s what happens next (and, besides, they need to do it so that something else can happen later on). Sometimes this is just an impression left by Erikson holding back essential information. And sometimes its justified by having gods explicitly or implicitly mucking around in the mix. But, just as frequently, the only all-powerful hand at work seems to be the author’s, fating characters to an inevitable outline.

(This is all simultaneously contrasted and highlighted rather oddly by a stretch of the book in which vast amounts of secret history comes spilling out during a casual conversation between two characters. I was left with the vague sensation of taking a walk with someone and having them casually – and for no apparent reason – describe the secret history of the Illuminati, the Masons’ involvement in the Fall of Atlantis, and the secret war between the Templars and Papist Loyalists over the Holy Grail in Victorian India. Ironically, very little of this conversation actually serves to directly illuminate the active threads of the plot.)

In the end, I was simply left with the vague feeling that – if I had known everything I knew by the end of the book at the beginning of the book – the whole work would have been a lot more effective for me.

More than anything, though, I’m left with a general feeling of inconsistency, because, like I said, there are large spans of the book where Erikson’s potential shines through unfettered by these storytelling flaws. (Most notably the last 150 pages flew by with only a couple of rough spots standing in the way.)

A couple more problems I need to throw out here before moving on:

First, Erikson cannot write poetry. Which is unfortunate, because he spreads it around pretty liberally in the books. Fortunately, the vast majority of it is found at the beginning of chapters and is easily skipped.

Second, someone hereabouts mentioned recently that Erikson has a tin ear for names, and that’s true in spades. He varies between two extremes: Names which are common words (Burn, Sorry, Whiskeyjack, Hairlock) and names which are nearly unpronounceable. Mixed inbetween the two extremes are more traditional-sounding fantasy names (Kalam, Paran) and a few names drawn from the real world (Quick Ben). The result is simply chaos, and I surely can’t see any rhyme or reason to the divisions: Whether a character is a god, a mage, a noble, or a common soldier seems to have no bearing whatsoever on the type of name they’ll possess.

Okay, I’ve now spent nearly a dozen paragraphs hashing out the problems I had with Gardens of the Moon. But take all that with a pinch of salt: The only reason that these problems stand out like sore thumbs is because they mar what would otherwise be a colossal triumph and achievement.

Erikson offers a rich world, spectacular settings, and powerful characters tied together in a plot of epic proportions and fiendish intrigue. If he ends up tripping over his feet every so often in the process, then that’s something I’m willing to forgive.

Before I bring this to an end, there’s one last thing that I want to point out: Gardens of the Moon functions as a stand-alone novel, not just the first volume in a series. The story being told here has a beginning, a middle, and an end. There are also clearly some threads which will be picked up and used later in the series, but they’re handled in a way which is entirely consistent with Gardens of the Moon having an independent existence. So even if you’re the type of person who doesn’t want to pick up an unfinished series, you might want to give Gardens of the Moon a try.

GRADE: B+
Steven Erikson
Published: 2003
Publishers: Tor
Cover Price: $18.00
ISBN: 0-765-31001-5

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Diaspora is science fiction at its purest.

The era of the transhuman has begun: Entire communities of AIs are born, live, and die entirely within artificial environments. Robots of born of human sentience mine the asteroids and prepare for the first interstellar flights. The few remaining enclaves of ‘fleshers’ are dominated by the genetically enhanced. The very definition of what it means to be human is rapidly expanding, the entire species is heading in a thousand directions are once.

This novel begins at the end of the 30^th century, with the birth of an AI in the Konishi polis. As the main character comes of age, we see his life journey mirrored by the species as a whole. Through vis biography, the story of humanity’s future unfolds across a tapestry of millennia: A bold, startlingly vivid vision of our first, tentative steps into the greater universe beyond the cradle of our pale sun.

From the very first page, as he describes the AI’s birth of consciousness with lavish insight, Egan dazzles you with his ideas. Here, with extraordinary detail, you will read of scientific revolutions, technological marvels, titanic journeys, startlingly alien life, unimaginable tragedies, cyclopean art, and vast accomplishments. Egan takes a canvas of mammoth proportions and paints upon it epic strokes.

And yet, despite this astronomic and captivating backdrop, Egan weaves a human drama out of the seemingly inhuman. Where most authors would be satisfied with telling a Story About the Scenery, Egan makes it clear that the setting is just one of the dimensions to his novel: Characters, events, and science are all perfectly balanced, and the result is a seamless whole. Everything seems to fall out of Egan’s prose with perfect, ethereal grace – unconstructed and unconstrained.

A closing thought: I picked up Diaspora on the recommendation of Elf M. Sternberg, who said: “Everything since then has been a commentary.” Well, that’s not quite true, but I’m amazed at the degree to which it can be said. In a stunningly slim volume, Egan has created a gestalt of the genre and pushed its frontiers in a dozen different directions.

For a long time now there have only been nine books on my Top 10 list of science fiction novels because I could never quite put my finger on a book which seemed to fully deserve a place with the other titles on the list. With Diaspora, I’ve found the tenth book.

GRADE: A+
Greg Egan
Published: 1998
Publisher: HarperPrism/Eon
Cover Price: $6.99
ISBN: 0-06-105281-7

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THE TOP 10

1. The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
2. The Hour of the Dragon / Conan Series (Robert E. Howard)
3. Small Gods (Terry Pratchett)
4. A Song of Ice and Fire (George R.R. Martin) (preliminarily)
5. Deadhouse Gates (Steven Erikson)
6. Harry Potter Series (J.K. Rowling) (preliminarily)
7. Good Omens (Terry Pratchett / Neil Gaiman)
8. First Chronicles of Amber (Roger Zelazny)
9. Elric Series (Michael Moorcock)

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser Series (Fritz Leiber)
Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)
Dragonflight (Anne McCaffrey)
Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L’Engle)
Spell for Chameleon / The Source of Magic / Castle Roogna (Piers Anthony)
War for the Oaks (Emma Bull)
The Weirdstone (Alan Garner)
Kane Series (Karl Edward Wagner)

NOVELS ALSO BY…

The Silmarillion (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Discworld (several volumes) (Terry Pratchett)

One of the interesting results of putting together these lists last year was my discovery that, quite contrary to my own personal belief, I was far more deeply read in the field of science fiction than I was in the field of fantasy. (Hence the shorter list.)

In fact, you’ll notice that the Top 10 list only contains nine entries. That isn’t a typo. That’s because none of the Honorable Mentions I list seem to quite justify a position on that list. They aren’t quite in the same league. (To be fair, the science fiction list only had nine entries on it until late last year when Egan’s Diaspora finally filled the last spot.)

You may also note that several incomplete fantasy series have been preliminarily placed on the Top 10 list. Their placement is, of course, based solely on the books released to date, and this placement could certainly change based on future releases. (For example, I tentatively placed Michael Kube-McDowell’s Trigon Disunity trilogy on the Top 10 List of Science Fiction Novels based on the outstanding quality of the first two volumes, only to drop him back down to the Honorable Mentions list after a relatively weak conclusion.)

It is also notable that there is an inconsistency on how volumes within a series are handled. Why are Pratchett’s Small Gods and Erikson’s Deadhouse Gates singled out on the list, while J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire are grouped collectively? Why is Howard’s The Hour of the Dragon given particular note as part of the series of Conan stories?

Walt, would you like to field this one?

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”

Go to Top 10 List of Science Fiction Novels

THE TOP 10

1. Foundation Trilogy (Isaac Asimov)
2. Use of Weapons (Iain M. Banks)
3. Memory (Lois McMaster Bujold)
4. Lord of Light (Roger Zelazny)
5. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester)
6. Fury (Henry Kuttner / C.L. Moore)
7. A Deepness in the Sky (Vernor Vinge)
8. Cyteen (C.J. Cherryh)
9. Diaspora (Greg Egan)
10. Ender’s Game / Speaker for the Dead (Orson Scott Card)

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)
Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
I, Robot (Harlan Ellison Screenplay)
At the Mountains of Madness (H.P. Lovecraft)
Lensmen (E.E. “Doc” Smith) (Galactic Patrol thru Children of the Lens)
Contact (Carl Sagan)
The Forge of God (Greg Bear)
Door Into Summer (Robert A. Heinlein)
Gateway (Frederick Pohl)
Dragon’s Egg (Robert Forward)
The Trigon Disunity (Michael P. Kube-McDowell)

NOVELS ALSO BY…

The Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge)
The Player of Games (Iain M. Banks)
Look to Windward (Iain M. Banks)
Mutant (Henry Kuttner / C.L. Moore)
Northwest Smith (C.L. Moore)
Robot Novels (Isaac Asimov)
I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)
The End of Eternity (Isaac Asimov)
Barrayar (Lois McMaster Bujold)
Mirror Dance (Lois McMaster Bujold)
A Civil Campaign (Lois McMaster Bujold)
Shards of Honor (Lois McMaster Bujold)
Borders of Infinity (Lois McMaster Bujold)
The Demolished Man (Alfred Bester)
Downbelow Station (C.J. Cherryh)
Merchanter Novels (C.J. Cherryh)

What do all these categories mean? Well, the Top 10 list itself should be fairly self-explanatory. The Honorable Mentions are works which just barely miss the Top 10 list for one reason or another. The list of Novels Also By is a result of self-imposed rule which limits an author to a single work on the Top 10 list. The other books listed in the Novels Also By are works by authors already appearing on the other lists which, if those slightly superior works did not exist, would themselves be considered for placement on the list.

This is not, needless to say, a precise science.

The conspicuous absence from these lists, I think, is Heinlein. In general, I think that Heinlein was at his best in his early, short fiction. (“The Green Hills of Earth” is my favorite Heinlein piece.) Of the novels I’ve read, the best two are The Door Into Summer and The Puppet Masters, and even those are flawed in fairly significant ways. Stranger in a Strange Land is mush; Starship Troopers is a short story padded with political essays; and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a novella padded with political essays. (Which isn’t quite fair to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but makes for a nice line.)

Go to Top 10 Fantasy Novels