Archive for the 'neal-stephenson' Category
It’s been quiet around here. I’ve been way too busy for anything! Work, work, and more work. The silence is almost over—I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Oh, and I am living in an RV now.
I do want to say that I finally finished the last book in the Baroque Cycle, Neal Stephenson’s master work. The last book, System of the World was my favorite. It took me a few months to complete, mainly because I don’t have much time to read. It was well worth it, though. By the way, it’s not considered a trilogy even though it’s published in three volumes.
“Why Baroque? Because it is set in the Baroque, and it is baroque. Why Cycle? Because I am trying to avoid the T-word (“trilogy”). In my mind this work is something like 7 or 8 connected novels. These have been lumped together into three volumes because it is more convenient from a publishing standpoint, but they could just as well have been put all together in a single immense volume or separated into 7 or 8 separate volumes. So to slap the word “trilogy” on it would be to saddle it with a designation that is essentially bogus. Having said that, I know everyone’s going to call it a trilogy anyway.” — Neal Stephenson
If you were frustrated by either of the first two books in the series, press on and read the last book. It’s a gem. It brings all the loose ends together, and even provides strange and crazy ties to Neal’s wonderful book Cryptonomicon. If you are wondering whether it’s worth it, I would say yes enthusiastically.
I’m actually kind of sorry I finished it, since now I have to look for a new masterpiece to read. Oh well.
You might be wondering why you are here at LanceWillett.com when you tried to go to NealFanPage.com.
I decided that one less blog would be good for me, plus there just wasn’t enough content to put up on just Neal and his work (great as it is!).
So, all my old posts (and the one that Aaron did) are here on this site now, under the category “sci-fi”. This will allow me to still include my thoughts on Neal from time to time and link to interesting web content that deals with his work.
That said, make sure to change any links or bookmarks accordingly.
Thanks (and goodbye for now to NealFanPage blog).
Nealfanpage.com has officially been added to the official Neal Stephenson Fanlisting ring. If you haven’t joined yet (and I am guessing not, since there are only 6 people listed), please do so today! The listing requirements are only for your first name, email, URI, and favorite Neal Stephenson book.
One cool thing about Fanlisting is that it brings fans together who maybe did not know about each other before. This can be a highly fruitful process, and allow people to make connections and friends both online and in their home towns. For more information and examples, check out thefanlistings.org.
In case you missed it, Neal Stephenson was featured in “The magazine in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field”, Locus, last August. To read excerpts from the interview and see his picture, go to the article. The full interview was published in the August 2004 issue of Locus Magazine, available for $7.95 if you want a hard copy (see the online article for details on how to purchase).
Neal was also featured in the same magazine back in 1999, and that interview excerpt is worth a read as well.
I found the more recent interview in Locus to be particularly similar to his Slashdot interview, but that’s OK because as Neal fans we like to read anything!
Neal Stephenson Fan Blog went live November 13th, 2004 around 7:30 in the evening MST. Up until then the Neal Stephenson Fan Page created in early 2004 was located at neal.fautrever.com and served in static html with some images that I didn’t necessarily have permission to use.
This new weblog is a lot nicer since it’s published through Wordpress, and served as PHP templates that the blog’s authors can fill with whatever content they wish. It’s easier to update and since it needed to be moved to the new nealfanpage domain, a few design changes were thrown in as well.
For example, I deleted the images partly since they were borrowed anyway and also because they didn’t really serve much purpose on the site. My mantra for images on web sites has always been: “use only images that are relevent to the web site and it’s purpose.”
Soon I’ll be posting real entries about Neal Stephenson and his work, so stay tuned.
