Status
Available
Call number
Series
Collection
Publication
New York, NY : William Morrow, [2019]
Description
"In his youth, Richard "Dodge" Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia. One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead and put on life support, leaving his stunned family and close friends with difficult decisions. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Legally bound to follow the directive despite their misgivings, Dodge's family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived. In the coming years, technology allows Dodge's brain to be turned back on. It is an achievement that is nothing less than the disruption of death itself. An eternal afterlife--the Bitworld--is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem... Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pure, unadulterated fun: a grand drama of analog and digital, man and machine, angels and demons, gods and followers, the finite and the eternal. In this exhilarating epic, Neal Stephenson raises profound existential questions and touches on the revolutionary breakthroughs that are transforming our future. Combining the technological, philosophical, and spiritual in one grand myth, he delivers a mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age."--provided by publisher.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member jsburbidge
The dust jacket notes for Fall position it as a sequel to Reamde, and, indeed, for the first fourteenth or so of the book that's just what it is, as the initial part of what is covered on the jacket blurb is worked through. But then, on page 69, the name Waterhouse pops up, and then
A reader who had read only Reamde wouldn't be too adrift, although they'd be somewhat puzzled by Enoch Root, and wouldn't get some of the bits of humour regarding his references to his background.
Root is the only character directly linking Cryptonomicon and Fall. Early on, he provides a context-setting statement for the whole arc from the Baroque Cycle to Fall:
"I would say that the ability of people to agree on matters of fact not immediately visible - states of affairs removed from them in place and time - ramped up from a baseline of approximately zero to a pretty high level around the time of the scientific revolution and all that, and stayed there and became more globally distributed up through the Cronkite era, and then dropped to zero incredibly quickly when the Internet came along."
The extended Baroque Cycle was an optimistic work, a chronicle of a rising arc from a pre-Newtonian world to a bright-side view of the dot-com boom: the key texts being Daniel Waterhouse's metaphor of the understanding of the world as a ship passing in reverse time order from the aftermath of a dorm to a clear sunny day, and Avi's / Goto Dengo's resolution to eradicate the possibility of abuses of human rights of the type associated with World War II.
Snow Crash and its successor, The Diamond Age, present a fragmented world of distributed micro-states which feels like some sort of at least potential improvement over the old nation-states. The "real world" of this book is very different: the fragmentation in Ameristan is a set of steps backwards, an amplification of today's fake news into a world where people can believe that a thriving town a few miles away had been obliterated in a nuclear explosion twelve years before without ever going to check on it.
It can be a bit of a shock to remember that when Cryptonomicon was published Clinton was still President of the United States and the Red State / Blue State meme popularised by David Brooks' "One Nation, Slightly Divisible" had not yet come into existence. Whatever continuation into the future Stephenson might have been contemplating for that continuity at that time it would assuredly not have been this one, along this particular axis.
The second obvious major theme, the habitation of virtual reality, has been a continuous interest of Stephenson's since Snow Crash with its metaverse. This picks up and plays with alternative models of uploading minds.
A third ongoing concern of Stephenson's, less obvious in previous books, is the coordination of religion (or at least mysteries unmappable by science, if we want to rope in the Philosopher's Stone) and science. Enoch Root raises the question just by being there, and the developing history of the simulation inside the book picks up on and juggles elements of both Hellenic and Hebraic mythologies.
Reamde was slightly atypical Stephenson - more a pure technothriller - and there's elements of that sort of storytelling here as well, especially as we get to the latter part of the book. Overall, though, it's classic Stephenson, full of ideas and digressive detail.
It even has an ending, or pair of endings, which tidy up some loose ends and bring us, in a way, pleasingly back to the beginning.
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"Waterhouse-Shaftoe", which tells an attentive reader that this is Cryptonomicon territory. About a chapter later this is confirmed with a museum which implies that Randy got quite a lot of information out of Enoch Root regarding the past once they all got back to safety.A reader who had read only Reamde wouldn't be too adrift, although they'd be somewhat puzzled by Enoch Root, and wouldn't get some of the bits of humour regarding his references to his background.
Root is the only character directly linking Cryptonomicon and Fall. Early on, he provides a context-setting statement for the whole arc from the Baroque Cycle to Fall:
"I would say that the ability of people to agree on matters of fact not immediately visible - states of affairs removed from them in place and time - ramped up from a baseline of approximately zero to a pretty high level around the time of the scientific revolution and all that, and stayed there and became more globally distributed up through the Cronkite era, and then dropped to zero incredibly quickly when the Internet came along."
The extended Baroque Cycle was an optimistic work, a chronicle of a rising arc from a pre-Newtonian world to a bright-side view of the dot-com boom: the key texts being Daniel Waterhouse's metaphor of the understanding of the world as a ship passing in reverse time order from the aftermath of a dorm to a clear sunny day, and Avi's / Goto Dengo's resolution to eradicate the possibility of abuses of human rights of the type associated with World War II.
Snow Crash and its successor, The Diamond Age, present a fragmented world of distributed micro-states which feels like some sort of at least potential improvement over the old nation-states. The "real world" of this book is very different: the fragmentation in Ameristan is a set of steps backwards, an amplification of today's fake news into a world where people can believe that a thriving town a few miles away had been obliterated in a nuclear explosion twelve years before without ever going to check on it.
It can be a bit of a shock to remember that when Cryptonomicon was published Clinton was still President of the United States and the Red State / Blue State meme popularised by David Brooks' "One Nation, Slightly Divisible" had not yet come into existence. Whatever continuation into the future Stephenson might have been contemplating for that continuity at that time it would assuredly not have been this one, along this particular axis.
The second obvious major theme, the habitation of virtual reality, has been a continuous interest of Stephenson's since Snow Crash with its metaverse. This picks up and plays with alternative models of uploading minds.
A third ongoing concern of Stephenson's, less obvious in previous books, is the coordination of religion (or at least mysteries unmappable by science, if we want to rope in the Philosopher's Stone) and science. Enoch Root raises the question just by being there, and the developing history of the simulation inside the book picks up on and juggles elements of both Hellenic and Hebraic mythologies.
Reamde was slightly atypical Stephenson - more a pure technothriller - and there's elements of that sort of storytelling here as well, especially as we get to the latter part of the book. Overall, though, it's classic Stephenson, full of ideas and digressive detail.
It even has an ending, or pair of endings, which tidy up some loose ends and bring us, in a way, pleasingly back to the beginning.
Show Less
LibraryThing member dbsovereign
I usually adore Stephenson and, so far, I am liking this one okay, but am getting a bit bogged down in the intricacies of the "data structures" and all the characters gathered there...[in progress]
LibraryThing member mbmackay
Another B I G book from Neal Stephenson. I'm a fan of his, and I enjoyed this book, but think it could have benefitted from a shortening of the Quest part towards the end.
As a whole, it is Sci-Fi meets Lord of the Rings with biblical themes and language thrown in. The start is brilliant. The
So, well worth reading, but no cigar.
As a whole, it is Sci-Fi meets Lord of the Rings with biblical themes and language thrown in. The start is brilliant. The
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section on Ameristan is comic genius (but sadly too true). The sci fi of brain scanning and later rebooting is good sci fi - believable enough for fiction. The large section on life of the rebooted "souls" is thought provoking - but too long for me.So, well worth reading, but no cigar.
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LibraryThing member themulhern
The most dystopian thing Stephenson has ever written. Something only Stephenson could have written these days; so long, and funny in parts, and smart. Stephenson's take on our internet and the world of delusion it has created is bleak; he's come a long way from the tech-happy Stephenson of, e.g.,
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Zodiac. Show Less
LibraryThing member sleahey
Stephenson's new novel is a monumental work of science fiction that morphs into fantasy and back to science fiction. At the beginning, which takes place in a not too distant future, Dodge, a wealthy guy who has been successful developing computer gaming software, is on his way to a medical
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procedure. He dies that day, and his will stipulates that he must undergo a cryogenic process, or whatever the most advanced technology would be to preserve him. We are introduced to the most important people in his life as they wrestle with how to best satisfy his wishes. The upshot is doing a scan to digitize his brain. As this process becomes fine-tuned, it becomes increasingly common, with the result that a virtual world develops inhabited by the beings who have been digitized. Chapters then alternate between the people Dodge has left behind and the new world that has evolved. As the novel progresses, the new world dominates and takes on the feel of a highly developed fantasy world, with its own communities and characters and conflicts and magic. For this reader, the narrative became bogged down in the extensive world-building with its confusing geographic details. I was eager for more of the "meatspace" plot, and found that it was tempting to skip the lengthy descriptions. Show Less
LibraryThing member Mithril
Excellently blows the mind as usual. A few points where the pacing slows for mood reasons but still.
LibraryThing member felius
How do Dyson spheres happen? Stephenson gives himself an excuse to write epic fantasy, with a story that interleaves chapters of near future sci-fi with descriptions of the exploits of amnesiac simulated brains and artificial intelligences inside a planetary-scale MMO.
LibraryThing member v12345
I don't review books, heck I'm too lazy even to add them to my LybraryThing usually (well, not lazy, optimizing, I could read for all that time). I was looking forward to this; I read mostly everything by NS, yes even The Baroque Cycle (and it was GREAT!), I'm plowing through "The Foreworld Saga";
But this wasn't disappointing, was more like a complete joke, like somebody had a file that was some obscure fantasy piece and somehow got printed instead of the one we were expecting. I'm not sure what I was expecting, probably something more like Greg Egan or Peter F. Hamilton, something that while not being "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" would give you one or two things to think about. But nothing. NOTHING. Took me about one third to one half of the book to realize I'm not getting anything (still finished it grudgingly just to make sure I didn't miss anything, sadly there was nothing to miss).
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anyway I was getting a kick only from thinking that I'll be reading his new book ever since it was announced!But this wasn't disappointing, was more like a complete joke, like somebody had a file that was some obscure fantasy piece and somehow got printed instead of the one we were expecting. I'm not sure what I was expecting, probably something more like Greg Egan or Peter F. Hamilton, something that while not being "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" would give you one or two things to think about. But nothing. NOTHING. Took me about one third to one half of the book to realize I'm not getting anything (still finished it grudgingly just to make sure I didn't miss anything, sadly there was nothing to miss).
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LibraryThing member bookboy804
A by turns fascinating, exasperating, boring GrecoNorseJudeoChristian fantasy, some sort of mishmash-up of Hesiod, the Eddas, Milton, Tolkien and Martin, embedded in a much more interesting near future science fiction novel about developments in computing, robotics, the doings of Tech lords and
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such. Had to plow through this one; not sure it was worth it. Show Less
LibraryThing member quondame
883 pages. Word processing has a lot to answer for. This is not one story but several. Dodge's last morning. An SF story of copying and rebooting minds, Dodge's being the first, in the cloud as spearheaded by his niece Sophia and his friend, and executor Corvallis which includes a sort of
Don't worry about spoilers up there, there's lots of other stuff. But while it is as easy to read and smoothly paced as almost all of Neal Stephenson's writing, it is facile surface stuff. Really, the adversaries are kind of six-of-one blah blah. Hierarchies are really all that's on offer. Who would pay to be a beedle? Who wouldn't have their estate sue if they were instantiated as one?
Also, the orientation is so completely US & Western Europe in spite of Corvallis's Asian ancestry and Zulu&Sophia's Eritrean origins. Not even a nod to Russian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, or Southeast Asian money, which would very likely not have gone into Dodge's after world, but it's as if these whole parts of the world are not worth mentioning.
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post-data-apocalyptic road trip through Ameristan. Then there is the creation story and the story of the fall, semi-inverted and interleaved with the original SF narrative. Then we get to watch as new Adam and Eve meet a charming worm and have to face the consequences. Then, with a few "meatspace" interludes we are off on a classic Quest with the repulsively charming Corvallis/Corvus.Don't worry about spoilers up there, there's lots of other stuff. But while it is as easy to read and smoothly paced as almost all of Neal Stephenson's writing, it is facile surface stuff. Really, the adversaries are kind of six-of-one blah blah. Hierarchies are really all that's on offer. Who would pay to be a beedle? Who wouldn't have their estate sue if they were instantiated as one?
Also, the orientation is so completely US & Western Europe in spite of Corvallis's Asian ancestry and Zulu&Sophia's Eritrean origins. Not even a nod to Russian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, or Southeast Asian money, which would very likely not have gone into Dodge's after world, but it's as if these whole parts of the world are not worth mentioning.
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LibraryThing member Guide2
Some good chapters (mostly in the real world, i.e. the roadtrip), but overall way too long. The whole virtual part could have been reduced greatly. I also feel that there's not really any point to that world...
I finished the book hoping for some interesting reveal or new idea, but it was very
I finished the book hoping for some interesting reveal or new idea, but it was very
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underwhelming overall. Show Less
LibraryThing member fpagan
This latest Stephenson meganovel (883 pages) is somewhat of a sequel to _Reamde_, one of his earlier delights, with several of the characters carrying over. The new book explores the extent to which computational simulation of a connectome obtained from microscopic scanning of a dead-but-preserved
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human brain might truly constitute an upload of the mind once hosted by that brain. This good, hard-SF framework justifies the book's very extensive fantasy-like (sometimes videogame-like) segments, but the fact remains that works of fantasy are just not my cup of tea. Nor could I be anything but horrified by the "Ameristan" segment depicting an extreme but all-too-plausible guns-and-religion derangement of rural society in the not-so-distant future. So the book is the first one by Stephenson (my fifth) that provided me with something less than a top-notch reading experience. Show Less
LibraryThing member g33kgrrl
Hilariously, while reading this I thought "this reminds me of... what's that book? Diamond Age! Oh right, he wrote it too."
It's good. Reamde's one of my least favorite Stephenson's so it took me a while to connect them, but I enjoyed this more. I'm going to be pondering this Enoch Root revelation
Here is my professional complaint:
"It was a flat wallet that she slung over her shoulder on a thin strap. It was big enough to carry ID, tampons, pens, a miniature multitool, a spare house key, and an improvised rosary of electronic fobs and dongles and mini-flashlights."
I find it both a failure of knowledge and imagination to think that in this far future tampons are still both necessary and our best option. Come on. In 2019 we have contraception methods that produce amenorrhea and better technology for collecting menstrual blood than tampons. In a world of self-driving cars, people are still going to be shoving uncomfortable wads of cotton up their vaginas? I bet Sophie would at least have a menstrual cup.
It's good. Reamde's one of my least favorite Stephenson's so it took me a while to connect them, but I enjoyed this more. I'm going to be pondering this Enoch Root revelation
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for a while.Here is my professional complaint:
"It was a flat wallet that she slung over her shoulder on a thin strap. It was big enough to carry ID, tampons, pens, a miniature multitool, a spare house key, and an improvised rosary of electronic fobs and dongles and mini-flashlights."
I find it both a failure of knowledge and imagination to think that in this far future tampons are still both necessary and our best option. Come on. In 2019 we have contraception methods that produce amenorrhea and better technology for collecting menstrual blood than tampons. In a world of self-driving cars, people are still going to be shoving uncomfortable wads of cotton up their vaginas? I bet Sophie would at least have a menstrual cup.
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LibraryThing member adzebill
I'm increasingly convinced that Neal Stephenson desperately needs a ruthless editor, like Thomas Wolfe did. You can with little harm skip hundreds of pages of this. Like Anathem. Even in The Diamond Age you can see the beginnings of the bloat. Nice questions, good SF settings, interesting
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resolution; it just could have been half the length. Show Less
LibraryThing member cad_lib
At furst compelling. Excellent thoughts on the current situation with internet/social media-fueled tribalism. But the alternate narative, of uploading brain patterns (souls) to a computer-based environment proved to be a flaky, bad, mishmash of religous thought and fantasy novel.
LibraryThing member nmele
Neal Stephenson is one of the most engaging writers I know, and also one of the most idiosyncratic. Fall is simultaneously an engrossing story and an often frustrating read. I've read criticisms that this novel is a rip off of Milton, and I can see how one might come to that conclusion, but there
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is more going on here despite characters named Adam and Eve, El, and Sophia. Stephenson is using mashups of different religious traditions (consider the Raven character and the Pantheon) to reflect on the nature of reality, the nature of death, the question of alternate universes. Ultimately, I called this science fiction because the enabling premises are tropes of that stream of fiction, but this novel is unclassifiable in genre terms. A very worthwhile way to pass the time until it's time to go out into the word again. Show Less
LibraryThing member capewood
2021 book #26. Dodge, make a fortune designing an on-line RPG. After he dies, his brain is scanned and uploaded to a quantum computer where he basically designs game to live in. The IRL parts were OK, but the digital world was dull. Sorry I wasted my time on this 900-page book.
LibraryThing member farrhon
conveniently ignores death
LibraryThing member Phrim
With Fall, Stephenson explores the possibility of reincarnating the recently deceased in a digital afterlife, using the characters he created in his previous novel REAMDE. The creation of this afterlife is done rather haphazardly, with its denizens maintaining their personalities but having no
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memory of their former life, and the world itself having literally no form. The first denizen of the afterlife, Dodge, happened to be a MMO computer game creator in his life, and creates the world's form. As the book proceeds, it becomes less and less about the real-world implications of there existing a digital afterlife, and more about the goings-on in the afterlife--mainly a power struggle between Dodge and the project's main funder El, in what turns out to be a swords-and-sorcery-type fantasy environment. The book culminates in a quest to overthrow the usurper El by the characters who have been slowly dying and being added to the afterlife world. I was a bit disappointed by this book, as the society implications of the afterlife are fascinating but largely ignored, and instead we get a book that focuses more on how the different characters from early in the book manifest themselves in the fantasy afterlife. Show Less
LibraryThing member jercox
Basically a fantasy novel embedded in a science fiction / ideas story. And Stephenson is always a good story teller with interesting ideas.
But not the best story in a lot of ways. Overlapping characters and world from Reamde, moving in a completely different direction, and it struggles to be
My response to the ideas in his books has often been - interesting, I should think about that further and more deeply. This time it felt much more like unlikely and vaguely incredible projections for the singularity / technological afterlife. Less worth thinking about than normal.
Also -he retells essentially a Biblical creation story, with twists (starting with a very limited creator). And he does so VERY slowly. Some of this lack of progress makes the book feel like it should be much shorter.
But not the best story in a lot of ways. Overlapping characters and world from Reamde, moving in a completely different direction, and it struggles to be
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coherent and make sense in many ways.My response to the ideas in his books has often been - interesting, I should think about that further and more deeply. This time it felt much more like unlikely and vaguely incredible projections for the singularity / technological afterlife. Less worth thinking about than normal.
Also -he retells essentially a Biblical creation story, with twists (starting with a very limited creator). And he does so VERY slowly. Some of this lack of progress makes the book feel like it should be much shorter.
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LibraryThing member Jean_Roberts
This one was tough to rate. I enjoy sciemce fiction. I'm not so much in love with fantasy. Still, I was intrigued enough to wade through the almost 1000 pages of this doorstopper.
I liked the meat-space portions of the book. While not exactly a sequel to Reamde which I loved, several of the
I liked the meat-space portions of the book. While not exactly a sequel to Reamde which I loved, several of the
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characters play important roles in Fall or Dodge in Hell. Those sections were worth a solid 4 stars. My feelings on the bit-space sections were mixed. I felt my attention wandering at times and believe that 200 or more pages of the Tolkien-like quest could easily been cut. Show Less
LibraryThing member JBD1
Absolutely sucked me in, this one ... and then it seemed to devolve into nonsense and by the end I just wanted it to be over. I've said this before about Stephenson's works but I really wish that someone would be rather more ruthless with the editing pencil.
LibraryThing member mainrun
Not a great way to start 2022. Neil Stephenson used to be a favorite of mine. However, I was not able to finish Quicksilver, and also this one. I think I just do not have the intelligence. Oh well. I decided to stop reading about half way through, and also remove Stephenson from my favorites
1,038 members; 3.41 average rating; 2/21/2022
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list.1,038 members; 3.41 average rating; 2/21/2022
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LibraryThing member DougBaker
Good concepts but way over written and large sections are boring and tedious. There is a good novel in here somewhere.
LibraryThing member martialalex92
His books tend towards long but there's usually more of a payoff than in this one so it ends up just feeling like a slog. Would have been a more compelling book had it been told in reverse - starting from the fantastical epic and working backwards to the sci-fi origin. The ending you get instead
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just doesn't feel like it matters in the grand scheme of things Show Less
Awards
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Fiction — 2019)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Science Fiction and Fantasy — 2019)
Language
Original publication date
2019-06-04
ISBN
9780062458728