The Mental Floss feed I run on the Around the Net page led me to discover the American writer Neal Stephenson. Apparently, he’s something of a geek cult figure and has been The New York Times‘ #1 top-selling author, so you almost certainly know about him already, in which case you can put this down to another case of old Uncle John finding out about modern novelties like biros or cell phones and stop reading. But I’m quite excited (in an entirely platonic way, you understand). You can tell: this is my first blog post in eons.

The Mental Floss article is a review by house blogger Chris Higgins (who also writes damn well) of Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, Reamde (sic). This seems well worth reading, but where the review really did it for me, was a) enumerating Stephenson’s ‘obsessions’: currency (not money, currency); technology; cultural differences; family ties; and time, geology, & geography (grouped just so), and b) linking to an old Wired article of his. If I tell you that the last book I really fell head-over-heels in love with was Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, and that the Wired article, called Mother Earth Mother Board, was 56 (no less, cub’s honour) riveting (and I mean that) pages about (get this) transcontinental cable-laying, you’ll understand that I felt stirred, as if meeting a kindred mind.

Written in 1996, the Wired article, though verging on brilliant, was decidedly outdated, for fifteen years is an eternity in the world of technology – the telecom wars were a recent occurrence if not ongoing, racks were not standard-sized, he feels it necessary to write out ‘graphical user interfaces’ in full, and a long etc. So I longed for something more contemporary, and fortunately Wikipedia led me to a Slate article called Space Stasis. I was not disappointed. Though Stephenson has evidently learned something about time-management efficiency and Space Stasis is only three pages long, it has the same qualities as Mother Earth Mother Board: it is funny, interesting, informative, immensely intelligent, has an original thesis, and the qualities of the intervening characters are skilfully and sympathetically drawn. In short, much like Bill Bryson, just a tad more geekish.

Stephenson has been writing fiction and mostly technology-related non-fiction for over twenty years, and been acclaimed to the point that it is extremely embarrassing for me to be discovering him at this late stage. Oh well. Evidently, this time, he has felt the desire to garner some serious revenue, for Reamde is an international thriller with all sorts of up-to-date attention grabbers (the hero is a tech entrepeneur, the villains are hackers or government agencies…), and a thick one (what Chris Higgins calls “1 kilopages”), destined to be stocked by every airport book stall in the world, and retailing at $35 – I’d say it should gross mega-if-not-tetramillions without counting e-book downloads and film rights* and tilt Neal Stephenson’s bank balance so far in the black he should never have to think about money again. Except as currency, an obsession being an obsession, after all.

An e-book will probably be my own choice, a reader being, precisely, third on my shopping list for this week, after groceries and a digital SLR camera. It’s a toss-up between a Kindle and a Nook at the moment, according to the advice of the ‘Configurator’ at Top-Ten Reviews – if only deciding which camera were as simple. Any recommendations on either? Do leave a comment if you have one, or if you have anything to say about Neal Stephenson or his works.

*Though there’s a YouTube video of him talking about why his books have never been filmed – basically, they’re too long.

More:
Neal Stephenson talks about his new novel, Reamde:

Neal Stephenson’s website
Buy Reamde

I’m really pleased for Terry Pratchett, not for his lost revenue, evidently, but for that kind of standing – in fact, only Neil Gaiman’s inclusion could have made me feel happier. And I was delighted to see how popular fiction is, albeit among the light-fingered literate: five of the ten are works of fiction. Even more pleasing are the absences of a) anything related with cooking, and b) anything derived from any kind of TV show.

The list, compiled by consultation with independent bookstores, is as follows:

1. London Street Atlas
by Geographers’ A-Z Map Co.

2. Ordnance Survey maps:
Exmoor Explorer Map
by Ordnance Survey.

3. The Colour of Magic
by Terry Pratchett.

4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J.K. Rowling.

5. Great Britain – a Lonely Planet Country Guide
by David Else.

6. The Lord of the Rings trilogy: 50th Anniversary Edition
by J.R.R. Tolkien.

7. Faces
by Martina Cole.

8. Secrets
by Jacqueline Wilson.

9. The Oxford English Dictionary
by Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (editors).

10. The Official Highway Code
by the Department for Transport and the Driving Standards Agency.

Found through WordOrigins.