John Gordon Ross

Technical translators get to read an awful lot of really bad writing, to the extent that we tend to enjoy good writing, even if the content isn’t particularly great: an annual report skilfully made rather than cobbled together out of clichés in order to mislead shareholders, a mission statement which is not a copy of every other mission statement in the sector in question, or a technical specification which actually explains things clearly, are rarities we almost treasure. When good writing comes together with interesting content, we find it quite sexy. And when good writing and interesting content is amusing as well, it makes our hearts leap.

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Written in 1996, the Wired article, though verging on brilliant, was decidedly outdated, for fifteen years is an eternity in the world of technology – the telecom wars were a recent occurrence if not ongoing, racks were not standard-sized, he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