Bad Mr Stephenson
Friday, November 5th, 2004 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthFrom the Guardian online. (It took me some time to find this, as apparently 'sci fi' authors come under IT, not Books.)
Online: Do you have any idea of what your next novel will be about? Have you started it? Will it be connected to The Baroque Cycle in the same way that there are links between those novels and Cryptonomicon?
NS: No, no, and no. I have not settled on what my next project will be. Some day I might write more in the vein of Baroque Cycle/Cryptonomicon, but at the moment I need to get away from these characters and these themes and---to paraphrase Monty Python---do something completely different for some years.
On Writing and Programming:
"The more prosaic side of the job---the "data set management" and so on---is just a kind of busy work that I do in my spare time while waiting for the Muse to swoop down and thrust her tongue in my ear. [T: thanks for that image, I didn't really want it in my brain!]
"I have said elsewhere that there are similarities between what computer programmers do and what novelists do. In both cases one is trying to build a great big system of words. It is highly structured. The structure has many layers of hierarchy. And there are many links that bind different parts of the structure together, and those links must all be sorted out. It all amounts to a quite elaborate thing. But one can't work directly on the structure itself; the only way actually to build it is by writing one letter at a time. Sort of like trying to construct a city by placing grains of sand, one at a time, with tweezers. All of this applies equally to novelists and computer programmers. Obviously the content and the intent are quite different between those two groups, but I believe that they do have to cultivate similar habits of work."
On Pleasing One's Readers:
Online: The books in The Baroque Cycle are incredibly detailed when it comes to conjuring up the minutiae of the period. Do you worry that it's overwhelming for some readers?
NS: Anything one might put into a book will be objectionable to "some readers" and so if one were to take the approach of not writing anything that some readers might not like, one would never write a single word. Of course, some readers would object to that too.
Yes, but is itartSF?
"People who are in the habit of reading SF will pick up The Baroque Cycle novels and, I suspect, recognize them as having coming out of an SF sensibility. People who aren't will probably find them to be historical novels, albeit with some quirks and twists they might not have seen before."
Online: Do you have any idea of what your next novel will be about? Have you started it? Will it be connected to The Baroque Cycle in the same way that there are links between those novels and Cryptonomicon?
NS: No, no, and no. I have not settled on what my next project will be. Some day I might write more in the vein of Baroque Cycle/Cryptonomicon, but at the moment I need to get away from these characters and these themes and---to paraphrase Monty Python---do something completely different for some years.
On Writing and Programming:
"The more prosaic side of the job---the "data set management" and so on---is just a kind of busy work that I do in my spare time while waiting for the Muse to swoop down and thrust her tongue in my ear. [T: thanks for that image, I didn't really want it in my brain!]
"I have said elsewhere that there are similarities between what computer programmers do and what novelists do. In both cases one is trying to build a great big system of words. It is highly structured. The structure has many layers of hierarchy. And there are many links that bind different parts of the structure together, and those links must all be sorted out. It all amounts to a quite elaborate thing. But one can't work directly on the structure itself; the only way actually to build it is by writing one letter at a time. Sort of like trying to construct a city by placing grains of sand, one at a time, with tweezers. All of this applies equally to novelists and computer programmers. Obviously the content and the intent are quite different between those two groups, but I believe that they do have to cultivate similar habits of work."
On Pleasing One's Readers:
Online: The books in The Baroque Cycle are incredibly detailed when it comes to conjuring up the minutiae of the period. Do you worry that it's overwhelming for some readers?
NS: Anything one might put into a book will be objectionable to "some readers" and so if one were to take the approach of not writing anything that some readers might not like, one would never write a single word. Of course, some readers would object to that too.
Yes, but is it
"People who are in the habit of reading SF will pick up The Baroque Cycle novels and, I suspect, recognize them as having coming out of an SF sensibility. People who aren't will probably find them to be historical novels, albeit with some quirks and twists they might not have seen before."
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no subject
Date: Friday, November 5th, 2004 08:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Friday, November 5th, 2004 08:32 am (UTC)(Shall keep adding fun snippets to this post: it's an excellent interview!)
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Date: Monday, November 8th, 2004 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, November 8th, 2004 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, November 8th, 2004 05:05 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: Monday, November 8th, 2004 05:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, November 8th, 2004 05:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, November 8th, 2004 06:02 am (UTC)I think it's a super book -- though, actually, I could see how someone might think otherwise if they had given up in the first 250 pages ...
no subject
Date: Monday, November 8th, 2004 06:59 am (UTC)I loved Cryptonomicon, hated & loathed Quicksilver, & haven't dared read the other 2 for fear of braining the nearest available person with whichever volume I happened to be reading if yet another hideously irritating character appears.
::tempts fate::
Date: Monday, November 8th, 2004 07:09 am (UTC)Re: ::tempts fate::
Date: Tuesday, November 9th, 2004 01:01 am (UTC)I hated half-cock Shaftoe, his brother, and, most of all, that bloody virgin courtesan. I was distinctly unimpressed that the exploits of those 3 characters took up fully half of the book.
The other half was fine.
Re: ::tempts fate::
Date: Tuesday, November 9th, 2004 06:16 am (UTC)A lot of people seem to founder in book one, and book two is more swashbuckling -- though clearly not more likeable, for you.