The used to say that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. I guess another definition is a libertarian who has seen 9-11.

It's interesting when you travel in the West. You notice that there really doesn't seem to be a need for law enforcement, people seem relatively affluent, the towns are clean, roads in decent repair, etc, and then you start to meet the people. What is striking is what a friend of mine who dropped everything and bought a radio station in Grand Junction, Colorado told me 'The planet is tilted and every loose nut seems to have ended up here.'

There are some very violent, very dangerous wing-nuts out there, and in a pure libertarian environment such people could cause serious problems.

oj, pj: would love to see you do a review of Cryptonomicon or one of the Baroque Cycle.

Bart: you must know the only hippie in Grand Junction. It's just another cow town.

I concur in directing your critical attention to Neal Stephenson's entire body of writing. Of course, his first two novels were respectively ecoterrorism and cyberpunk nonsense but he seems to have grown up and his themes have progressed from libertarian to conservative by increments.

Cryptonomicon has an especially wonderful defense of traditional monogomous marriage developed from the perspective of a relentlessly secular computer geek. It's also got a great plot and stupendous character development and the later as we all know has never been the greatest strength of SF writers. Athough, I would hesitate to characterize Cryptonomicon as SF at all.

I hsave come to believe that Stephenson is one of the three greatest living American writers. I'll let you know who the other two are as soon as they develop a comparable body of work. The Baroque Cycle is as good as Colleen McCullough's, First Man in Rome series. Higher praise I cannot offer.

Ray:

I was especially struck that the real climax of Cryptonomicon (in my view) was not some battle or cunning plan, but a (brief) discussion
between the secular computer geek and a catholic priest about the existance of evil.

Joe,

You must live in a very crabbed world where everyone who doesn't want to be an employee, a hamster on the treadmill or a cog in the machine is somehow a 'hippie.' She's a radio engineer who wanted to work for herself in a pleasant environment. Her comments are not about Grand Junction itself but more directed to what lives in the woods, plains and mountains as you get further away from civilization.

Mike:

If you've read the Baroque cycle you know that the priest first appeared as an apparently immortal character who may have been the prototype of the wandering Jew of legend. The fact that the wandering Jew later converted to Christianity is one more level of Stephenson's writing that gives me pause as I try and parse his meaning. Biography as history, apparently.

And, in imitation of National Review's recent Groundhog Day cover, I'd put Cryptonomicon up there on my list of the funniest books I've ever read.

Randy Waterhouse's loveless interlude with a humorless and doctrinaire feminist professor is one of the sharpest satire's of PC thought on sex and love that I've ever read. Remember her scholarly critique of his beard? Hilarious.

Ray - Gotta disagree with your characterization of his early stuff as nonsense. I haven't read the ecoterrorism one, whichever one that is, but the other stuff is as funny and as lively in style as Cryptonomicon. E.g.,
"A young woman was here, standing before one of the poles with her hands clasped behind her back, which would have given her an endearingly prim appearance if she had not been stark naked and covered with constantly shifting mediatronic tattoos."
- A choice sentence from The Diamond Age.
He also describes a taxi driver's foreign accent as something like "fluid vowels with the occassional sharp consonant, like warm butter infused with shards of glass." (Snow Crash)
Man, Stephenson rocks.

Ray - Gotta disagree with your characterization of his early stuff as nonsense. I haven't read the ecoterrorism one, whichever one that is, but the other stuff is as funny and as lively in style as Cryptonomicon. E.g.,
"A young woman was here, standing before one of the poles with her hands clasped behind her back, which would have given her an endearingly prim appearance if she had not been stark naked and covered with constantly shifting mediatronic tattoos."
- A choice sentence from The Diamond Age.
He also describes a taxi driver's foreign accent as something like "fluid vowels with the occassional sharp consonant, like warm butter infused with shards of glass." (Snow Crash)
Man, Stephenson rocks.

Great Slashdot interview in which his intelligence and wit are evident, as always:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/1518217

Phasers on stun, Bart, I was just yanking your chain while the morning coffee finished brewing. Grand Junction seemed like a nice sleepy little town, set amid very pretty country ( the Gunnison and Colorado rivers join there, hence the name.) Hope your friend likes it there, and agreed that some of the sodbuster types can be frightening to the uninitiated. Sorta like some commenters on this forum.

Joe:

I may be mistaken but I thought that Stephenson's first novel was Zodiac (ecoterror) and his second was Snow Crash. I am a fatally compromised reviewer here since I couldn't stomach enough of Zodiac to finish it.

Snow Crash was adolescent cyberpunk in feel. Both were written.

I sent Orrin an email advocating Diamond Age in regard to the post on Chinese Infanticide preceeding this one. I loved Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon and the entire Baroque Cycle.

Ray: I started in with Cryptonomicon, so I don't know either.

Read Snowcrash and Diamond Age, started Cryptonomicon and stalled.

Which of his books comprise the Baroque Cycle?

Quicksilver, The Confusion and System of the World. Quicksilver's the best read of the three, I think.

Thanks Joe.