The US author’s latest slice of speculative fiction contrasts a computerised fantasy world with a dystopic post-truth ‘Ameristan’
At a paltry 883 pages, Fall or, Dodge in Hell is short by Neal Stephenson’s standards. Reamde, from 2011, to which Fall is a sequel, is 1,044 pages long, and his multi-award-winning three-part Baroque Cycle (2003-04) runs to 2,671 pages. You certainly can’t fault him when it comes to giving readers value for money, and not just in terms of pages. A typical Stephenson novel will contain enough plot for two or three regular-sized books, and enough thought-provoking ideas for four or five. And the bonus here: Fall is the best thing he’s written in ages.
In Reamde, games developer Richard “Dodge” Forthrast developed an immersive virtual reality MMORPG – a massively multiplayer online role-playing game – called T’Rain. It made him rich, and provoked a kidnap/terrorism Russian-mafia storyline too intricate to summarise here. Luckily you don’t need to know all the ins and outs of the former novel to enjoy Fall, which starts with Forthrast, now a middle-aged billionaire, waking in his luxurious Seattle apartment. We get a leisurely account of his morning, and of the routine medical procedure he has scheduled. But something goes wrong in the clinic and he dies under anaesthetic. His will instructs that his body be cryonically preserved and his brain scanned neuron by neuron in the hope that technology will eventually be developed that can bring him back to life. Soon enough, virtual reality provides him with just such a second chance.
The info-dumping is still there – fans of Stephenson expect nothing less – but mixed with an old-school fantasy novel
Related: Some Remarks by Neal Stephenson – review
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