Anybody know what Neal Stephenson is working on next?

[phantom power]

Whatever it is, I admit I'm hoping it isn't written as 3000 pages of pseudo-17th century prose.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[politicat]

1. Yeah. I could do with some Sumerian or some nanotech fairy tales.

Or chemical pollution or box fan worship or anything....

I still have to slog through the second half of the Confusion (I really hate Jack and Eliza and so it's hard for me to get into the Confusion) and The System... I liked the parts of Quicksilver with Isaac and Daniel.

Though I'm on my 23rd or something listen to The Diamond Age.... (it's good for going to sleep to....)

[phantom power]

2. You'll have to make it to System, for more Isaac and Daniel.

I enjoyed all the books, I just don't know if I'm up for a rematch :-)

I'm curious, why do you hate Jack and Eliza? I thought they were cool. An epic star-crossed love story. And Jack just generally made me laugh.

[politicat]

3. She seemed conniving and manipulative. Jack was just... dull.

Predictable. It was far more emotional than logical.

I know I'm not up for a rematch, either.

[NewHampshireDem]

4. I loved all of Stephenson's books, even the ones he wrote under

other names ... but I haven't been able to make it more than 200 pages into 'Quicksilver.' I'm hoping his next book is more like 'Snowcrash.'

[phantom power]

5. By extrapolating the trends of his novels over time, I predict...

that his next novel will be set in ancient Mesopotamia, and written entirely in Cuneiform.

[salvorhardin]

6. Cuneiform on actual clay tablets!

The novel will be mass distributed as photographic images of the tablets on microfiche for free. The portable microfiche reader though will cost you $59.95. Word has it that there will be an entire second 3,000 page trilogy steganographically encoded into the images of the clay tablets.

[phantom power]

8. He will *write* it in cuneiform, on clay tablets...

then he will go back and type-set it in TeX, and then apply a custom Lisp parser to put it into his publisher's file format:

http://www.nealstephenson.com/content/author_colophon.htm

[NewHampshireDem]

7. And, strangely enough ...

Enoch Root will be in it. :eyes: