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A review by gerhard
Atmosphaera Incognita by Neal Stephenson
4.0
I have not read Neal Stephenson in ages. He is one of those SF writers whose books (by default) are long and demanding, though not on the same level as a writer like Kim Stanley Robinson. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this … novella on Goodreads. Neal Stephenson writing short fiction? There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Indeed.
Imagine also my surprise at discovering that this slim book is quintessential Stephenson, a distillation of the author’s talents and preoccupations in just about 100 pages. It is a deceptively quick read, with the author masterfully ratcheting up the tension and detail … until a truly mesmerising ending that seems out of this world. Except it takes place on earth. Well, actually at the top of a 20-km-high building, the construction of which is the narrative engine here.
I actually think that Atmosphaera Incognita (got to love that grandiose and baroque-sounding title) is a masterclass in How To Write An Effective SF Tale of Ideas. Stephenson has an incredible ability to break down highly complex ideas into Big Screen style images – he will make a helluva effective teacher, if he hasn’t done so already.
Yes, some reviewers have griped that the characterisation is not as carefully constructed, but they are missing the point: The bloody building is the main character. And SF is a genre about Big Ideas, after all. It rather leaves character navel-gazing to literary fiction. Of course, you get true fireworks when you combine the two, but that, as they say, is yet another story …
P.S. BoingBoing reports that this story is actually from a collection called Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future. This, of course, was a project of Arizona State University’s Centre for Science and the Imagination, with which Stephenson has been associated since 2011.
Imagine also my surprise at discovering that this slim book is quintessential Stephenson, a distillation of the author’s talents and preoccupations in just about 100 pages. It is a deceptively quick read, with the author masterfully ratcheting up the tension and detail … until a truly mesmerising ending that seems out of this world. Except it takes place on earth. Well, actually at the top of a 20-km-high building, the construction of which is the narrative engine here.
I actually think that Atmosphaera Incognita (got to love that grandiose and baroque-sounding title) is a masterclass in How To Write An Effective SF Tale of Ideas. Stephenson has an incredible ability to break down highly complex ideas into Big Screen style images – he will make a helluva effective teacher, if he hasn’t done so already.
Yes, some reviewers have griped that the characterisation is not as carefully constructed, but they are missing the point: The bloody building is the main character. And SF is a genre about Big Ideas, after all. It rather leaves character navel-gazing to literary fiction. Of course, you get true fireworks when you combine the two, but that, as they say, is yet another story …
P.S. BoingBoing reports that this story is actually from a collection called Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future. This, of course, was a project of Arizona State University’s Centre for Science and the Imagination, with which Stephenson has been associated since 2011.