Anathem | Neal Stephenson | Talks at Google
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it mainly as the place where Stephenson addresses criticism of his novels' endings, plus as a fun author talk with jokes.
What it is
Neal Stephenson visits Google in 2008 to discuss his novel Anathem as part of the Authors@Google series. He talks about the book's world and takes audience questions.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2008 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends JayNeely · 2008-09 · on “New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem”
He's been doing a book tour, stopped by Cambridge yesterday. If you're not in a place he's stopping by, check out the Authors@Google talk he gave: [this video] He makes some long-winded jokes for the first few minutes (mainly about authors being ill-suited to public appearances), starts talking about Anathem around 3:40, and starts the Q&A time around 8:30.
Cites EdwardCoffin · 2015-06 · on “An Interview with Neal Stephenson”
Stephenson had an Authors @Google talk in 2008 [1], which was mostly about his book Anathem. In it he actually addressed what he calls the "Stephenson can't write endings" meme, as he calls it, at 10:54 going on for about three minutes [2]. I think his endings are just fine, myself, and also think that this whole idea that he can't write endings is just a self-perpetuating meme. [1] [this video] [2] [this video]
Cites raywu · 2016-07 · on “YC’s Summer Reading”
_Anathem_ is great. Very slow build up. The interwoven theme of race, religion, time and space makes it well worth the slow construction of the world. Here's a video of him speaking at Google for the book tour [this video]
Cites EdwardCoffin · 2021-09 · on “William Gibson is a literary genius”
Stephenson occasionally fields questions about his endings in talks. Here's one of them, from his Google talk for the Anathem book tour [1]: Q: How do you think about ending your stories? They seem to run the gamut from some where the action just ends, and others where there's the equivalent of a movie ending with a ten-minute car chase in it. A: Well, I'm reasonably happy with all of my endings, but I know that some people feel differently. But as you've noticed, they're different, it's not always the same thing. All I can say is different books end in different ways, and different people have different tastes in what they want to see. I'm well aware that there are certain people frustrated
Cites EdwardCoffin · 2024-02 · on “Neal Stephenson was prescient about our AI age”
Talking about Neal Stephenson's works always brings up several topics: endings and editing. He's responded to criticisms of his endings in various book talks, for instance his Author's at Google talk about Anathem [1] (prepositioned to the relevant bit @10:54). One of his editor's at Wired magazine also made a comment about editing his work in his book talk about Fall or Dodge in Hell at the Interval [2]. This is a transcript of a part of the Authors at Google talk for Anathem (first link prepositioned to 10:54): [10:54] Q: How do you think about ending your stories? They seem to run the gamut from some where the action just ends, and others where there's the equivalent of a movie ending wit
Cites imp0cat · 2024-07 · on “Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut”
So true about the endings! And he's actually aware of it. Well, I'm reasonably happy with all of my endings, but I know that some people feel differently. But as you've noticed, they're different, it's not always the same thing. All I can say is different books end in different ways, and different people have different tastes in what they want to see. I'm well aware that there are certain people frustrated with the endings of some of my books. But I also think that it's one of these things where people's preconceived ideas sometimes drive the way they perceive things. ... So I think that my experience is that once you've written a book with a controversial ending and that meme gets going of