{"id":483,"date":"2006-06-23T22:44:14","date_gmt":"2006-06-24T03:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=483"},"modified":"2006-06-23T22:44:14","modified_gmt":"2006-06-24T03:44:14","slug":"the-big-u","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=483","title":{"rendered":"The Big U"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mark is <a href=\"http:\/\/kaedrin.com\/weblog\/archive\/001102.html\">reading<\/a> The Big U, Neal Stephenson&#8217;s first book.  I remember reading an interview where Stephenson downplayed this book. It was out of print for a while, and the buzz generated by his later book Snow Crash had inflated the price of The Big U, which displeased him.  It was his first effort, and I guess he wasn&#8217;t very happy with it.  For that reason I&#8217;ve avoided the book.<\/p>\n<p>But now that I&#8217;ve read the passages that <a href=\"http:\/\/kaedrin.com\/weblog\/archive\/001102.html\">Mark posted<\/a> I think I need to check it out.  Have a look at some of the PC doublespeak from the book, and keep in mind the thing was written in 1984.<\/p>\n<p>Mark also mentions that he isn&#8217;t expecting much in the way of an ending.  That sort of goes without saying.  Stephenson is a brilliant author, but by fault or by purpose, his endings always feel hurried, confusing, and unfinished. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mark is reading The Big U, Neal Stephenson&#8217;s first book. I remember reading an interview where Stephenson downplayed this book. It was out of print for a while, and the buzz generated by his later book Snow Crash had inflated the price of The Big U, which displeased him. It was his first effort, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerd-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}