What Book to Read?

Based on the subject matter, this is not a book I would expect to like. One of the main threads running through it is a computer game called T’Rain , which is a ‘massively multiplayer online role-playing game’ (MMORPG) something like the World of Warcraft – which I had never heard of until I read this book. A number of its characters are part of America’s gun culture – something else I’m not keen on. Also, it’s a great brick of a book – over 1000 pages. But it’s by Neal Stephenson, and as far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t put a foot wrong.

After years as a draft dodger and smuggler of marijuana across the US Canadian boarder, Richard Forthrast, known to his friends as Dodge, has developed a computer game which has grown into a multi million dollar enterprise with players all around the world. But a group of hackers – who could be located anywhere – have created a virus called Reamde that captures players’ files and holds them to ransom. This is an annoyance rather than a disaster until some information that belongs to Russian mobsters is inadvertently captured. This sets off a chain of events that draws in a cast of characters who find themselves in a wild adventure even more dangerous than tangling with the Russians.

The story is clever and intricate. Stephenson draws together his cast, disperses them to various distant locations, then brings them back together for the grand finale. Part of the length of the book arises from the detail devoted to the adventures of several people or groups of people, and such is the complexity of the story, it is hard to see that it could have been made any shorter. There is perhaps more about the game than I really need, though it plays an important part in the story, and there are nice parallels between the role playing and the real world. (At one point, Richard even compares his situation to that of his T’Rain character, the powerful but currently adrift wizard Egdod.) But others who know about such games will doubtless find it fascinating. Is he just being self indulgent? I rather think that Stephenson now has enough faithful readers that he can write at any length, and not put them off. And when he can present a plot twist that take’s one’s breathe away, as he does here, I’m not going to be put off either.

Stephenson says he wanted to write an adventure story that has interesting characters. He has gone about making them interesting in part by giving them a diverse range of backgrounds and circumstances. In addition to Richard, others include Zula, an Eritrean orphan adopted by Richard’s sister; Csongor, a Hungarian computer expert; Sokolov, a Russian security consultant; Yuxia, a Chinese Big Foot woman; Olivia, a British intelligence analyst and Abdallah Jones, a Welsh born jihadist. But it is also how these characters think and feel and react that makes them interesting. Jihadists, Sokolov reflects, have the advantage of being fatalists who believed God was on their side. ‘Russians, on the other hand, were fatalists of a somewhat different kind, believing, or at least strongly suspecting, that they were fucked no matter what’. Or, thinking about jihadists, Zula muses that ‘once they had left common notions of decency in the dust – once they had abandoned all sense of proportionality – then it turned into a sort of competition to see who could outdo all the rest in that. Beyond there it was all comedy, if only you could turn a blind eye to the consequences’. I really like the way Stephenson looks at the world through his characters. And I really like his ironic turn of phrase.

Stephenson certainly likes his games and his guns, and I don’t understand or relate to either. Clearly I wouldn’t enjoy the book if that was all there was to it. But fortunately it isn’t. On the other hand, I recognise that 1000 pages is a big ask if you aren’t already a convert. But if you’re prepared to try, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

You can listen to Stephenson talking about the book on his website here. And you can read my earlier posts on his books Cryptonomicon here and on Anathem here.