And as much as I love classes and higher education, I don’t want to be subjected to an advanced lesson in mathematics, physics, psychology or anything else when I sit down to read any fiction, scifi, fantasy, or otherwise.

My patience with it gets tested, and I’m not so sure Stephenson’s better-than-average execution of the punishable offense is an excuse for him to keep committing said offense

Shogun, eh? Maybe someday.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. In this case Mur’s is wrong. Keep reading Norell and Strange until you become right — with God, with the Universe, everything. I have developed a low tolerance for fantasy and Clarke succeeded where so many have failed, so often and so unimaginatively.

Stephenson serially commits “I learned it, so you have to” but he manages to weave it into the story’s plot much better than others. I’m not saying he shouldn’t abandon the practice and work on making it seemless like others have but since he does it so well and he’s the one exception I’m happy to have him, if only to prove the rule.

Beginning writers shoud read Knutter and see how it’s done. Or, for non-genre writers, read Clavell’s Shogun. Sure it’s 1100 pages long but by the end you actually speak a little japanese. He teaches you a language without you ever noticing.

I’ve read Smith/Trowbridge’s Exordium a couple times, and they go into intense philosophical and political detail that is fasinating and does actually apply to the storyline, but skipping them doesn’t detract from the plot – if they skipped these, you could probable save several hundred pages of the 5 book series. Sometimes I read em, sometimes not.

Jumping back to the Zelazney discussion, I tend to skip hellrides . . . .easy to find the end, for all the ….ellipsis stop.

Stephenson has lots of cool ideas in his info dumps, but many times those enormous dumps just hinder his story.

“Cryptonomicon” was the last book of his I read. I waited forever for something to happen in that book and then was horribly disappointed with the lame ending. While I enjoyed and understood much of what was in his info dumps, that enjoyment was not enough to overcome what was a weak story, IMO. Frankly, if I *really* want to know about cryptography, I’ll read (and have read) Bruce Schneier’s books.

Isn’t it funny that Simmon’s was critisized for having too long descriptions in the Hyperion books, but Stephenson is praised for his info dumps? Maybe it is just a matter of how much we can geek out over the information, but without doubt, info dumps are a double-edged sword.

I stopped reading David Webbers Honor Harrington series because of the long, boring dumps that could have been summed up nicely in a few sentences.

http://cultofsummer.com/kamn will get you there.

Science fiction by it’s nature has to incorporate infodump – especially the hard SF flavor. Even though the reader might know something about zero point energy or the human genome, the writer must include some of this data to give a jumping off point for extrapolations and concepts. The trick is making it work well in the story. For my money, writers like Baxter, Gibson, and Niven make it work well. Heinlein set the blueprint for it. Stephenson is hit or miss. Greg Egan – the one book I read, anyway – was dull because the whole story seemed like infodump. Asimov I loved, but he used lots of infodump, and his fiction has become dated because of it.