Talks at Google
1 HN recommender · recommended in 6 months, 2008–2024
58:10 · 108K views · Sep 20, 2008
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.
HN uses it mainly as the place where Stephenson addresses criticism of his novels' endings, plus as a fun author talk with jokes.
6 comments from Hacker News
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.
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 with a ten-minute car chase in it. [11:11] A: Well, I'm reasonably happy with all of my endings, but I know that some people feel differently. [11:21] 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. I've seen people complain, for example, that Snow Crash doesn't have a good ending. But I can remember that at the time I was writing it, I told a friend of mine that the climax of Snow Crash was now longer than Moby Dick. There's a
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 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 Stephenson can't write endings, then that gets slapped on to everything you do, no matter how elaborate the ending is. For me, the endings meme really is that - I don't see what people are complaining about. [1]: this video
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 Stephenson can't write endings, then that gets slapped on to everything you do, no matter how elaborate the ending is. this video
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