The Big U

Ever since I read Snow Crash, I've been a big fan of Neal Stephenson. In my completely unbiased and judicious opinion, he has assumed the mantle of King of Cyberpunk, inheriting the title from William Gibson himself.

Stephenson's books are fast, clever, witty, and - most importantly - interesting to a random geeky reader (despite the fact that some of his cyberpunkishness is a bit dated, now). I've quickly devoured The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon. On a whim, though, I decided to pick up a book that seemed, on the surface, to go outside the mold of geeky computerish books and enter a somewhat different realm: The Big U, one of Stephenson's first books.

I loved it.

Before picking this book up, realize that it's an early attempt of his, and the edges are rather rough. With that in mind, though, one can truly enjoy this book. It focuses on American Megaversity, an enormous, blundering, bureaucratic monstrosity that is encased in a single building. Stephenson follows the antics, pitfalls, and travails of university life over the course of a schoolyear, with increasing amounts of hilarity and insanity.

I read the book with increasing degrees of incredulousness... but oddly, the stranger the book got, the more it resembled stories I've heard or experienced about universities. Stephenson neatly lampooned the American university system, exposing its many flaws (well, he also implied many of its good traits, but books full of praise aren't funny, anyways). Furthermore, a book that at start seems unrelated to cyberpunk rather impressively turned into a full-blown geekfest. Trust me, it's worth the wait. *Grins*

I'm recommend this book to anyone who has already read some of Stephenson's later works, so that have something with which to compare it. *thumbs up*