So I’m reading Reamde because I happened by the CBPL and against all odds they had it on the shelf. The benefits of being one of the few cyberthriller readers in the metro area that didn’t pre-order on Amazon or just torrent the thing I guess.

Anyway, there is a part where the main character is talking about the splash screen of the MMORPG his company is making money off of and Stephenson throws out some gratuitous smack. I don’t have the book in front of me but he basically says that the splash screen is a ripoff of Google Earth but that he (the character) didn’t feel bad about ripping it off. This was because Google Earth was a ripoff of an idea in some sci-fi novel someone wrote.

The joke being, Neal Stephenson described an internet application simply called “Earth” that was a real-time, 3-D, user interface for accessing any knowable data about the planet. For values of ‘knowable’ that are equivalent to the information in the Library of Congress, which in Snow Crash had evolved into a for-pay information access clearinghouse.

Now some people who would be better suited to make this claim than I say that Neal Stephenson is kind of an ass…or at least ballsy in a socially uncomfortable way. I’d love the chance for him to prove me wrong though. Word-for-word, one of my most favorite authors, Stephenson has some serious capacity for digesting information and trends and turning them into gripping narratives.

I really only wish that he didn’t ultimately make everything in to an end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it conflict about 2/3rd the way through every novel. Smaller problems can be at least as gripping as planetary revolution. So, Neal, in the event you stop by, consider yourself advised. Also, if you want to share beers, the porch is always open.