The Big U [Paperback]

Neal Stephenson has gathered legions of fans with his sassy, streetwise SF sagas such as /Snow Crash/ and /The Diamond Age/, but he didn't start there: his first two books were satirical contemporary novels. /Zodiac/, subtitled "the eco-thriller", received some acclaim and modest commercial success, but his début, /The Big U/, sank almost without trace and copies now change hands for startlingly large amounts of money.

It's recognizably Stephenson, but in an early, immature form. It's the story of a year in the American Megaversity, the eponymous Big U, an improbably large educational institute with a distinctly diabolical feel. In the Big U's four towers live and work its 40,000 students; it is so vast that it is a world unto itself, with its own government, police force and culture, including multiple feuding tribes. Its huge sewer system is the location for live-action roleplaying campaigns lasting days. Its inhabitants seldom leave the building, and in their incarceration, they go a little crazy.

The narrator, Bud, is a freshly-minted associate professor who has the misfortune to be "faculty-in-residence": he lives with the students in E07S. Thus he is privileged to witness the joys of life as a student in the Big U. These include the battle between the Systems of John Wesley Fenrick and Ephraim Klein, who share a room and an obsession with hifi, but regrettably not musical tastes; the oratory of Dexter Fresser, whose part in the Stalinist Underground Battalion is only slightly hampered by the vast amounts of drugs he takes; the multiple factions of the Terrorist alliance, such as the Droogs, the Blue Light Specials, the Flame Squad Brotherhood and the Plex Branch of the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army (Unofficial).

It starts as a romp, a deranged dystopia of university life, and as ever, Stephenson's caustic observations are often hilarious. But the Big U is going wrong. It's reached critical mass, and it's about to explode. Something has to give, and right at the sharp end are the few sane hard-working undergrads who are trying to get an education - and Bud is right in there with them.

First novels are often autobiographical, and /The Big U/ has the feel of an impassioned rant by someone who has just escaped from higher education and has some stuff he needs to get off his chest. As Bud says,

"This is a history... by writing it I hope to purge the Big U from my system, and with it all my bitterness and contempt."

One can only hope, though, that the next line isn't as true: "What you are about to read is not an aberration: it can happen in your local university too. The Big U, simply, was a few years ahead of the rest."

Although it's plentifully inventive, /The Big U/ isn't as imaginative as Stephenson's subsequent books - it's all too possible to guess at where some of his inspiration sprang from. The story also doesn't fit together quite as neatly as in later work. However, there's much to please fans here, and as ever, some of the characters and events will live in the memory long afterwards. It's a wild ride, and as ever, leads to an unexpected destination.

It's worth reading if you want to see where he came from, but the characterisation is horribly clicheed, the plot minimal and the whole thing just doesn't hang together for me. Mind you, I didn't like his latest one either (the US president with a chip in his brain tale), so either his cyberpunk writing is better, or this reviewer has a bias against novels about life in the US.

Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age are superb and Zodiac's not half bad. Unless you're a die-hard fan, I'd stick to those for now.

Unfortunately, the book shows his inexperience at writing, this being his first published novel. The humor that he handles so well in Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon is very inconsistent here. Many of his satirical points are presented a little too baldly, and the barbs sometimes take the aspect of a diatribe rather than a succinct observation of human foibles. His depiction of a near-rape, while obviously intended as an extended ironical comment on the non-limits of courtship behavior as practiced by all participants within the hot-house atmosphere of the confined close order living of a co-ed dorm, comes far too close to reality, a very horrifying one, and far away from the humorous tone that he was trying for. In the later stages of the book the plot line becomes an exercise in the surreal, from Dungeons and Dragons played for real (not that such things did not happen, but Stephenson's portrayal reads more like fantasy at this point) to a plot by the janitors to take over everything.

Characterization is somewhat flat, at times stereotypical. Of course, some of the stereotypes are intentional, as in any decent satire, but here some of the main characters come off the same way, when they really need some good development as individuals to further the story line in a (semi) logical manner.

Definitely good for a few laughs, and several more smiles and chuckles, but with too little control over plot, character, and level of humor to make this a first-order book. A good first effort, which any Stephenson fan will appreciate if only for its historical interest, but nothing great.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)