I enjoyed Neal Stephenson’s *Seveneves *just fine, but I wound up feeling pretty disappointed at the end. The vast majority of the book takes place in our near future. When it hopped a few thousand years forward, Stephenson created a very cool future setting and then steamrolled to the end of the novel.
Now, Neal Stephenson has a reputation for not being great at ending his books, but that’s not my real complaint here. It was more the hints at this sprawling, living society that he’d imagined and then pocketed. I would have much rather the book been flipped - less time on the disaster and more time in the future.
What otherwise enjoyable works left you feeling like the best parts or ideas didn’t get the attention they deserved?
I also thought Stephen King’s Rose Madder would have been more interesting without the supernatural element. Just have Rose kick the crap out of her abusive husband Norman, who runs out into the street and gets run over and dies.
“3001 The Final Odyssey”. Clarke spends about 90% of the book talking about all the cool tech of the future. Then the last two or thee chapters getting down to the actual plot. :smack:
In Interface by Neal Stephenson, a politician undergoing brain surgery for a stroke is secretly and without his knowledge implanted with a device that feeds real time polling data into his subconscious, making his thoughts and feelings mirror those of the electorate. The incredibly intriguing questions this raises about democracy and free will are completely ignored.
I had the exact same issue with Anathem. Stephenson spent way too much time in a slow plodding build of the chanting mathematics and the temple social order, and then rushed to a quick finale resolution where IMO the most intriguing ideas and possibilities laid. It was like once he got to expound on his clever alternate math society, he had no interest in any of the subsequent plot resolution.
Honore Balzac’s book “La peau de chagrin” is about a guy who receives a magic piece of leather that will fulfill all of his wishes. The catch is that every time it gets used (and it gets used automatically whenever he wants something, whether he likes it or not), the leather shrinks, and he’ll die once it shrinks into non-existence.
There’s a bunch of rather uninteresting stuff (to me) where he has a big party and he chases after a woman. But the really interesting part was towards the end where he’s trying to prevent his demise: first, by consulting scientists to see if they can increase the size of the piece of leather, and then by eliminating all opportunities where he might ask for something (for instance, he has all of his meals served according to a pre-determined schedule so that no one will ask him what he would like to eat).
You’re the first person I’ve met who wanted more of the future world story? Most people I know would have rather the book ended at the point they land in the moon crevice.