Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

A Novel

De: Neal Stephenson

Narrado por: Malcolm Hillgartner

A New York Times Notable Book

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Seveneves, Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon returns with a wildly inventive and entertaining science fiction thriller - Paradise Lost by way of Philip K. Dick - that unfolds in the near future, in parallel worlds.

In his youth, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia.

One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead and put on life support, leaving his stunned family and close friends with difficult decisions. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Legally bound to follow the directive despite their misgivings, Dodge’s family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived.

In the coming years, technology allows Dodge’s brain to be turned back on. It is an achievement that is nothing less than the disruption of death itself. An eternal afterlife - the Bitworld - is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls.

But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem...

Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pure, unadulterated fun: a grand drama of analog and digital, man and machine, angels and demons, gods and followers, the finite and the eternal. In this exhilarating epic, Neal Stephenson raises profound existential questions and touches on the revolutionary breakthroughs that are transforming our future. Combining the technological, philosophical, and spiritual in one grand myth, he delivers a mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age.

©2019 Neal Stephenson (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

Beautiful technomythology

I very much so loved this story. Every sentence of every chapter held my interest and I always wanted to know what was going to happen next. Neal Stephenson creates such wonderful worlds and lets us the readers, or listeners, explore and enjoy them. I highly recommend this book.

Disappointing work from an author I usually love

I really wanted to like this book, as I love several of his previous works, to include REAMDE, the nominal predecessor to this story. There were just too many plot holes for me to suspend disbelief this time around. If you haven't read Stephenson before, I recommend you go read Snow Crash, Seveneves, and REAMDE instead of this one.

starts sci-fi transitions to pure fantasy

Stevenson's imagination fully unleashed develops a whole new world on par with LOTR. I only wish it was longer.

I wept

This is a long book. This isn't a long book as far as other Neil Stephenson books go but get ready for a journey, literally. I very much enjoyed the story Arc where the book essentially circles back and closes the loop. The performance was perfect and at 1.5 speed it worked quite well. I highly recommend reading the previous book in this series Reamde as if introduces a lot of character development but in the end it's not necessary. this is sci-fi mixed with fantasy to perfection.

I guess not for everybody …

but definitely for me. I got this audiobook when it first came out but only recently got around to listening. I actually hadn’t heard too much about its reception but my nephew, a big Stephenson fan who also had given me the hardback copy as a gift, had told me they it had not been received very well. I can see that by the reviews here this appears to be the case.
Not for me though. This is one of my favorite Stephenson book; Anathem and the Diamond Age being the other two. I like the way Stephenson builds worlds and I feel like he did very good job with this one. The book takes many different turns much like Reamde (which I also liked very much) but it has ideas like Anathem. I loved the “techno thriller” parts and was very interested in what he did with the simulated “afterlife”.
I won’t say “highly” recommend because it appears to be an acquired taste, if you like long meander meaty books about ideas than you might like Fall; or, Dodge in hell

This is Stephenson's Dhalgren

Some people think that might be a compliment. I'm not one of those people.

In short, the story runs too long, is wildly predictable, and the allegories are paper thin.

"Gee, this sub-plot sure sounds familiar. I [don't] wonder what happens next!"

There are lots of really cool ideas sprinkled around the novel. Unfortunately, nothing ever comes of them. What does happen is that somewhere around a third of the way in, we are introduced to "another place." Around half-way, it's split evenly between the two places, but by the end of the book, it's almost entirely the other place. The other place has tons of potential, which like the first place, isn't really realized. Mostly it's a place where Stephenson tells age old stories

What I liked was him taking a SciFi trope and turning it on its head, resulting in almost literally hellish results. What I didn't like is that the restrictions placed on interaction between the two worlds was explained away too easily, and I really didn't buy it at all,

It was nice to revisit some familiar characters from Reamde, but it would have been nicer if the visit was much shorter.

I would be really hard to recommend this book. Stephenson does stick to his strengths in the content, but it basically doesn't do much. Of course, if you really liked Dhalgren, or at least really like taking the long way to everything, then go for it.

Different, but I liked it

I wish the entire story line together made a bit more sense, but the thought of how an electronic afterlife could work is interesting.

Book 1 is great, the next 2 Books are a grind

I've read everything that Neal Stephenson has published. I consider Cryptonomicon to be his best work. I really enjoyed "Book 1" of this 3 book, 888 page story. Book 1 is what I would call classic NS. Great science, and great storytelling, with a sprinkling of dry humor. Books 2 & 3 which follow our meat space heroes into digital space are written as a fable. To me the stories were not interesting and I only ground through them for the occasional update from meat space.

I would give Book One 5 stars, and Books Two and Three 2 or 3 stars.

Fantasy

I struggled through to the finish. I love the other books from Neal Stephenson's but this one was too much fantasy for my tastes.

If this is your first Neal Stephenson book and you didn't like it, try his other books before you decide if you like his writings.

Among his best, cryogenics mythos and epic fantasy in one.

I love everything Neal ever wrote except I couldn’t get through Reamde, sadly. Fall or Dodge in hell was a huge relief to have NS back in all his glory, reincarnating Dodge from this world to the next as lord of all things and, you may ask, how could that go so very wrong? Epic exploration of of post meatspace world and the very human problems that ensue.
Loved the narrator except his Australian accent which made me laugh every time - think Schwarzenegger then Scottish then Afrikaan.
Overall a great audiobook with much to contemplate afterward.