Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

A Novel

By: Neal Stephenson

Narrated by: 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

A listen for the sake of the listening

One does not approach the reading of a Neal Stephenson story with an an aim of getting to the end. The end comes all too quickly, even with the depth of Stephenson's stories. So too with Malcolm Hillgartner's performance. It was a joy just to listen, to be carried along by his mastery. Do not listen if you're in a hurry. This is a story and perfomance for which it pays to stay in, and savor, the moment.

Another Great Story

Neal Stephenson knocked another one out of the park. His ability to turn speculative IT science into an epic story of ascension to heaven, the retelling of the creation story, and epic battles sings to his talent as a writer.

I really look forward to his next great book.

Not his best work

I usually enjoy all of NS's books, but found I had to struggle to complete this one.

Well....

Well, that sure was a book that I just read.

While the individual parts were good, I don't really know how they fit together. The first few sections of the book set up a lot of interesting ideas, but none of them ever pay off. A lot of the book's prerelease promotion was about what happens fabricated news dominates a culture. I thought that part, and the aftermath part were interesting. But that those storylines were basically abandoned after getting the characters from REMDE into a place where Stephenson could tell this other story.

It really bummed me out,

One of Stephenson’s best

I had been worried about the last part of this book based on some of the other reviews. But I had nothing to worry about. The whole book is amazing. Throughout the book I continually mused if Stephenson’ sheer hubris to tackle what he did. I really was not confident he could pull it off. But. He did it. And with great style.