Snow Crash is his best book. Imaginative and punchy as fuck.

Cryptonomicon is very good too. Should be a must read for people who want to make another Tor :)

Incomparison, Reamde is slow and boring.

Huh interesting. I actually thought reamde was the most gripping after I got through the first 2 or 3 chapters which were indeed a bit slow. I wasn't able to finish cryptonomicon, that one was the most boring for me

Interesting- cryptonomicon was the book that gripped me abs made me pursue a technical career.

The Diamond Age as the follow-up to Snow Crash is also a great piece of sci-fi.

Cryptonomicon is fun, I re-read that recently. I wouldn't really call it sci-fi, though. More like historical fiction..

Agreed. I wasn’t a big fan of seveneves.

Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash are must reads. Anathem is a beast that I just couldn’t get into, though I tried several times.

Anathem was (surprisingly!) my first book by him. I then read Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, and am now a cryptographer, in no small part due to these books =)

Do you think Seveneves is weaker than Fall? That seems like a really hard sell to me.

Stephenson has done some great things, but dude needs an editor badly. I'm afraid success has scared off anyone who can tell him when to stop.

Fall, had some interesting and vivid passages, but the whole "Dodge wakes up in a simulation with a brain injury" bit, and really the rest of the book from there to the end could have been cut. That would leave us with a much better 350 page novel about the near future instead of yet another Stephenson -- much longer than the original! -- attempt at retelling the Book of Genesis.

I liked Fall actually, but I can imagine pure sci-fi readers being put off by the second part. It’s a 2-for-1 situation which brings together sci-fi and fantasy elements in interesting ways. But you’ll have to enjoy reading both genres or else it will be a slog.

As with all fiction books, my usual advice is to read it for pleasure, and put it aside if you don’t like it or it doesn’t live up to expectations. You don’t have to finish a book just because you started it.

What sort of person do you imagine will find your "usual advice" necessary or helpful?

I haven't read Fall, because one of my buds told me it was even worse than Seveneves :/