Stephenson's take on e-gold might offend some libertarians too! In all seriousness, as I recall it the weirdness about women was mostly in-character views of nerds whose perception of the wider world isn't necessarily supposed to be that reliable, and the male-dominated cast actually makes sense in context. There are other Stephenson books more likely to annoy people in terms of gender roles and digressions about liberals and universities...

But yeah, Stephenson isn't the author to start non-sci fans on (though Vonnegut fans might love Cryptonomicon and spot an influence or two). Atwood's Oryx and Crake is probably my answer to that, since it's classic near future sci fi disguised as literature. The first book is all about near future society and the implications of plausible tech, she just writes about the people in it and doesn't waste words describing the details of stuff they wouldn't know or how it actually works. And the subsequent books are cliche-trope heavy dystopic sci-fi and still probably doesn't feel that way to people who tend to avoid that stuff.

Yeah people don't seem to realize that Lawrence Waterhouse is kind of an unreliable narrator.

Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books, but I also once described it to a friend as "one very long dick joke".

On the other hand, if your problem is with the thin portrayal of women, and you like a more conventional Space Opera kind of thing, Atwood isn't interested in "robots and spaceships and all that" so maybe try Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy ("Ancillary Justice" etc.)

Neal is terrible at writing female characters, which is probably at its most obvious in Cryptonomicon.

he's gotten better at it. I really don't like his more tech bro-ish books but I liked Reamde a lot, which features a pretty good set of characters.

Reamde does still have rape as character development which is... it's one of those tropes that once you notice an author keeps doing it you wince when it comes up again. This is of course in The Big U, and in Snow Crash, and in Diamond Age, and here it is again in Reamde.

I really like Diamond Age, it's probably one of my favourite books, and if that was his only novel which did it I'd say well, fair enough it sort of makes sense in context - but it happens over and over, so that's not great. It's in the same category as Fridging in comics. Twice is coincidence, three times is lazy writing.

Yep, that's something I kind of flagged as a big "oof" as well after reading Reamde and noticing the repeat use in other books :/

I still enjoy his writing, and generally think he isn't a bad writer, but also...