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Re:"A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4 by the_af on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @07:46PM (#37923062)
> I loved Diamond Age. My favorite Stephenson book, by far. But the ending, the resolution of all the action, was such a letdown. Such meh. I find that this is often a problem with cyberpunk.

I wouldn't know about Stephenson in general, but I found that to be the case with Diamond Age: the setup was cool and intriguing, but the actual development and resolution was very disappointing.

I don't think this is the case with all cyberpunk and cyberpunk-adjacent works of scifi.

Re:"A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4 by geophile on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @08:05PM (#37923252)
I remember thinking the same thing of a few Gibson novels. What do you recommend that doesn't fall flat at the end? That actually has a point leading to a good ending?
Re:"A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4 by the_af on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @10:00PM (#37924040)
Well, I cannot think of proper cyberpunk now, but I found The Windup Girl to be good in both world-building but also an oddly satisfying finale. It does lose some steam for some of the story arcs though (the titular windup girl is the least interesting character, in my opinion!).

Also, the Murderbot series is pretty solid (note: it's a single story arc misleadingly sold as separate short books; don't fall for it). It's not awe inspiring but it's fun throughout the whole deal. More about action than big ideas though.

I think cyberpunk is possibly more suitable for short stories than full fledged novels? I like Gibson's stories more than his novels.

I thought of another example of a cyberpunk-adjacent work that is all setup/interesting world and disappointing payoff: Altered Carbon. At least the show, anyway.