U-Turn

Interesting read, but I was more confused at the end than at the beginning. Not the "U" I attended long ago.

Second read through this crazy, dark romp through the underbelly of campus life in and around a university megadorm.

it's a 3.5 for me this time!

A gonzo novel, capturing the hallucinatory madcap wildness of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and spinning it into a paranoid, out-of-control fantasy of a modern megaversity gone feral.

A very chaotic first novel that is entertaining and shows promise of what is to come from him.

This is a weird book. I'm giving it a 4 for being the proto-Stephensonian novel, holding the seeds which later blossom in Snowcrash, Anathem, Diamond Age etc. At some point I'd like to sit down and actually trace what blossomed where :)

Neal Stephenson is one of my favorite authors and this is one of his earlier books. It appears that from the start he shows the ability to weave many different story elements together and have it all come together nicely at the end.
This one was a little less tightly written than his later works. Part of the book was a first person narrative and part was third person. I did not really see the purpose there since it made it a little hard to follow and the first person narrator was not really a main character.
The campus life elements were entertaining for me since it was the same time period I attended a large public university.
One point dealt with Dungeons and Dragons players using the utility tunnels under the university for live action playing. This was a persistent college campus urban legend at the time and usually included a gruesome outcome. It was at my school and I suspect it was at any school that had utility tunnels. The gruesome outcome is included here.
Overall, not quite as good as Stephenson's later books but entertaining anyway.

Its eye-rolling start tried to discourage me from continuing: Kafkaesque, petty-tyranted bureaucracy; an isolated, hothouse society of weirdo student behavior; an impersonal, implacable crushing of human spirit under cinder block architecture and lousy food. I had had enough of this style of satire with Bill, The Galactic Hero.

Over a progression of increasingly strange developments, it becomes something other. Something Lord of the Flies, as various factions of the student body are cut loose from the nominal administrative control, and the arcology-like "Plex" is divided among violent, deranged groups such as the party-animal Terrorists, the Stalinist Underground Battalion, and the Temple of the Unlimited Godhead. Many of them are receiving instructions from invisible or mystic sources, such as hearing it in the whirr of fan blades or in the white noise of radio static.

And then giant radioactive spiders are found in the sewers and a splinter group of Crotobaltslavonian nationals threaten domestic terrorism. Somewhere in there my jaw hit the floor.

I really enjoyed this book, but it is certainly something else. It's a somewhat denser flavor of the type of matter-of-fact ridiculousness of Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams. For that reason, it was certainly a slower read. It definitely has the rough edges of an early novel, but it was my first Stephenson and I'm looking forward to exploring his other work.

This begins as a satire of university life and culture with Neal Stephenson’s trademark insertion of all things nerdy. Unfortunately, it descends into madness with giant radioactive rats and full blown war inside in the university complex. It’s just ends up a bit too ridiculous to really enjoy.

An intriguing read, if one is familiar with Stephenson’s other works. It is fun to spot the nerdy references he more fully develops in his future work. The Big U on the whole is a prime example of how practice is a necessary step to mastery: Stephenson had the guts to write and publish a book, any book, knowing it would be the first step to refining his writing. The Big U demonstrates that Stephenson has always had fine command of the English language (though this skill would also be further developed down the road), but it lacks any semblance of cohesive narrative. It reads like a bunch of gags a 24-year old man thought up and slapped onto paper, in no particular order, really, and consistency in tone is also lacking: the reason this book is written in first person is a complete mystery, because half of it isn’t truly first person, and the parts that are don’t serve the story in a way any 3rd person narrative couldn’t’ve.

What surprises me is the extraordinary rapidity with which Stephenson’s storytelling skills improved. He truly learned everything he had to from writing The Big U. Zodiac, only his second novel, is a tremendously funny book that maintains a strong sense of nerd-noir in every paragraph. And don’t even get me started on the prodigious narrative techniques applied in his third book, Snow Crash. His writing didn’t improve exponentially after The Big U, but rather took an enormous leap in a piece-wise function from point 1 to point 2, and thence continued upward.

I’d have to say the author’s own derogatory opinion of The Big U is not feigned humility, but rather sincere criticism: a rushed book written by a young man a long time ago. I’d recommend it for Stephenson completionists, and to newcomers I strongly recommend you read at least 5 of his other books first.

A compelling, largely accurate satire of modern higher education that gets progressively more surreal, crazed and violent as it goes along. This was Stephenson's first published novel and you can tell - every apparently pointless chunk of bizarre exposition is actually important, the book is no longer than it needs to be, characters aren't picked up and dropped like a toddler with a toy and the "Guns make the USA Great, everybody should have one, preferably several" bullshit is at least minimally disguised and not the whole point of the story. (Btw, Stephenson, the refutation of your argument on this is splashed all across the news these last few days...I mean years...I mean decades..I mean the last century. Let's face it, reform has been over-due in your country since the end of the era of the Wild West.)

Anyway, the only book by this guy that I've read and thought was better was Zodiac, which manages to remain grounded in reality through-out instead of jumping the shark (or giant rat) like this does.

This book was a bit nuts. It's a fun read for anyone who is a fan of Stephenson and wants to see the mind that would produce some great books. I know Stephenson said he wasn't proud of this book but I think it's a classic. I really enjoyed the first half of this book. Right around the second semester things go a little insane. It takes a while, but it eventually pulls you back in. I think anyone who is a fan of Stephenson's work would probably enjoy this book.