Fall, or Dodge in Hell (Neal Stephenson)

After I have been more or less publicly shamed into sharing my thoughts on sci-fi more widely, this is it: My first book review. “Fall, or Dodge in Hell” by Neal Stephenson is neither the most recent book I have read, nor is it the one of my recent favorites, but I know this review will have at least an audience of one, so here it goes.

I read my first Neal Stephenson novel in 2015: A fascinating hard science fiction story, Seveneves got me hooked on science fiction again after a long hiatus from the genre. I had to fight my way through and was quite disappointed a few years later by Reamde, so I was a bit hesitant to buy and start reading “Fall, or Dodge in Hell”. And if I had known that “Fall” was at least partially set in the Reamde universe of characters, I probably wouldn’t have taken the plunge. (Fall can be read independently – I did not actually realize the connection back to Reamde until I read about it after finishing the book.)  

Now, after three books by Stephenson, I am still somewhat undecided. Seveneves was great. Reamde not so much. And Fall was somewhere in between. Elements of the book were thought-provoking, others at least made for a good story. But there was also a big part of the book that I again had to fight my way through.

Fall starts out with a (somewhat lengthy, but entertaining) account of a morning in the life of a tech billionaire – a morning cut short by said tech billionaire’s passing during a routine medical procedure. Luckily – for the reader and the billionaire – a will is in place and lawyers and engineers on stand-by to ensure that his brain is preserved to later be scanned and digitally reconstructed.

From here on, the book follows multiple stories – some more interesting than others.

In meatspace – in the real world – we follow a community of people dedicated to making the virtual reconstruction of preserved brains a reality. Scientific and ethical factions and fights over money and influence included. Also in meatspace, we have a hilarious side-story showing what a post-truth social media world can lead to (can you make people believe that a town in the middle of the US was wiped off the map by a nuclear bomb?) and the coming of age story of the niece of our billionaire in a post civil war US. Not all of this is new: “Ameristan” evokes memories of “American War”, elements of the social media story have been told before (“The Circle” and others), and the contrast built between woke coastal elites and Ameristan red-necks feels somewhat stale, but on the whole, I found the story entertaining and engaging.

In the bitworld, in the meantime, Dodge, our dead billionaire, wakes up without his memories and in an empty world that he very gradually learns to build up from scratch. Fall was published in 2019 – before the most recent AI hype entered the mainstream, but reading Stephenson’s account of Dodge beginning to wake and to build a world from scratch, it is hard not to think about the possibly of consciousness and understanding emerging from bits in a neural network. That alone isn’t enough to make a novel, so Dodge goes about creating a whole world from scratch and – thanks to advancements in the real world – is eventually joined in his new world by other people whose brains have been scanned, all initially oblivious to any memories.

And this is where the book becomes a bit tedious: For Dodge was not just any tech billionaire, he made a fortune developing computer games. And so the story in the virtual world turns into a giant quest. If you enjoy playing MMORPGs (or better yet: enjoy watching other people describe their in-game quests), you might enjoy the world Dodge built and the epic battles being fought for control of his new world. If you are like me, you might get a bit bored and look for a way to fast forward the story. (Also, I hate it when science fiction and fantasy are lumped together into one genre. But annoyingly, for Fall this actually makes some sense.)

There is more to the book, obviously – some of it new original, some of it reminiscent of other stories. How do you actually see into bitworld? How do you create enough computing power to run an ever increasing world simulation? How can you try to bring memories into bitworld and shape your future bitworld self before you die? And how can you accelerate moving into bitworld?

All of this is to say: This is a book well worth reading – but given the mix of topics and styles there is a good chance you will find parts of the story a bit tiring. This is not a quick read, but a overall a good one.

You can find my full reading list over at goodreads.