The Big U. [Paperback]

Neal STEPHENSON (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: see notes for publisher info (1974)
• ASIN: B000MYKQ26
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,638,897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer, known for his speculative fiction works, which have been variously categorized science fiction, historical fiction, maximalism, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk. Stephenson explores areas such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired Magazine, and has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (funded by Jeff Bezos) developing a manned sub-orbital launch system.
Born in Fort Meade, Maryland (home of the NSA and the National Cryptologic Museum) Stephenson came from a family comprising engineers and hard scientists he dubs "propeller heads". His father is a professor of electrical engineering whose father was a physics professor; his mother worked in a biochemistry laboratory, while her father was a biochemistry professor. Stephenson's family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in 1960 and then to Ames, Iowa in 1966 where he graduated from Ames High School in 1977. Stephenson furthered his studies at Boston University. He first specialized in physics, then switched to geography after he found that it would allow him to spend more time on the university mainframe. He graduated in 1981 with a B.A. in Geography and a minor in physics. Since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Seattle with his family.
Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic "The Baroque Cycle" (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) and the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sadly Lacking., January 28, 2002

By 

lizvelrene "lizvelrene" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Big U (Paperback)

A wise man once told me not to write a book right out of college, that I should go out unto the world and get some experience first. Neal Stephenson did not hear from this wise man.

I guess any Neal Stephenson fan is going to read this book anyway, since he wrote it, and any book he wrote is going to have some degree of wit and imagination to it, so let me just warn all of you Stephenson fans: don't expect much. Really. It's messy, the structure is lousy, the narrator is unnecessary, etc etc. The story's been done many, many times over (read Fool on the Hill by Ruff, Moo by Jane Smiley, or even Tam Lin by Pamela Dean or White Noise by Don Delillo, for more entertaining/insightful looks at college life). So basically your only draw is to see how Stephenson's developed along the way, and your answer will be: a lot. The good points? It's not completely without merit: the Go Big Red Fan Thing Whatever it is sequence is funny the first time, several characters are likeable, and a few bits of obscure knowledge seep through. The style is already well on the way to the Snow Crash / Cryptonomicon casual-smartass-genius tone (I discount The Diamond Age, which is a bit different though equally good) which makes most of it at least mildly entertaining even when the plot is wandering. Still, one can see how this book went out of print - if it wasn't Stephenson, it wouldn't be back.

If you're not hard-core Stephenson fans already, I would recommend reading any of his other books first. This book barely hints at what the writer is capable of.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars hilarious, immature, and ahead of its time, June 28, 2000

By 

"regehr" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Big U (Paperback)

Picture university life gone wrong: the students and faculty do whatever they want, the computer randomly munches files, giant rats live in the sewers, and the sub-basement holds nuclear waste. In the second half of the book the student population degenerates into bicamerality (as Snow Crash readers know, Stephenson has a thing about Julian Jaynes) and a small-scale war breaks out on campus.

The Big U is a hilarious, manic satire on life at a big public university in the United States. Stephenson has great riffs about the nonsensical nature of a large administration, the bizarre varieties of people who wouldn't be able to survive outside of academia, and the architectural ugliness of recently constructed university buildings. Although it's funny, The Big U is conspicuously a first novel: the dialog often fails to ring true, the tone changes unpredictably, and the use of the first person was almost certainly a mistake: most of the book is in third person and the narrator is never developed into a real character.

Stephenson's novels feature physically unimpressive male protagonists who are nevertheless intelligent, resourceful, and competent at a wide range of technical activities, especially computer programming. These protagonists are often interested in female characters who are their intellectual equals but are also physically attractive. These two classes of characters combined with detailed, tactical action sequences and at least one lavish multi-page description of heavy weaponry epitomize Stephenson's novels. In other words, he writes books for nerds.

The Big U is a fun book. I believe that it tanked when it came out in 1984 not so much because of its flaws but because it was ahead of its time: Microsoft and the Internet had not yet entered the public consciousness and books for nerds were just not yet socially acceptable.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Neal Stephenson's "long-lost" first novel, /The Big U/, November 20, 2000

By 

Liam Proven (Balham, London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Big U (Paperback)

Neal Stephenson has gathered legions of fans with his sassy, streetwise SF sagas such as /Snow Crash/ and /The Diamond Age/, but he didn't start there: his first two books were satirical contemporary novels. /Zodiac/, subtitled "the eco-thriller", received some acclaim and modest commercial success, but his début, /The Big U/, sank almost without trace and copies now change hands for startlingly large amounts of money.

It's recognizably Stephenson, but in an early, immature form. It's the story of a year in the American Megaversity, the eponymous Big U, an improbably large educational institute with a distinctly diabolical feel. In the Big U's four towers live and work its 40,000 students; it is so vast that it is a world unto itself, with its own government, police force and culture, including multiple feuding tribes. Its huge sewer system is the location for live-action roleplaying campaigns lasting days. Its inhabitants seldom leave the building, and in their incarceration, they go a little crazy.

The narrator, Bud, is a freshly-minted associate professor who has the misfortune to be "faculty-in-residence": he lives with the students in E07S. Thus he is privileged to witness the joys of life as a student in the Big U. These include the battle between the Systems of John Wesley Fenrick and Ephraim Klein, who share a room and an obsession with hifi, but regrettably not musical tastes; the oratory of Dexter Fresser, whose part in the Stalinist Underground Battalion is only slightly hampered by the vast amounts of drugs he takes; the multiple factions of the Terrorist alliance, such as the Droogs, the Blue Light Specials, the Flame Squad Brotherhood and the Plex Branch of the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army (Unofficial).

It starts as a romp, a deranged dystopia of university life, and as ever, Stephenson's caustic observations are often hilarious. But the Big U is going wrong. It's reached critical mass, and it's about to explode. Something has to give, and right at the sharp end are the few sane hard-working undergrads who are trying to get an education - and Bud is right in there with them.

First novels are often autobiographical, and /The Big U/ has the feel of an impassioned rant by someone who has just escaped from higher education and has some stuff he needs to get off his chest. As Bud says,

"This is a history... by writing it I hope to purge the Big U from my system, and with it all my bitterness and contempt."

One can only hope, though, that the next line isn't as true: "What you are about to read is not an aberration: it can happen in your local university too. The Big U, simply, was a few years ahead of the rest."

Although it's plentifully inventive, /The Big U/ isn't as imaginative as Stephenson's subsequent books - it's all too possible to guess at where some of his inspiration sprang from. The story also doesn't fit together quite as neatly as in later work. However, there's much to please fans here, and as ever, some of the characters and events will live in the memory long afterwards. It's a wild ride, and as ever, leads to an unexpected destination.