Customer Reviews

The Big U

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The title should have been Dante's U, as the world Stephenson describes seems to fall deeper into the hell we knew as college. Quite frankly, the only reason this book is of interest is because of Stephenson's later works. I don't know how anyone can take this book seriously or say it has much to do with college in the eigthies. There is so much material from the eighties college experience and this book barely scratches the surface. It starts as a slightly over the top skewering life on the big campus, but to stick to the book's themes, the story turns into one huge (and not so funny) acid trip. The second half of the book is so over the top, nuclear waste, giant rats, and submachine gun toting heroes that it lost all sense of 'fun' or satire. One can see a little genesis of his later writings, especially 'Zodiac', but anyone who is not a fan of Stephenson's is going to be rolling their eyeballs and wondering how he made the huge leap from this to outstanding 'Snow Crash'.

Neal Stephenson's ethnological imagination makes hash of the usual campus clans, clones and clowns in The Big U. A month by month deconstruction of the not-so-typical academic year in a very typical Midwestern University, The Big U is probably most interesting to three different groups: Neal Stephenson's readers, readers of academic satire, and anyone traumatized by a college experience in the '80's.

Stephenson readers may be most disappointed in the tenor of the book. Although it doesn't live up to the standards of his later novels, however, The Big U is a microscopic look at the germs of ideas that Stephenson more fully developed in Snow Crash. Most notable of these: the Worm, a powerful computer virus that only one Ubergeek can successfully battle. But the very elements most interesting to Stephenson fans may baffle fans of academic satire, who would probably prefer a straightforward romp, such as Jane Smiley's Moo U.

This novel cannot be evaluated outside of the context of the 1980's, when the words "date rape" were just beginning to be uttered. In colleges across the midwest, the world was divided between the Reaganites and those who lived in constant awareness that Missouri housed at least 165 nuclear missiles. Something called AIDS hit the news, and there were some projections that huge numbers of the general population would be dead in 10 years. Anybody who knew what a mouse was was automatically a geek and proud to be one. The Big U is probably most valuable for its sociological grasp of all the factions and campus groups coming to a head in that time.

Because I am a Neal Stephenson reader, a fan of academic satire and a survivor of the '80's, I found The Big U a wonderful read, and couldn't put it down. I liked the characters all the way through, stayed interested in the plot, and couldn't wait to find out what happened. I wasn't disappointed, but did find some of the scenes a bit violent. Thus, the four-star rating.

After a long hiatus, Neal Stephenson's first novel is back, and, having read it, I see not good reason why it was out of print for so long. It's certainly amusing enough and should be a big hit among geeks, and the weaknesses the book has are not all that much worse than what Stephenson's other books prior to _Cryptonomicon_ suffered from.

Somewhat reminiscent of Matt Ruff's _Fool on the Hill_, _The Big U_ is set around dueling subcultures in an university setting. Characteristic for Stephenson, we get technological implausibilities instead of Ruff's magical realism, the characters have plenty of attitude and a good deal of senseless violence, and the geek subculture is lovingly portrayed.

Like many of Stephenson's novels, the end of _The Bug U_ is not quite as brilliant as the beginning. Also, the first person narrator is not one of the strong points of the book. Still, this is overall a highly amusing book and strongly recommended if you liked any other Stephenson novel.

...their late-night conversations and speculations might have produced something like _The Big U_. I'm a Stephenson fan, and was delighted to see this book back in print, and greatly enjoyed reading it.

On the other hand, I can see why (if rumor is true) he did not want it reprinted; it is not up to the same level, in terms of tension of plot or depth of character, as his later work. The satire is, at times, over-the-top, but the targets deserve it, and his aim is true, if sometimes using overly powerful ammunition.

If you're a Stephenson fan, read it; if you liked _The Futurological Congress_, _Memoirs Found in a Bathtub_, Sladek's _The Muller-Fokker Effect_, or ever wondered what Ballard's _High Rise_ would be like as a comedy, definitely pick this book up.

When will book publishers get it into their heads and re-publish this book? Hopefully, the success of his recent "Cryptonomicon" will prompt a reprint of odd little classic, a book that came out before Stephenson started getting name recognition. People, especially NS's fans, need to know about this book. Even my friend, who was the one who got me to read "Snow Crash", had never heard about this one. I just picked it up at a local library on a lark and was pleasantly suprised! "The Big U" is a maddening (and kind of funny, in a disquieting way) descent into a ravaged and war-torn...college campus? Strange as that may seem, after a little time reading, one almost starts to believe that, somewhere out there, there actually IS a "Big U"! The best way to describe this book: an average overcrowded state university as seen through the eyes of Hieronymous (sp?) Bosch or Dante... Sure, its detractors complain that its a bit dated and while this is true, it does nothing to lessen the impact. It must be read to be believed!

I first read Neal Stephenson's "The Big U" when I was in college and had picked it out of a great pile of books in the basement of the college bookstore. They were selling books for as little as a dime or a nickel apiece. I bought "The Big U" for this tiny amount, and have spent the past couple of years on and off trying to replace this copy. Why is it out of print?!?! "The Big U" may not be a classical masterpiece of satirical fiction, but it has important elements that make it a book to read and reread again and again. It's wildly adventuresome, with a cast of characters that range from the narrator "nice guy" to the "dueling stereo roommates" to the "Airhead" sorority girls to the submerged cult of Dungeons and Dragons fanatics who find themselves in a game more real than they ever would have imagined. "The Big U" is also an interesting precursor to Neal Stephenson's other works. His style is punchy, healthy and vivid. I don't know how else to describe him, but I can't help but always think of John kennedy Toole when I think of Stephenson. If you find a copy of "The Big U", hang onto it!

This book was my introduction to the work of Neal Stephenson, and oddly enough I read (and bought) my copy when it first came out. It was described to me as a book about open warfare at a college, but I found it to be much more-the characters are actually realistic, especially if you attended college in the eighties, as I did. It also was a harbinger of things to come- the political correctness movement, for example. It is also a brilliant parody of college politics, and the naive intelligentsia that rule there. Mostly, though, it is just plain fun, with (yes) open warfare breaking out, battling groups of Airheads, Terrorists (thinly veiled Greek-types), Right wing religious fanatics and acid-warped Communists. Plus, subplots of unrequited love, revenge, computer programming, dungeons and dragons and food fights.The most unusual feature in the book has to be that the science geeks are the most normal people in the campus- a feature that I found has been followed in most of Neal Stephenson's work since. David Payn