Customer Reviews

Interface

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is not Stephenson at his best (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon). The book has a slow buildup to the premise described on the back cover, and then rips through most of the good stuff in the last 150 pages. The story takes place in the 1996 election (I'm assuming, as the book was written in 1994). Besides the wiplash ending, there are some other major problems with the book.

The characters are very two dimensional, adhearing to besic archetypes. There is no real protaganist. None of the charcters are developed enough for the reader to even care about them.

The plot is implausible, not from a technological standpoint, but from a political one. It takes a leap of suspension of disbelief to think that Cozzano (the hero?) makes it as far as he does.

The story skips major events in the srory, such as Election Day!

Don't get me wrong, this is an entertaining story, but nowhere near as deep as the Stephenson we know and love.

If you've seen the size of some of his works, the System of the World trilogy spans almost 3000 pages, then you know what I mean. Six-hundred pages seem like a quick read by comparison, and it does go by quickly.

The incumbent president's platform for re-election is the negation of the national debt. A large conglomerate decides to use it's money to get someone into office that will not renege on the American Debts. This entity sees a perfect opportunity when William A. Cozzano has a stroke and thus opens up the possibility of a new procedure. Doctors implant a chip in his brain to replace lost nerve connections. However, who is now making his decisions?

Part thriller, part political satire, this will keep you hooked wondering how it will all work out.

Oh, yeah; if you want a cheaper copy, just input "Interface" at the search for books menu and it should bring up an earlier edition printed in 1999. It is the same book under the pseudonym Steven Bury and can be had for about two dollars plus shipping.

This is a great summer read, which you should be able to knock off in about a week, but this may be the worst Stephenson novel. (Which means it's a good novel, but just not up to the standards usually set by this author.)

This novel has the worst character development of any Stephenson novel that I have ever read. (That includes everything, chronologically, from Zodiac through the Baroque Cycle.) Rather than an interesting critique of the American political process, which is what Stephenson apparently set out to create, Mr. Stephenson has created a passion play in which the characters are superficially developed and somewhat cliched.

The central theme of political hacks hijacking American democracy is interesting enough -- especially considering that this novel was written in the pre-Rovian era -- but this novel uterly lacks the exhaustive research, meticulous prose, and well-rounded characters that make Stephenson one of the greatest modern authors.

When compared to the rest of Stephenson's work, this one is just shy of three stars. When compared with everything else being written in this genre, it gets four and a half. Buy it, read it, but don't expect vintage Stephenson. All in all, what you get here is a very good story that fails to meet the very high expectations set by this author.

Interface is a neat little conspiracy tale dealing with the attempt by an organization with virtually unlimited resources to take effective control of the United States. It is, apparently, a republished edition of a very early Stephenson novel and exhibits Stephenson's wonderful gift for drawing vivid characters by way of providing an exceptionally detailed background. Average Stephenson far surpasses the best works of most other authors. Having just finished his over 3,000 page opus set in the Baroque era, I can state without qualification that he really is that good.

One of my favorite characteristics of a Stephenson novel is his uncanny ability to ride right on the line of willing suspension of disbelief. Perhaps because his characters are so excellently drawn the reader is willing to accept that, for example, neurosurgical science advances fifty years in a week or that a candidate could get away with turning a debate into a campaign advertisement. We aren't just introduced to the protagonist, we are introduced to his great-grandparents and given a complete family history. The introduction of our evil (well, not really evil, but that is his role) genius character takes place only after Stephenson knowledgably describes the character's monster pick-up truck and its effect upon the locals. So, yes, the book is full of rather contrived situations and characters--but they are so exquisitely contrived that you can't put the book down. These are characters you come to understand and care about--you find yourself hoping that they succeed.

Finally, Stephenson has some interesting things to say about our world. He understands at a very deep level how we are drowning in BS and trading reality for pleasant fictions that help us get along in an overly complex society that is no longer interested in where it is going or how it got there.

While this is a great book for entertainment purposes and will be purchased rabidly and enjoyed by (the great number of) Stephenson fans, it will have little impact on the genre as a whole. Stephenons's flair is on display here but it is not the sort of thing that will affect future writers. It's a book strictly for Stephenson enthusiasts and not a book by which readers should be introduced to Stephenson. For introductions, see Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS

As we suggest, Stephenson fans will and should purchase this book and read it. There is something ineffably glorious about reading Stephenson's work for many people. For anyone who is familiar with his writing and laughs that kind of deep joyous laugh-this is a great book and should be read. It will be read quickly over a couple fo days in a kind of furious pace. Readers who enjoy thrillers such as John Grisham or Michael Crichton or Tom Clancy, then this book will probably be very delightful and exciting. Stephenson has none of the pretensions that these other authors sometimes have. You get all of the insight, all of the suspense, plus a great bit of comedic relief.

WHO SHOULD PASS

People who are investigating Stephenson for the first time should avoid this book. The Baroque Cycle may be his opus, Cryptonomicon is, we feel, his best book. Snow Crash is Stephenson at his most accessible and perhaps his most relevant. We have avoided saying anything about J. Frederick George merely because we don't know where he fits in with the obviously Stephensonesque prose. He is an author that will subsume others in the ferocity and incandescence of his work. To investigate George and gauge him as a writer, this would be a terrible book to purchase. If you're looking for history, by one of his books Civilization Past and Present.

READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW AT INCHOATUS.COM

...was Richard Condon. And he was ~very~ good! He wrote novels that had nearly impossibly complex plots become hysterically funny. One of those novels posited what many of us have long believed: that Prohibition was merely a plot by Joe Kennedy to increase the street price of liquor, and that he was able to pull it off by persuading Congress to enact the legislation. When it became so painfully obvious that Prohibition was more of an evil than not, it got repealed, but not before old Joe had made enough money to get at least one son into the White House, with others to (hopefully) follow. That novel was Mile High.

And then along came Michael Crichton, and from time to time he, too, was good, but only rarely very good. Had Crichton bothered to talk with Condon before writing The Terminal Man, he might have written Interface. I think that, at some time in Stephenson's life, he had a Condon biochip implanted, and that chip has enabled him to continue to RC's reincarnation.

Bottom line is that Stephenson writes dense, convoluted, hilarious prose that seems to be able to interweave itself with my neurons. Condon was for many years my favorite author. I'm confident that he would be flattered to share that distinction with Stephenson. I have to wonder whether he met Condon. Hopefully Stephenson will write another novel or three.

Truly a Manchurian Candidate for the computer age (thanks for the quote, Seattle Weekly), the story follows the path of one William A. Cozzano on his bid for the presidency. Guidance for his campaign comes from the usual cadre of analysts, speechwriters, policy wogs, et al but Cozzano is best aided by a computer chip. A chip imbedded in his brain...a chip that allows his handlers to, well, go read the book...

The novel traces the side stories of the international development of the chip's technology and application, the tenebrous fraternity that moves to shape global realpolitik to suit its wishes, and the responses of the 'family' Cozzano to the new G4 processor in papa's skull. These give the novel its depth and soul. I particularly enjoyed the lifestories of Eleanor Richmond and Floyd Wayne Vishniak...these characters are beautifully crafted.

This is a clever and deftly-written (as well as enjoyable and highly-credible) tale of politics & technology and the unholy alliance of the two. It works simply because it takes very little imagination to see real-world applications and their implications.

Cheers to the authors for a job well done and also to their publishers for the reprints of this novel and of The Cobweb, another Stephenson/George collaboration. I thoroughly enjoy reading their material and hope they are working on a new offering...

Earlier reviewers are correct to observe that this is not Neal Stephenson at his finest; the book needed an editor's eye (especially in the last third) to pick up repetition at the sentence level--still, the events in the US 2008 presidential campaign have made this book amazingly apt, and much funnier than it was even a year ago: an election taking place during a U.S. financial crisis that renders families homeless and feeling hopeless and has an incumbent president offering silly solutions, combined with professional media analysts who understand that content matters less than camera angles, a pseudo-populist politico who tries to manipulate prejudices with coded language, and other things that look all too familiar. If you want something readable that will make you laugh and wince at how much a satire published fourteen years ago got 2008 right, this is it. The plot gets out of a hand in the last pages as Stephenson gives into his recurring temptation to write "action" scenes, but it remains fun throughout.

From what I understand, this is a re-release of some early Stephenson work. Its not typical Stephenson as we know, its probably his worst book on that relative scale - which, as folks have pointed out, makes it a much better book than most out there. Yah, the characters don't develop out as much as his recent stuff. But man, his predictions are uncanny - $10 trillion national debt sure sounds plausible now, but it didn't in 1994. They are now indeed implanting chips in the brains of folks to overcome neurologic disability, too. And of course, the body politic is timeless.

I would say that Interface is more relavant now than it ever was in the past. This book needs to be turned into a screenplay between now and the '08 election if you ask me.

The other reviewers saying that this is not a typical Stephenson book are correct, but the technical though-provoking themes are still here.

My main complaint, what keeps this from 4 stars, is the out-of-character implausibility of the Floyd character. When we first meet him, he's portrayed at the stereotypical racist redneck who is only barely able to restrain himself from inflicting violence on the "Jew" that knocked on his door. From there he quickly becomes a news-reading researching savant with subtle & nuanced insights into the true nature of what Cozzano has become, slipping then into a paranoid-delusional state of mind that just happens to stumble upon the correct interpretation of events. It got to be that every time the focus was on him, I was pulled out of the book and lost my suspension of disbelief.

Definitely an above-average book, with interesting insights into the political process and the future of technology re: computer-brain interfaces, recommended for fans of the techno-thriller genre or Stephenson fans.