THE BIG U PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

Neal Stephenson | 320 pages | 14 Dec 2002 | HarperCollins Publishers Inc | 9780380816033 | English | New York, NY, United States BIG U | Rebuild By Design

LMCR is being implemented in two separate parts. Related content. On April 17, Community members from Lower Manhattan come together to discuss de Blasio's flood protection proposal. The BIG Team. Find Us on Social Media. The events take place at a fictitious big university consisting of a single building a central complex with eight towers containing student housing , making the university an enclosed universe of its own. Stephenson uses this fact to take what starts as a mostly realistic satire and move it further and further into the realm of improbability, with giant radioactive rats, hordes of bats and a lab-made railgun. The book was written while Stephenson attended University. The fictional campus' design is based on a BU dormitory, . Stephenson has said he is not proud of this book. When original editions began selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars, he relented and allowed The Big U to be republished, saying that the only thing worse than people reading the book was paying that much to read it. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Novel by . As his first work it is very reminiscent of Hunter S Thompson 's first book The Rum Diar This is the story of a very serious student trying to navigate the bureaucracy of the ridiculous hyperbole of higher education that is American Mega-university, a sort of parody of every large American university. As his first work it is very reminiscent of Hunter S Thompson 's first book The Rum Diary ; they are both rough and do not live up to the later works, but they both show the promise of the author. I read this book because I like Neal Stephenson. Apr 25, Mike rated it really liked it. Stephenson's very first book, from , which he has since disowned, is much better and more entertaining than he gives it credit for! A campus satire and a bit of a mess, it hasn't dated that much and is great fun to read. It's also amusing to see early examples of Stephenson's later themes. The nest of computer prefigures , the university sealed off from the outside world prefigures , and the wild action sequences prefigure REAMDE. And at pages, it has the virt Stephenson's very first book, from , which he has since disowned, is much better and more entertaining than he gives it credit for! And at pages, it has the virtue of being quite short for a Stephenson book. Very glad I read it. View 2 comments. Aug 06, Robert rated it liked it Shelves: general-fiction. 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 minimall 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. Aug 31, Marina rated it it was amazing. This book is brilliant. It's beautifully disturbing. It flows like a mad river. It's amazing. Admittedly, I have not read much of Stephenson. I read bits and pieces of 'Snowcrash' but found it a bit boring. I have had 'Anathem' highly reccomended to me but found the thickness a bit intimidating. Therefore I am a novice, untainted by Stephenson's apparent brilliance. This book is a little gem. A rough, uncut, blinding gem. I love the smooth transitioning into madness. Until pretty much the end, whe This book is brilliant. Until pretty much the end, when I could stop and think, I did not realize how ludicrously exquisite the descent or rather, ascent into madness was. Most of the critiques towards this book seem to have to do with how it doesn't stand up to the standard of the later Stephenson. I think this beauty should be held as an amazing piece of literature in its own right. Mar 15, Cain rated it it was amazing. This book is one of the funniest things I have ever read. It gets a little outrageous, especially in the second half, but a lot of this is just expanding on real-life ridiculousness which already borders on hyperbole. Sep 13, Tony rated it liked it. The street outside my restaurant pulsates with life. The sidewalks narrow as random guys hold signs offering free advice. Tables are strewn with trinkets for sale. A French hippie carves one-hitters and juggles badly. A wannabe thesbian dresses in crazy outfits and sings and jumps around without rhyme, reason, or talent in a bizarre attempt to entertain at all costs: a sort of street theater of the rude and crude. Book peddlers are spaced every half a length of a north-south block. From time to time, the book peddler, who sets up two long church basement tables almost every day just outside my restaurant, offers a free book as I arrive for work. They remain untouched. I went three months without a day off and convalesced without reprieve from sundry ailments. I began to consider skimming a few articles in the paper or online, a huge accomplishment. I wiled away my days downloading television episodes and watching cheesy DVDs. I was in a rut…. One night, my friend Sandro, the intelligent, scrawny, dancing Dominican who works as a dishwasher and busboy at my restaurant, came in with a find from a stack the book peddler had left up for grabs next to some freebie newspaper carrels. But, one night he found a book that looked interesting. He loves history and natural history in particular. I accepted the book and began to read. Thanks to the enthusiasm displayed by my friend, I was back in the reading groove. By the next morning, I was better than half way through the novel and woke up early. I scanned through metal racks of paperback books on sale and stacked on tables. I looked over the sale racks and tables that are not organized like the rest of the store. Books are not strictly sorted by genre, subject, or author. I just wait for a spine, a cover, or title to leap out at me. Then I read back covers and keep going. Within minutes I had ten or twelve options that I narrowed down to two, two paperback novels and five bucks later I emerged on the street just south of Union Square. I walked through the market, picked up a couple of perfect peaches and walked up to Madison Square Park where they were playing U. Open matches on a big screen in the park. A seat in the outdoor park, a tennis match, a good book with two more ready to read and I found the perfect form of relaxation before going to work. I was hooked. I suppose I have to believe that dreams can be realized even if outside the conventional timeframe. I started cooking professionally when I was ten years older or more than most who start out. Or, I endeavor to make that true. Within pages of starting this novel, I became intrigued by the narrative voice. The voice is first-person. The narrator is not omniscient per se. He sets himself apart from the fray. Immediately, the narrator is complex. He is not omniscient. Yet, he is an observer. We also get the idea from the opening pages that the narrator is a player in the story. What then are his motives for telling the story? The question underlies much of the novel. Perhaps he needs to make himself more integral. This raises the whole question of the autobiographical voice in literature. He endures not because Whitman included portions of autobiography and imposed his own soul on the work in a direct fashion but because the character Whitman is immortalized by lofty words and thoughts. Whitman becomes a symbol, perhaps what he wanted to be or could have been in life, he becomes these things and more in poems. We must assume his facts are at least skewed if accurate. The whole novel has these sort of built in complexities that give the reader so much to contemplate while enjoying clear, straight-forward prose. Aside from the narrative voice, Stephenson is a powerful descriptive writer. View 1 comment. Jun 09, Althea Ann rated it liked it. Jan 12, Ericka Clouther rated it it was ok Shelves: s , book-club-dad , scifi , 0-konmaried , fiction , author-male , first-novel , cyberpunk , stephenson. This is like a futuristic Lord of the Flies inside a big city university and dorm. The book is not good. It took me two months of slogging through it to finish it. I gave it two stars instead of one because I liked the idea kind of and the characters, but not the insane execution. Mar 27, Tim Pendry rated it really liked it Shelves: horror , science-fiction , north-american , popular-culture , alternative-histories , twentieth-century , heroic-fantasy , black-comedy , humour. This was Neal Stephenson's first published novel , written when he was 25 and just out of university. It is an accomplished over-the-top satire on the American university system that reminded me of J. G Ballard's dystopian 'High Rise' of It is also the work of a bright young writer from a scientific and rationalist background letting off steam about the insanity and absurdity of the human species when it is purporting to use higher education for improvement but is doing nothing of the This was Neal Stephenson's first published novel , written when he was 25 and just out of university. It is also the work of a bright young writer from a scientific and rationalist background letting off steam about the insanity and absurdity of the human species when it is purporting to use higher education for improvement but is doing nothing of the kind. The idea of a modern architectural and institutional structure literally collapsing under its weight because of the raw human nature it seeks to contain is not original but what Stephenson does is make that raw nature the tribalism and conformity of American High School culture. The theme is of often slightly mad Stephenson makes use of the informal British word 'bonkers' at one point individualistic heroes triumphing over the mindlessness of people who go to university not to think and learn but to continue their adolescence before they join conventional society. It is not a great book, just a good one. Sometimes Stephenson lets his own rioting imagination sink into moments of obscurity or incoherence. But there are many moments of hilarity and even filmic excitement as this structure of competing conformities degenerates into violence and outright war. I could spend paragraphs outlining all the standard tropes of social criticism he makes use of and makes fun of. The final stance is, of course, precisely that of the American liberal rationalist using science to conquer, in part by employing irrational religious enthusiasm against itself. There is nothing philosophically new in this. It is all part of a liberal intellectual disdain for the mob and, to be unkind, a projection of the impotence felt by the rational individualist who ironically 'conforms' to his own intolerant stereotype in this respect in the face of mass society. This is a book of class war, or rather of class propaganda, directed by one element of society - the technocracy - against the rest of humanity. The author is spokesperson for a rational elite despising the raw material which it has been tasked with overseeing using its own form of 'magic'. The MegaUniversity becomes a dysfunctional whole, part of a wider society, yet separate from it. Stephenson intensifies its absurdities, viciousness, ignorance ironically and chaos. The cement to the story is a completely potty conspiracy theory over control of nuclear waste disposal. He cites the bicameral brain theory of Jaynes more than once not a theory I ever found persuasive but this enables him to play with the idea especially through the character of the insane Fred Fine of the two worlds of reason and imagination losing their boundaries. One of the charms of the book is its contemporary portrayal of the mind-set of the geeks and nerds evidently one of the sets of hero that mirror the mind of the author who would come to create our own digital and internet culture over subsequent decades. It also fair-minded. This is no rant, in fact. The logic of capitalism is cynically argued and the University President SS Krupp, is presented more favourably than any of the social justice warriors avant la lettre of the Stalinist SUB. Indeed, Stephenson clearly quite likes intelligent authority. Stephenson is also a sensible feminist able to have an easy laugh at the mother goddess types and the airheads but rightly horrified at the collusion of airheads in the exploitative sexual behaviour of MegaUniversity's jocks, curiously self-naming themselves the Terrorists. The strongest character of all is in fact the lesbian former Student Government head Sarah, a high-achieving, grounded, brave young woman in despair at the conformity of the airheads in her Tower. She is central to the eventual co-operative triumph of reason over hysteria. There are live action dungeons and dragons-type adventures in sewers, a clown corpse straight out of King horror, inept academics, gunfights in corridors and elevator shafts, a mad former College President stalking the university, electrocutions, bureaucracy and more, much much more. There is too much to comment on in this book which has everything from giant radioactive rats to murderous food fights. It should just be enjoyed as a romp through American social behaviours with an inventive idea on almost every page and rather likeable gun-toting student heroes and heroines. Feb 23, Vincent Silk rated it really liked it. Yes it was at times stupid and messy, and read kind of like he wrote it in two months on a typewriter when he was twenty-four, and a good deal of it devolved into this macho-nerd frothing over weapons and battle tactics. But as a kind of dark parody of university culture it was pretty funny and searingly critical. Like most of Stephenson's books, came to a rapid stop instead of actually ending in any real thought out way. I kind of didn't mind because the whole thing was a mess. I mostly read it to see what he was writing 20 years ago, and I got pretty much what I expected. As with any Stephenson book, I have many criticisms but it's enjoyable to read something where you can hear the writer enjoying themselves so much. Jun 21, Evan rated it it was ok. There is one vivid character in this novel: Fred Fine, an excruciating portrait of a live-action gamer with severe delusions. The Big U by Neal Stephenson

The proposal consists of separate but coordinated plans for three contiguous regions of the waterfront and associated communities, regions dubbed compartments. Each compartment comprises a physically separate flood-protection zone, isolated from flooding in the other zones, but each equally a field for integrated social and community planning. Bridging Berm provides robust vertical protection for the Lower East Side from future storm surge and rising sea levels. Both berms and bridges are wide and planted with a diverse selection of salt tolerant trees, shrubs and perennials, providing a resilient urban habitat. Between the Manhattan Bridge and Montgomery Street, deployable walls are attached to the underside of the FDR Drive, ready to flip down to prepare for flood events. Decorated by neighborhood artists, the panels when not in use create an inviting ceiling above the East River Esplanade. At night, lighting integrated into the panels transforms a currently menacing area into a safe destination. Panels can also be flipped down to protect from the elements, creating a seasonal market during the winter. Enhancing the public realm while protecting the Financial District and critical transportation infrastructure beyond, the Battery Berm weaves an elevated path through the park. Along this berm, a series of upland knolls form unique landscapes where people farm, sunbathe, eat and engage with world class gardens. In place of the existing Coast Guard building, the plan envisions a new building programmed as a maritime museum or environmental education facility, whose form is derived from the flood protection at the water-facing ground floor. See all ten proposals at Rebuild by Design. You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users. About Contact Submit Advertise. Change country. The story chronicles the disillusionment of a number of young intellectuals as they encounter the realities of the higher education establishment parodied in the story. Over time their lives and sanity disintegrate in different ways through a series of escalating events that culminates with a full-scale civil war raging on the campus of American Megaversity. The events take place at a fictitious big university consisting of a single building a central complex with eight towers containing student housing , making the university an enclosed universe of its own. Stephenson uses this fact to take what starts as a mostly realistic satire and move it further and further into the realm of improbability, with giant radioactive rats, hordes of bats and a lab-made railgun. The book was written while Stephenson attended . The fictional campus' design is based on a BU dormitory, Warren Towers. Stephenson has said he is not proud of this book. When original editions began selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars, he relented and allowed The Big U to be republished, saying that the only thing worse than people reading the book was paying that much to read it. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Novel by Neal Stephenson. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. The BIG U: BIG's New York City Vision for "Rebuild by Design" | ArchDaily

In , Hurricane Sandy's devastating impact on coastal communities along the eastern seaboard forced cities in floodplains to reflect upon whether their communities were resilient. Rebuild by Design, the U. The BIG U team worked with one question in mind: How can we protect the city from flood and stormwater without blockading residential access to the waterfront? The BIG U is a mile protective ribbon around lower Manhattan designed into three separate yet interconnected compartments based on local neighborhood necessities. Bridging Berm provides robust vertical protection for the Lower East Side from future storm surge and rising sea levels. Both berms and bridges are wide and planted with a diverse selection of salt tolerant trees, shrubs and perennials, providing a resilient urban habitat. Between the Manhattan Bridge and Montgomery Street, deployable walls are attached to the underside of the FDR Drive, ready to flip down to prepare for flood events. Decorated by neighborhood artists, the panels when not in use create an inviting ceiling above the East River Esplanade. At night, lighting integrated into the panels transforms a currently menacing area into a safe destination. Panels can also be flipped down to protect from the elements, creating a seasonal market during the winter. Enhancing the public realm while protecting the Financial District and critical transportation infrastructure beyond, the Battery Berm weaves an elevated path through the park. Along this berm, a series of upland knolls form unique landscapes where people farm, sunbathe, eat and engage with world class gardens. In place of the existing Coast Guard building, the plan envisions a new building programmed as a maritime museum or environmental education facility, whose form is derived from the flood protection at the water-facing ground floor. See all ten proposals at Rebuild by Design. You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! By the time I read it, the evidence was a little more mixed. Thus I had trouble taking the plot seriously. I couldn't get through even the first volume of . Maybe this one was a fluke. I choose to see it as a stroke of genius. Maybe this book couldn't have been written seriously or intentionally, because we are all too identified with sides in the on-going culture war that rages in the universities. Stephenson has a pretty clear side with the left-Libertarians now, but in this book maybe he hadn't quite found his voice, because even characters on the wrong side seem sympathetic, despite some salvos in favor of his clear favorites. As Lincoln and C. Lewis argued in their distinctive ways, the sides we are on, and the sides that are really in the right, may not necessarily turn out to be the same. Sep 23, Breinholt Dorrough rated it it was ok. 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. 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. This is the story of a very serious student trying to navigate the bureaucracy of the ridiculous hyperbole of higher education that is American Mega-university, a sort of parody of every large American university. This book is very entertaining, despite some very disturbing parts. This book is not nearly as good as Neal Stephenson 's subsequent works but it is still entertaining and it really shows his promise. As his first work it is very reminiscent of Hunter S Thompson 's first book The Rum Diar This is the story of a very serious student trying to navigate the bureaucracy of the ridiculous hyperbole of higher education that is American Mega-university, a sort of parody of every large American university. As his first work it is very reminiscent of Hunter S Thompson 's first book The Rum Diary ; they are both rough and do not live up to the later works, but they both show the promise of the author. I read this book because I like Neal Stephenson. Apr 25, Mike rated it really liked it. Stephenson's very first book, from , which he has since disowned, is much better and more entertaining than he gives it credit for! A campus satire and a bit of a mess, it hasn't dated that much and is great fun to read. It's also amusing to see early examples of Stephenson's later themes. The nest of computer hackers prefigures Cryptonomicon, the university sealed off from the outside world prefigures Anathem, and the wild action sequences prefigure REAMDE. And at pages, it has the virt Stephenson's very first book, from , which he has since disowned, is much better and more entertaining than he gives it credit for! And at pages, it has the virtue of being quite short for a Stephenson book. Very glad I read it. View 2 comments. Aug 06, Robert rated it liked it Shelves: general-fiction. 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 minimall 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. Aug 31, Marina rated it it was amazing. This book is brilliant. It's beautifully disturbing. It flows like a mad river. It's amazing. Admittedly, I have not read much of Stephenson. I read bits and pieces of 'Snowcrash' but found it a bit boring. I have had 'Anathem' highly reccomended to me but found the thickness a bit intimidating. Therefore I am a novice, untainted by Stephenson's apparent brilliance. This book is a little gem. A rough, uncut, blinding gem. I love the smooth transitioning into madness. Until pretty much the end, whe This book is brilliant. Until pretty much the end, when I could stop and think, I did not realize how ludicrously exquisite the descent or rather, ascent into madness was. Most of the critiques towards this book seem to have to do with how it doesn't stand up to the standard of the later Stephenson. I think this beauty should be held as an amazing piece of literature in its own right. Mar 15, Cain rated it it was amazing. This book is one of the funniest things I have ever read. It gets a little outrageous, especially in the second half, but a lot of this is just expanding on real-life ridiculousness which already borders on hyperbole. Sep 13, Tony rated it liked it. The street outside my restaurant pulsates with life. The sidewalks narrow as random guys hold signs offering free advice. Tables are strewn with trinkets for sale. A French hippie carves one-hitters and juggles badly. A wannabe thesbian dresses in crazy outfits and sings and jumps around without rhyme, reason, or talent in a bizarre attempt to entertain at all costs: a sort of street theater of the rude and crude. Book peddlers are spaced every half a length of a north-south block. From time to time, the book peddler, who sets up two long church basement tables almost every day just outside my restaurant, offers a free book as I arrive for work. They remain untouched. I went three months without a day off and convalesced without reprieve from sundry ailments. I began to consider skimming a few articles in the paper or online, a huge accomplishment. I wiled away my days downloading television episodes and watching cheesy DVDs. I was in a rut…. One night, my friend Sandro, the intelligent, scrawny, dancing Dominican who works as a dishwasher and busboy at my restaurant, came in with a find from a stack the book peddler had left up for grabs next to some freebie newspaper carrels. But, one night he found a book that looked interesting. He loves history and natural history in particular. I accepted the book and began to read. Thanks to the enthusiasm displayed by my friend, I was back in the reading groove. By the next morning, I was better than half way through the novel and woke up early. I scanned through metal racks of paperback books on sale and stacked on tables. I looked over the sale racks and tables that are not organized like the rest of the store. Books are not strictly sorted by genre, subject, or author. I just wait for a spine, a cover, or title to leap out at me. Then I read back covers and keep going. Within minutes I had ten or twelve options that I narrowed down to two, two paperback novels and five bucks later I emerged on the street just south of Union Square. I walked through the market, picked up a couple of perfect peaches and walked up to Madison Square Park where they were playing U. Open matches on a big screen in the park. A seat in the outdoor park, a tennis match, a good book with two more ready to read and I found the perfect form of relaxation before going to work. I was hooked. I suppose I have to believe that dreams can be realized even if outside the conventional timeframe. I started cooking professionally when I was ten years older or more than most who start out. Or, I endeavor to make that true. Within pages of starting this novel, I became intrigued by the narrative voice. The voice is first-person. The narrator is not omniscient per se. He sets himself apart from the fray. Immediately, the narrator is complex. He is not omniscient. Yet, he is an observer. We also get the idea from the opening pages that the narrator is a player in the story. What then are his motives for telling the story? The question underlies much of the novel. Perhaps he needs to make himself more integral. This raises the whole question of the autobiographical voice in literature. He endures not because Whitman included portions of autobiography and imposed his own soul on the work in a direct fashion but because the character Whitman is immortalized by lofty words and thoughts. Whitman becomes a symbol, perhaps what he wanted to be or could have been in life, he becomes these things and more in poems. We must assume his facts are at least skewed if accurate. The whole novel has these sort of built in complexities that give the reader so much to contemplate while enjoying clear, straight-forward prose. Aside from the narrative voice, Stephenson is a powerful descriptive writer. View 1 comment. Jun 09, Althea Ann rated it liked it. Jan 12, Ericka Clouther rated it it was ok Shelves: s , book-club-dad , scifi , 0-konmaried , fiction , author-male , first- novel , cyberpunk , stephenson. This is like a futuristic Lord of the Flies inside a big city university and dorm. The book is not good. It took me two months of slogging through it to finish it. I gave it two stars instead of one because I liked the idea kind of and the characters, but not the insane execution. Mar 27, Tim Pendry rated it really liked it Shelves: horror , science-fiction , north-american , popular-culture , alternative-histories , twentieth-century , heroic-fantasy , black-comedy , humour. This was Neal Stephenson's first published novel , written when he was 25 and just out of university. It is an accomplished over-the-top satire on the American university system that reminded me of J. G Ballard's dystopian 'High Rise' of It is also the work of a bright young writer from a scientific and rationalist background letting off steam about the insanity and absurdity of the human species when it is purporting to use higher education for improvement but is doing nothing of the This was Neal Stephenson's first published novel , written when he was 25 and just out of university. It is also the work of a bright young writer from a scientific and rationalist background letting off steam about the insanity and absurdity of the human species when it is purporting to use higher education for improvement but is doing nothing of the kind. The idea of a modern architectural and institutional structure literally collapsing under its weight because of the raw human nature it seeks to contain is not original but what Stephenson does is make that raw nature the tribalism and conformity of American High School culture. The theme is of often slightly mad Stephenson makes use of the informal British word 'bonkers' at one point individualistic heroes triumphing over the mindlessness of people who go to university not to think and learn but to continue their adolescence before they join conventional society. It is not a great book, just a good one. Sometimes Stephenson lets his own rioting imagination sink into moments of obscurity or incoherence. But there are many moments of hilarity and even filmic excitement as this structure of competing conformities degenerates into violence and outright war. I could spend paragraphs outlining all the standard tropes of social criticism he makes use of and makes fun of. The final stance is, of course, precisely that of the American liberal rationalist using science to conquer, in part by employing irrational religious enthusiasm against itself. There is nothing philosophically new in this. It is all part of a liberal intellectual disdain for the mob and, to be unkind, a projection of the impotence felt by the rational individualist who ironically 'conforms' to his own intolerant stereotype in this respect in the face of mass society. This is a book of class war, or rather of class propaganda, directed by one element of society - the technocracy - against the rest of humanity. The author is spokesperson for a rational elite despising the raw material which it has been tasked with overseeing using its own form of 'magic'. The MegaUniversity becomes a dysfunctional whole, part of a wider society, yet separate from it. Stephenson intensifies its absurdities, viciousness, ignorance ironically and chaos. The cement to the story is a completely potty conspiracy theory over control of nuclear waste disposal. He cites the bicameral brain theory of Jaynes more than once not a theory I ever found persuasive but this enables him to play with the idea especially through the character of the insane Fred Fine of the two worlds of reason and imagination losing their boundaries. One of the charms of the book is its contemporary portrayal of the mind-set of the geeks and nerds evidently one of the sets of hero that mirror the mind of the author who would come to create our own digital and internet culture over subsequent decades. It also fair-minded.

NYC: The BIG U | Rebuild By Design

Additionally, the joint planning group held a series of workshops that allowed residents and groups alike to debate the BIG U team's proposed solutions. Feedback from the workshops was later integrated into the final BIG U plan. The U. In a time when resilience is more important than ever before, the BIG U provides a new model for integrating resilience within cities. Book peddlers are spaced every half a length of a north-south block. From time to time, the book peddler, who sets up two long church basement tables almost every day just outside my restaurant, offers a free book as I arrive for work. They remain untouched. I went three months without a day off and convalesced without reprieve from sundry ailments. I began to consider skimming a few articles in the paper or online, a huge accomplishment. I wiled away my days downloading television episodes and watching cheesy DVDs. I was in a rut…. One night, my friend Sandro, the intelligent, scrawny, dancing Dominican who works as a dishwasher and busboy at my restaurant, came in with a find from a stack the book peddler had left up for grabs next to some freebie newspaper carrels. But, one night he found a book that looked interesting. He loves history and natural history in particular. I accepted the book and began to read. Thanks to the enthusiasm displayed by my friend, I was back in the reading groove. By the next morning, I was better than half way through the novel and woke up early. I scanned through metal racks of paperback books on sale and stacked on tables. I looked over the sale racks and tables that are not organized like the rest of the store. Books are not strictly sorted by genre, subject, or author. I just wait for a spine, a cover, or title to leap out at me. Then I read back covers and keep going. Within minutes I had ten or twelve options that I narrowed down to two, two paperback novels and five bucks later I emerged on the street just south of Union Square. I walked through the market, picked up a couple of perfect peaches and walked up to Madison Square Park where they were playing U. Open matches on a big screen in the park. A seat in the outdoor park, a tennis match, a good book with two more ready to read and I found the perfect form of relaxation before going to work. I was hooked. I suppose I have to believe that dreams can be realized even if outside the conventional timeframe. I started cooking professionally when I was ten years older or more than most who start out. Or, I endeavor to make that true. Within pages of starting this novel, I became intrigued by the narrative voice. The voice is first-person. The narrator is not omniscient per se. He sets himself apart from the fray. Immediately, the narrator is complex. He is not omniscient. Yet, he is an observer. We also get the idea from the opening pages that the narrator is a player in the story. What then are his motives for telling the story? The question underlies much of the novel. Perhaps he needs to make himself more integral. This raises the whole question of the autobiographical voice in literature. He endures not because Whitman included portions of autobiography and imposed his own soul on the work in a direct fashion but because the character Whitman is immortalized by lofty words and thoughts. Whitman becomes a symbol, perhaps what he wanted to be or could have been in life, he becomes these things and more in poems. We must assume his facts are at least skewed if accurate. The whole novel has these sort of built in complexities that give the reader so much to contemplate while enjoying clear, straight-forward prose. Aside from the narrative voice, Stephenson is a powerful descriptive writer. View 1 comment. Jun 09, Althea Ann rated it liked it. Jan 12, Ericka Clouther rated it it was ok Shelves: s , book-club-dad , scifi , 0-konmaried , fiction , author-male , first-novel , cyberpunk , stephenson. This is like a futuristic Lord of the Flies inside a big city university and dorm. The book is not good. It took me two months of slogging through it to finish it. I gave it two stars instead of one because I liked the idea kind of and the characters, but not the insane execution. Mar 27, Tim Pendry rated it really liked it Shelves: horror , science-fiction , north-american , popular-culture , alternative-histories , twentieth-century , heroic-fantasy , black-comedy , humour. This was Neal Stephenson's first published novel , written when he was 25 and just out of university. It is an accomplished over-the-top satire on the American university system that reminded me of J. G Ballard's dystopian 'High Rise' of It is also the work of a bright young writer from a scientific and rationalist background letting off steam about the insanity and absurdity of the human species when it is purporting to use higher education for improvement but is doing nothing of the This was Neal Stephenson's first published novel , written when he was 25 and just out of university. It is also the work of a bright young writer from a scientific and rationalist background letting off steam about the insanity and absurdity of the human species when it is purporting to use higher education for improvement but is doing nothing of the kind. The idea of a modern architectural and institutional structure literally collapsing under its weight because of the raw human nature it seeks to contain is not original but what Stephenson does is make that raw nature the tribalism and conformity of American High School culture. The theme is of often slightly mad Stephenson makes use of the informal British word 'bonkers' at one point individualistic heroes triumphing over the mindlessness of people who go to university not to think and learn but to continue their adolescence before they join conventional society. It is not a great book, just a good one. Sometimes Stephenson lets his own rioting imagination sink into moments of obscurity or incoherence. But there are many moments of hilarity and even filmic excitement as this structure of competing conformities degenerates into violence and outright war. I could spend paragraphs outlining all the standard tropes of social criticism he makes use of and makes fun of. The final stance is, of course, precisely that of the American liberal rationalist using science to conquer, in part by employing irrational religious enthusiasm against itself. There is nothing philosophically new in this. It is all part of a liberal intellectual disdain for the mob and, to be unkind, a projection of the impotence felt by the rational individualist who ironically 'conforms' to his own intolerant stereotype in this respect in the face of mass society. This is a book of class war, or rather of class propaganda, directed by one element of society - the technocracy - against the rest of humanity. The author is spokesperson for a rational elite despising the raw material which it has been tasked with overseeing using its own form of 'magic'. The MegaUniversity becomes a dysfunctional whole, part of a wider society, yet separate from it. Stephenson intensifies its absurdities, viciousness, ignorance ironically and chaos. The cement to the story is a completely potty conspiracy theory over control of nuclear waste disposal. He cites the bicameral brain theory of Jaynes more than once not a theory I ever found persuasive but this enables him to play with the idea especially through the character of the insane Fred Fine of the two worlds of reason and imagination losing their boundaries. One of the charms of the book is its contemporary portrayal of the mind-set of the geeks and nerds evidently one of the sets of hero that mirror the mind of the author who would come to create our own digital and internet culture over subsequent decades. It also fair-minded. This is no rant, in fact. The logic of capitalism is cynically argued and the University President SS Krupp, is presented more favourably than any of the social justice warriors avant la lettre of the Stalinist SUB. Indeed, Stephenson clearly quite likes intelligent authority. Stephenson is also a sensible feminist able to have an easy laugh at the mother goddess types and the airheads but rightly horrified at the collusion of airheads in the exploitative sexual behaviour of MegaUniversity's jocks, curiously self-naming themselves the Terrorists. The strongest character of all is in fact the lesbian former Student Government head Sarah, a high-achieving, grounded, brave young woman in despair at the conformity of the airheads in her Tower. She is central to the eventual co-operative triumph of reason over hysteria. There are live action dungeons and dragons-type adventures in sewers, a clown corpse straight out of King horror, inept academics, gunfights in corridors and elevator shafts, a mad former College President stalking the university, electrocutions, bureaucracy and more, much much more. There is too much to comment on in this book which has everything from giant radioactive rats to murderous food fights. It should just be enjoyed as a romp through American social behaviours with an inventive idea on almost every page and rather likeable gun-toting student heroes and heroines. Feb 23, Vincent Silk rated it really liked it. Yes it was at times stupid and messy, and read kind of like he wrote it in two months on a typewriter when he was twenty-four, and a good deal of it devolved into this macho-nerd frothing over weapons and battle tactics. But as a kind of dark parody of university culture it was pretty funny and searingly critical. Like most of Stephenson's books, came to a rapid stop instead of actually ending in any real thought out way. I kind of didn't mind because the whole thing was a mess. I mostly read it to see what he was writing 20 years ago, and I got pretty much what I expected. As with any Stephenson book, I have many criticisms but it's enjoyable to read something where you can hear the writer enjoying themselves so much. Jun 21, Evan rated it it was ok. There is one vivid character in this novel: Fred Fine, an excruciating portrait of a live-action gamer with severe delusions. He's the only one that Stephenson provides with sufficient narrative to generate something resembling empathy. Otherwise, the book doesn't really have "characters" so much as stereotypical ciphers for denouncing a wide range of unsurprising categorical college "types. As Sarah aptly comments towards the end of the book, there's not much about There is one vivid character in this novel: Fred Fine, an excruciating portrait of a live-action gamer with severe delusions. As Sarah aptly comments towards the end of the book, there's not much about any of this that is really specific to universities. Most of the book's parody could be set just as easily in a government or the military one may indeed think of Strangelove or Catch 22 , a corporation, a rereational facility, or perhaps even some horrible family. There are a few scathing bits here and there about the dead weight of emeritus faculty, the Vatican- like finances of higher education, and, also like the Church, the imperviousness of the university to the flows of history. These seem like side notes, however. The novel is pretty disappointing as an expose of the state of higher education. So without much characterization or specific social critique, what is Stephenson actually trying to accomplish here? Mainly, it's an exercise in extended sarcasm. Okay, I'll be charitable. The novel has domestic terrorism,the explosive demolition of towers described eerily with the familiar pancaking effect and a few other details that might seem prescient today. But in , when S wrote the thing, I think this sort of thing was just boiler plate shock tactics for aggressive satirists. If the work is precocious or interesting in any way, perhaps it is in anticipating the vapid tastes of "Generation Q" as one NY Times columnist dubbed us recently. The generation of quirk who prefer irony to insight, exotic meaningless details from other cultures coupled with strict accuracy regarding current technology above all, weaponry , and above all, the reduction of individual psychology to "quirkiness": the unspecific, politically evacuated assignation of peculiarity and oddness. Spared the burden of having to think, as readers, about conditions whose severity might suggest a need to engage meaningfully with the world, we sit back and chuckle at clever takedowns of characters whose resemblance to anyone real is so vague as to be irrelevant. We are amused. Feb 21, Steve rated it really liked it. I'm only eight pages in but I think this book will be a lot of fun for the same reason another author-dissed first novel, The Broom Of The System is a lot of fun: it was written by a young guy feeling his oats. That sense of play is irresistible to me. I'm now pages in and I have little to complain about and a LOT that's making me late to and keeping me hurrying home after work. Sure the book has issues, but it was still a hell of a lot of fun to read. I created a web page for it. You may find this image of the Plex helpful when reading. Dec 03, Derek rated it liked it. 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 fr 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. 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. Sep 13, Becca rated it it was ok Recommended to Becca by: Jon. Shelves: fiction- not-otherwise-specified , borrowed , satire. In the future, when an author thinks that his book isn't worth reading, I'm going to take his word for it. The Big U is too over the top to be an enjoyable, subtle satire of the large university life, although it had that potential in the beginning. On the other hand, the melodrama and large scale events are too trivial for the novel to be epic. The overall effect is pretty "meh. The only signature Stephens In the future, when an author thinks that his book isn't worth reading, I'm going to take his word for it. The only signature Stephenson move that the Big U contains is the litany of story lines and multiple character narratives, but with uncharacteristic brevity and lack of details, the constant storyline switching is irritating and makes the novel shallower rather than deeper. Also, Stephenson should know that his fans are the physics majors, hackers and LARPers of the universe and be a little more careful with the negative stereotyping Apr 10, Lissa Notreallywolf rated it it was ok Shelves: goned. The Big U is a good indication of how much Neal Stephenson has grown in his writing. It's an early novel and in some ways it reminds me of Neil Gaiman or Terry Prachett, because it is fun reading. He makes some insightful pokes at the the corporate model of the university, and institution whose face is undergoing remarkable changes since the GI bill went through in the US. Strange because I have been reading Neuman's The Idea of the University, a rather long and ponderous essay written in the mi The Big U is a good indication of how much Neal Stephenson has grown in his writing. The story chronicles the disillusionment of a number of young intellectuals as they encounter the realities of the higher education establishment parodied in the story. Over time their lives and sanity disintegrate in different ways through a series of escalating events that culminates with a full-scale civil war raging on the campus of American Megaversity. The events take place at a fictitious big university consisting of a single building a central complex with eight towers containing student housing , making the university an enclosed universe of its own. Stephenson uses this fact to take what starts as a mostly realistic satire and move it further and further into the realm of improbability, with giant radioactive rats, hordes of bats and a lab-made railgun. The book was written while Stephenson attended Boston University. The fictional campus' design is based on a BU dormitory, Warren Towers. Stephenson has said he is not proud of this book. When original editions began selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars, he relented and allowed The Big U to be republished, saying that the only thing worse than people reading the book was paying that much to read it. https://files8.webydo.com/9586063/UploadedFiles/4B5EC12D-0AEA-952E-79B3-3B39F80EAE23.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4642174/normal_601f63f5eb1a3.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4644478/normal_60201717e6b67.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9585873/UploadedFiles/EF9F7F80-CC41-9E10-1509-8F45B6E012D5.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4641939/normal_601ff1820d04c.pdf