Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller

This is actually my favorite Stephenson book. As a writer, his curse is usually that he lets the plot go spiraling wildly out of control. Stephenson's books usually don't so much end as grind to a halt. Zodiac is a pleasant exception. Its taut plotting and brevity is clearly modeled on the great detective novels of Dashiell Hammet et al, and doesn't stray into self-importance, and it still has all the wit that makes his books so much fun. Great reading!

What a great book! The plot is well thought out, the information well researched and the situational comedy is superb. S.T.'s character is classic, hilarious and so smooth. An EPA James Bond. Definitely a must read.

OK, _Snow Crash_ caught my attention. But it suffered (imho) from grandiosity -- the need for a Great Cosmic Plot Resolution. DA was even more interesting but has some of the same disease -- the themes get so big they are unwieldy. Same goes for the voudun stuff in Gibson, if you ask me._Zodiac_ is my pick of NS's work. I buy used copies and give them away to people. It's better than his later works because he's on his own turf, writing more tightly and realistically about stuff he really knows. The manuscript glitters with one-liners; I sometimes slowed down and read whole sections out loud to myself to get the full enjoyment out of them.Sangamon Taylor, ego and all, has become one of the most memorable characters of my long SF-guzzling career. I recommend this book to sci fi and non-sci-fi readers alike. I still don't believe you can punch a hole in a zode with a wired tazer, but I love the book anyway :-)And yes, it's a cautionary tale. It has a moral message. So has Dickens, most of Shakespeare, and most of Star Trek for that matter. There's nothing wrong with preaching if it's done with wit, style, and real passion. I think NS pulls it off. If I didn't dread sequels so much, I'd love to see a volume of the prior, or continuing, adventures of ST.

Zodiac is a fun book that takes a boring subject like ecology and makes it 'cool' (for lack of a better word). Instead of hand-wringing eco-hippies shoving data down people's throats till they puke, S.T., the main character, is a wise-acre, quick thinking, media-manipulating environmentalist who gets things done--and makes some major enemies along the way.Consistently, Stephenson's best books take place in 'the real world;' frankly, I found Snow Crash amusing but slow, and Diamond Age was a bear to get through. In both cases, the techno ideas were great but pages of explainations bogged down the stories. Here, the science is slipped in comfortably, much in the same way it was for "Interface," which he co-wrote under the name Stephen Bury. I have to say, I hope Stephenson starts writing books about here and now again instead of wasting his talents on futurist sci-fi.