<story><title>&quot;A Young Lady&apos;s Illustrated Primer&quot; Simulated by GPT-4</title><url>https://www.andrealyip.com/a-young-ladys-illustrated-primer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cl42</author><text>Do you think that&amp;#x27;s a Neal Stephenson issue? Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, I love his writing, but I found this to be the case with Fall too. I can see it becoming tiring if one is writing 400+ page books.</text></item><item><author>geophile</author><text>I &lt;i&gt;loved&lt;/i&gt; Diamond Age. My favorite Stephenson book, by far. But the ending, the resolution of all the action, was such a letdown. Such meh. I find that this is often a problem with cyberpunk.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jjcm</author><text>Definitely a Stephenson issue. It&amp;#x27;s a meme for sure, but there is some truth in it. Nowadays when I re-read any of his old works, I tend to stop after getting about 80% through. That said, I do think that these incredibly complex narratives are extremely hard to wrap up neatly. GRRM has this issue as well.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the problem with letting characters act how they would actually act, and make decisions that make sense for them. Those decisions often don&amp;#x27;t end in a way that&amp;#x27;s concise and brings closure.&lt;p&gt;I think he tried to sidestep this issue quite a bit in Seveneves in a fairly clever way. To me personally (and I know there are others who disagree), the third act felt the weakest. Despite that it did bring closure to the story. There was no finality to the characters themselves - it skipped over all of that, but there was closure to the story.&lt;p&gt;One thing I&amp;#x27;m curious on the other end of the spectrum - who does HN think writes good endings to complex scifi stories?</text></comment>
<story><title>&quot;A Young Lady&apos;s Illustrated Primer&quot; Simulated by GPT-4</title><url>https://www.andrealyip.com/a-young-ladys-illustrated-primer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cl42</author><text>Do you think that&amp;#x27;s a Neal Stephenson issue? Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, I love his writing, but I found this to be the case with Fall too. I can see it becoming tiring if one is writing 400+ page books.</text></item><item><author>geophile</author><text>I &lt;i&gt;loved&lt;/i&gt; Diamond Age. My favorite Stephenson book, by far. But the ending, the resolution of all the action, was such a letdown. Such meh. I find that this is often a problem with cyberpunk.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>glial</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s a well-known Stephenson issue. Here&amp;#x27;s his response when asked:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;nealstephenson&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;5jjwmq&amp;#x2F;neal_stephensons_response_to_a_question_on_how_he&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;nealstephenson&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;5jjwmq&amp;#x2F;neal...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>