The Big U: A Hilarious Satire of American College Life

by Neal Stephenson

The New York Times Book Review called Neal Stephenson's most recent novel "electrifying" and "hilarious".  but if you want to know Stephenson was doing twenty years before he wrote the epic Cryptonomicon, it's back-to-school time. Back to The Big U, that is, a hilarious send-up of American college life starring after years out of print, The Big U is required reading for anyone interested in the early work of this singular writer.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Humor, Satire, Fantasy, Novels, Ebooks

308 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Neal Stephenson is the author of Reamde, Anathem, and the three-volume historical epic the Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World), as well as Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Reviews

[Duffy Pratt · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I thought: "Cool, it's Yossarian Goes to College." And for a while, that's what this book felt like. Then, it either derailed or got on track, depending on how you look at it. Ultimately, the whole thing becomes a giant, but always fun, mess. There are alot of great parts here, and they are all jammed together in ways that might or might not make sense. From a pure plot standpoint, the various parts actually fit together pretty nicely -- but the way they fit, it feels like Stephenson has built something out of the game "Mousetrap". They all fit together like a bizarrely conceived puzzle, but none of them really seem to go together, except perhaps by the force of the author's will.

But they are really cool parts: Stereo wars of Bach Organ works that hit upon the resonant frequencies of redundant skyscrapers; irradiated giant rats living in the sub-sewer systems; college frat boys who worship a neon sign; a clandestine nuclear waste facility; a computer virus that becomes a kind of overarching artificial intelligence... And these are just a smattering of the assorted craziness that forms the Big U. Ultimately, however, it seems to fall apart, as though Stephenson is a juggler running out of hands. But, even for its flaws, it was almost always fun and engaging. It lacks the diversions and infodumps that come in his later books. The characters are reed thin. The satire is so over-the-top that it becomes hard to even think of it as satire -- it's closer to pipe dreams. But there's plenty of humor and exuberance to pull through these weaknesses.

[SR · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book.

This BOOK.

Holy shit.

It's complete and utter crack of the absolute best kind. It is fantastic and ridiculous and terrifying and beautiful and WHAT THE HELL, THIS BOOK.

I love it. I love it so much. Holy god.

SUCH CRACK.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, even the author tried to distance himself from this trainwreck of a novel. We see some of the themes that he will work with extensively in better books: geek culture, video games, absurdity...
But there are no compelling characters here, a mish-mash of a chaotic plot, and just generally messy writing. Fortunately, he was more inspired when he wrote Zodiac!

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[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 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.

[Remo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tres estrellas y media. Primera obra publicada de Neal Stephenson, en la que ya apunta maneras. A base de escenas disjuntas de un campus innombrado de los EE.UU. el autor construye un mosaico que al principio parece un cuadro costumbrista de la vida universitaria norteamericana pero que va incorporando más y más idas de olla (todos los estudiantes se ponen de acuerdo para tirar de la cadena de todos los váteres del campus a la vez, siendo el mecanismo de sincronización la melodía de inicio de un programa de la tele. Guerras de órgano de Bach con frecuencias que hacen resonar edificios abandonados. Ratas gigantes procedentes de experimentos científicos que pululan por las alcantarillas. Un virus informático que podría haber tomado conciencia de sí mismo. Y más. Mucho más.) que hacen que al final todo sea un caos, pero un caos divertidísimo de leer.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 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.

[Nick Tankard · Rating 3 out of 5]

5/10

Not bad for a debut novel but I can see why Stephenson disowned this book and tried to remove it from printing.
Some of the Stephenson’s signature style peeks through but overall it’s pretty underwhelming in every aspect. Definitely do not recommend this one as an intro to his work.

[Benjamin Espen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Big U Book Review

I picked up The Big U while I was organizing my library, and I decided to see if I still liked it ten years [at least] since the last time I had read it.

It turns out, I do! For me, this is the perfect college satire, on the same level as Thank You For Smoking or Office Space. I read it when I was an undergraduate, and it was hilarious, and a devastating send up of the bizarre world that is the American university. Ten years later, it is still hilarious and devastating. Then I flip to the flyleaf, and I find Stephenson wrote it in 1984.

Stephenson nailed the essence of university life in a way that is still relevant thirty years later. The LARPers. The Goddess worshippers. The terrible cafeteria food. The out of control parties. This is the American university, in all of its glory. American universities have long been at the center of the culture war, fostering, even encouraging, a hothouse culture in which the strangest things can flourish. Add to that a culture that has been intellectually static for the last hundred years, a guaranteed fresh supply of naive teenagers, and you will get a system that loops through the same obsessions, over and over and over.

In the introductory chapter, Stephenson's narrator says:

What you are about to read here is not an aberration: it can happen in your local university too. The Big U, simply, was a few years ahead of the rest.

This turns out to have been prophetic. In the Big U, we have all of the current obsessions of trendy politics. Rape culture. Identity politics. Minoritarianism. Endless curricular disputes. Weird religions. There are few things in the book so outrageous that they have not managed to happen in the last thirty years. It is all so ridiculous, and all so pertinent. I liked it the first time because it seemed very much like my alma mater. I like it now because it seems like all the universities in America. If anything, my own university has only grown more like American Megaversity with the passage of time.

It is fortunate this is a book and not a movie, because it prevents you from seeing out of date clothes and assuming everything in the book happened in the past. With a few minor changes, The Big U could easily be set today. The Stalinist Underground Battalion would have to be replaced with Occupy Wall Street, smart phones would have to be added in, and the university mainframe would have to be replaced with the web, but everything else could stay the same.

The first time I read this book, I was attracted to the commonalities to my own life. The character who was a budding physicist. The genius programmers. The awkward fit of so many of the viewpoint characters to the dominant party scene. Even the bit with the university locksmith [in college, I worked as a student locksmith for the university]. It just seemed to fit.

Ten years later, there are a few things I appreciate more now than I did the first time. The cynical university president is someone I can now identify with. The Big U administration made poor choices, but now that I have actual responsibility, I appreciate the heroic virtue that would be required to resist those temptations. S. S. Krupp is bright, decisive, and capable. His only flaw is putting the university's reputation [and lots of jobs] ahead of doing the right thing. I am glad I don't face the same choices, because it is hard to see how I could realistically do better in the same circumstances.

The sexual dynamic that drives many of the viewpoint characters is far more obvious in retrospect. Especially if you were a nerd [who I presume is Stephenson's target audience]. Teenagers are driven by their hormones in strange ways, nerdy teenagers even more so, and those of us who have survived that phase can only pity them. This too shall pass.

Of all Stephenson's books, this is the one I like best. The first Neal Stephenson book I ever read was Snow Crash. Snow Crash was recommended to me by my freshman year college roommate, and I liked it enough to try more, although I'm not sure its many fans realize it is a dystopia. The Big U was the second. I really liked The Big U, so I tried a number Stephenson's other books, but I never really enjoyed them. Stephenson wrote Zodiac when it seemed like dioxin was the worst thing ever made by humans. 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 the Baroque Cycle. 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. S. 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.

[Abe · Rating 2 out of 5]

An intriguing read, if one is familiar with Stephenson’s other works. 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. It reads like a bunch of gags a 24-year old man thought up and slapped onto paper, in no particular order, really, and consistency in tone is also lacking: the reason this book is written in first person is a complete mystery, because half of it isn’t truly first person, and the parts that are don’t serve the story in a way any 3rd person narrative couldn’t’ve.

What surprises me is the extraordinary rapidity with which Stephenson’s storytelling skills improved. 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. And don’t even get me started on the prodigious narrative techniques applied in his third book, Snow Crash. His writing didn’t improve exponentially after The Big U, but rather took an enormous leap in a piece-wise function from point 1 to point 2, and thence continued upward.

I’d have to say the author’s own derogatory opinion of The Big U is not feigned humility, but rather sincere criticism: a rushed book written by a young man a long time ago. I’d recommend it for Stephenson completionists, and to newcomers I strongly recommend you read at least 5 of his other books first.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephenson's very first book, from 1984, 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 300 pages, it has the virtue of being quite short for a Stephenson book. Very glad I read it.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Shotgun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jde o knihu, jejíž vydání nechtěl autor dlouho povolit a proto získala kultovní status. Tak trochu nezaslouženě, tak jako u nás Kulhánek. ; )
Ne, že by byla vyloženě špatná ale na druhou stranu nejde ani o nějaký zázrak nebo přelomové dílo. Prostě takový slušnější nadprůměr.
Jde o vyprávění o životě v smyšlené americké obří universitě, která tvoří takový stát ve státě. SE všemi výhodami a nevýhodami. K vykreslení jak samotné university, tak jejích obyvatel a institucí použil autor pořádnou porci černého humoru. I ve jménech osob a institucí se nenechal omezovat nějakou politickou korektností a proto universitu řídí S. S. Krupp a na universitě působí spolek levičáckých aktivistů skrývající se za zkratkou S.U.P..
Do vyprávění se prolíná spousta iracionálních až magických prvků a s tím, jak se postupně prohlubuje krize a chátrání university, iracionalita jejich obyvatel nabývá na intenzitě. Jednou z nejlepších scén v knize je je ta, kdy S.U.P. naplánuje, že po rektorovi university hodí šlehačkový dort ale "soudruh" pověřený koupí "munice", koupí ten dort mražený a tak ho musí poměrně dlouho rozmrazovat pod sušákem ruk na záchodech a jen tak tak, stihne rozmrazit dort ještě před skončením vystoupení S. S. Kruppa. Nakonec se stejně netrefí.
Kniha bych asi doporučil jako takovou jednohubku mezi dvěma knihami s vážnou tematikou.

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

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, 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.

[Cain · Rating 5 out of 5]

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. Anyone who enjoys satire and/or attended Boston University (on which it seems to be based, though BU is never named) should give it a look.

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stephenson's first published work is a bit uneven - the first half is an amusing satire of big campus life, and the second half pulls out all the stops, with an all-out war erupting, complete with mutant rats, nuclear waste, foreign nationals, bizarre cults, lots and lots of weaponry & violence - and of course, some heroic geeks.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d fallen out of the habit of reading….

The street outside my restaurant pulsates with life. Fad-adorned hipsters walk up and down the main drag likes it’s a track ducking into local bakeries, cafes, music stores, bars, and eateries. 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. I’ve picked up a copy a biography on William Carlos Williams, a couple of mysteries, and a couple of artist retrospectives filled with photos and descriptions. 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. Sandro speaks English rather well but has never attended school so he doesn’t read books in English. But, one night he found a book that looked interesting. He loves history and natural history in particular. Thinking he’d uncovered a botanical compendium of some sort he rushed in with the book in hand to see if I’d like to read it not wanting it to go to waste. He told me in Spanish, “it takes a lot of time to write a book. You shouldn’t have to find your book on the street.” What a great attitude! He was also excited because he thought he’d found something I’d enjoy. I accepted the book and began to read. Turned out the book, “The Natural History of Uncas Metcalfe,” was a novel, and a very good one at that. 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 rushed to The Strand, one of the world’s great booksellers. Based out of lower Manhattan, The Strand boasts that it shelves “18 miles of books.” With two large downtown locations as well as sidewalk operations along the southeast corner of Central park, I don’t doubt it. 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 love looking at books this way when I’m not sure what to read next. 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.S. 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.

As I searched through the sale ranks of The Strand, I was drawn to “The Big U.” The back cover announces that the protagonist is a thirty year-old college junior named Casimir Radon. 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. The idea that it’s never too late to start all over again (also the title of a good Steppenwolf song) appeals to me. I can only hope it’s true. Or, I endeavor to make that true. I knew I’d read the book.

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 identifies himself as a “tweedy” young black professor starting out teaching in what we assume is the sort of large all-American (traditionally white-bred) University. He tells us that he spent most of his time at ‘The Big U’ listening, observing, and, talking. He sets himself apart from the fray. He also tells the reader he is writing “to put ‘The Big U’ behind” him. Immediately, the narrator is complex. He is not omniscient. Yet, he is an observer. Therefore, he’ll know more than the average character. 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’s trying to distance himself from the story he sets about telling. Perhaps he needs to make himself more integral.

This raises the whole question of the autobiographical voice in literature. I remember reading Harold Bloom’s take on Walt Whitman, I think in “The Western Cannon.” Bloom noted that Whitman made himself a character in his poetry and by doing so Walt Whitman became greater than the man himself. 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. In a way, Neil Stephenson, author of “The Big U,” plays with just that. The reader is almost forced to ask himself, how is the narrator’s character different from the narrator himself? 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. The university’s campus becomes a character itself. The campus is a droning bureaucratic grunt that almost serves as the chief antagonist – rather “Catch-22” as one reviewer noted, although I’d add that the book accomplishes this sort feat without humanizing the campus itself. This speaks to a lucid, powerful descriptive writing that I’ve rarely come across.

In the end, Stephenson provides a great piece of satire that’s worth reading. I’m just lucky the publishing house reissued the book based on the author’s subsequent success.

[Matt Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of crazy entertaining stuff, but extreme to the point where it’s almost abstract art. Looking at Stephenson’s next book, Snowcrash, you can see they share that vibrancy. The difference is that snow crash channels that energy into a sci-fi thriller plot, but the outlandish action didn’t land for me in the context of the book’s parody of campus life. Seemed a bit too zany and messy. Plot and characters were lost in the sauce. Still, the creativity and insight from Stephenson shines through, worth the read if only for that.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Первый роман Стивенсона — чуваку было сколько, 29, когда он вышел? — и совсем непонятно, почему он обойден вниманием руссоидателей, так обильно на Стивенсона фапающих (уважительная причина может быть только в том, что сам Стивенсон не дает его на русский переводить, оберегая нервную систему своих фанов, но переиздавать же дал, так что все равно непонятно).
Т.е. это конечно, не фонтастега для умных, где литературным мальчикам там приятно опознавать знакомые буквы, это натурально грубо сляпанный балаган, шизокомический эпос из студенческой жизни. Там все как бы сметано на живую нитку, но в этом и есть определенная прелесть — видно, как из автора фонтаном бьют придумки.
С виду роман — эдакий гибрид Мэтта Раффа, Линды Джейвин и Тома Шарпа, а в глубине было лень разбираться, Стивенсона я же для развлечения читаю. Ну и карнавал имени Пинчона, конечно. Здесь отлично видно, у кого на самом деле он учился писать.

[Vincent Silk · Rating 4 out of 5]

***TW: there is a bunch of sexual violence in this book which I think is dealt with ok (the author seems really critical of rape culture in universities and there's lots of women-taking-revenge kind of stuff), but it's confronting.***

I liked this book. 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.

[John R. Goyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty much impossible to describe without giving much away - weird, surreal, political with sci-fi and fantasy overtones. Life in a University as it descends beyond chaos to civil war, madness, and very close to total destruction. Unions and eastern European influences too. Captivating and astonishing - a self contained entity complete with warp drive - or not...

[Ericka Clou · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Second read through this crazy, dark romp through the underbelly of campus life in and around a university megadorm.

it's a 3.5 for me this time!

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Animal House with a higher IQ and Kalashnikovs.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Neal Stephenson's first published novel (1984), 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 1975.

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.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Neal Stephenson is one of my favorite authors and this is one of his earlier books. It appears that from the start he shows the ability to weave many different story elements together and have it all come together nicely at the end.
This one was a little less tightly written than his later works. Part of the book was a first person narrative and part was third person. I did not really see the purpose there since it made it a little hard to follow and the first person narrator was not really a main character.
The campus life elements were entertaining for me since it was the same time period I attended a large public university.
One point dealt with Dungeons and Dragons players using the utility tunnels under the university for live action playing. This was a persistent college campus urban legend at the time and usually included a gruesome outcome. It was at my school and I suspect it was at any school that had utility tunnels. The gruesome outcome is included here.
Overall, not quite as good as Stephenson's later books but entertaining anyway.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m moving house soon, so it’s time to re-read books and decide whether to keep them. ‘The Big U’ stands up well to a re-read, I must say. Neal Stephenson is a fantastic writer, so this wasn’t much of a surprise. ‘The Big U’ was his first novel and is quite different to his subsequent, often much longer works. It reminds me, in fact, of a mashup between the oeuvre of J.G. Ballard and the TV series Community. The Ballardian connection comes from the lead character being a structure rather than a person. Although the book is narrated by a junior academic, it is dominated by the Plex, a gargantuan university campus of high rise towers and dank basements, all linked by lifts. As in High-Rise, these structures precipitate an inexorable mental unravelling amongst their inhabitants. The institutions within the university (‘American Megaversity’) also have their place in the collapse into chaos, though, and individual responsibility isn’t ignored. The Community-esque elements are the ensemble cast of misfits thrown together and the humour of the whole thing. Said humour is extremely dark most of the time, to the point that the back cover compares it to Catch-22. I found the digs at various aspects of student life, Reaganomics, and the media very funny.

The novel is essentially a hyperbolic satire on the American education system. Amongst the bat infestations and 1980s supercomputers (which inevitably age the book slightly), though, there is a thoughtful examination of rape culture. The majority of the characters are male, but the main women Sarah and Hyacinth are handled very well. The ‘Nice Guy’ archetype is deconstructed effectively. The book could also be read as an acerbic comment on America’s obsession with guns, however I genuinely can’t tell whether it was intended as such. Few American authors seem to have much of a sense of irony about widespread gun ownership. Given that at one point a tank is driven through the Plex cafeteria, though, surely Stephenson does. Perhaps a more wide-ranging point about the violence simmering below daily life is being made. That and how easy it can be to improvise weapons with everyday objects.

My own university experience has (so far) been at a collegiate rather than campus institution, so the Plex seems like a dystopian horror structure to me. If you’ve lived in a monolithic block of student accommodation, it might seem more familiar. I love novels which use the idea of physical structures causing a vicious spiral of insane behaviour, which J.G. Ballard is of course famous for. ‘The Big U’ is an excellent entry into the sub-genre and I recommend it to anyone fond of black comedy, urban dystopias, and satires on student life. If you have a phobia of rats, however, read with care beyond the halfway mark. Finally, this novel could make a fantastic film and David Fincher should get on that immediately.

[Evan · Rating 2 out of 5]

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." Or maybe just social types. 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 1984, 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.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished the Go Big Red Fan prologue, and I think I can see why Stephenson sort of disowns The Big U. It's his first novel, published in 1984 when he was 24 or thereabouts, which means it was most likely *written* when he was 22-23, if not younger. But JUST BECAUSE STEPHENSON WOULDN'T CONSIDER WRITING SOMETHING LIKE THE BIG U TODAY, DOESN'T MEAN HE SHOULDN'T HAVE WRITTEN IT IN HIS TWENTIES. 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.

01DEC10. I'm now 70-80 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.

10DEC10. 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.)

[Becca · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 detail and fact finding that Stephenson is known for is all but absent in this book. 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

[Lissa Notreallywolf · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 mid to late 1800's. It's a chilling shift in the concept of the university, especially in light of the idea of discontinuing tenure to purge schools of bad professors. Yet tenure was designed to give academics liberty to spak their minds without fear of termination, not necessarily to provide them with the ability to coast after publishing. I would like to read more books on this topic, fiction or non fiction, so suggestions welcome.