Reamde

Reamde

Neal Stephenson

Reamde

William Morrow, 2011

1056 pages

3 polychromatic galaxy skulls

Neal Stephenson loves systems.  In Reamde, he dotes on systems of land formations, virtual monetary flows, systems of travel—plane pathways and hiker’s trails, organized religious (jihadists), criminal (Russian triad), and guerrilla business (MMORPG extortion) systems, he zooms in for about a hundred pages and details the systems and patterns that go into large-scale urban shoot outs, the physics, for example, of jumping head first into the back of a taxi with a young woman handcuffed to you as the apartment building where you were manufacturing arms for Islamic jihadists is pretty much demolished in sustained gunfire.

Consistently, and kind of brilliantly, Stephenson loves guns.  Guns, guns, and more guns pepper this novel like codes in Cryptonomicon.  The novel opens with recreational rifle shooting at a family reunion and it closes with recreational shooting at family Thanksgiving.  In between, not only are there a number of massive shootouts, but in the midst of non-stop action Stephenson’s characters take the time to reflect on guns.  For example, when a Hungarian hacker working for the Russian mafia has a gun at an English jihadist’s temple (in China), the jihadist, a Mr. Jones, waxes textbook on the safety mechanism of the Hungarian’s piece, on the trigger pressure and delay, and on how his own piece is a mite more responsive.  Or, similarly, in the middle of the climatic shootout, three characters pause to consider the merits and demerits of a 5-shooter pistol, a sniper rifle, and a shotgun.   

If codes and systems of codes provided the central motif of Cryptonomicon, pushing the plot forward with a great deal of intellectual pleasure at the role of intelligence in both big scale military and economic warfare, massaging the ego of the mathematicians who are often left out of such narratives—if codes did all of that in Cryptonomicon, then guns play the same role in Reamde, but it’s more of a spectacle than spectacular.  Guns, in this case, are mechanisms of destruction, protection, and, the libertarian strain of the novel suggests, freedom.  It is guns that protect Americans from jihadists illegally flying into Canada and hiking across the US border, aimed for Las Vegas.  And, of course, it is guns that pose the immediate threat from said terrorists. 

Guns are also, the novel suggests, really fucking cool.  And that’s about the gist of the novel’s depth.  Guns are cool, like blowing shit up is cool, like video games.  There’s an odd moment when the protagonist reflects that he and his on-line character are doing pretty much the same thing at pretty much the same time, looking pretty much the same.  It’s an odd moment because it celebrates the similarities between the flesh and blood reality of a man with a gun pointed at him and his family, and an online avatar that, uh, that’s just that.  

This kind of reduction of the novel to something as deep as a game is a bit disappointing for me, as I enjoy Stephenson for his intellectual engagement with the world as much for his ability to make that engagement entertaining.  In previous novels, Stephenson showed himself to be a master at putting complex things into understandable prose.  He’s still doing that here, but unlike in the past, wherein the complex things suggested deeper aspects of our condition, in Reamde the system breakdown is all about enjoying the system breakdown.