"I would say that the ability of people to agree on matters of fact not immediately visible—states of affairs removed from them in space and time—ramped up from a baseline of approximately zero to a pretty high level around the time of the scientific revolution and all that, and stayed there and became more globally distributed up through the Cronkite era, and then dropped to zero incredibly quickly when the Internet came along." [loc. 4027]
The title is a spoiler, really, for values of 'spoiler' including 'this is a theory posited about halfway through the book'. Dodge is Richard Forthrast, protagonist of Reamde, a novel about (amongst other things) gaming. In Fall, or Dodge in Hell, Richard dies during a routine medical procedure -- the nature of which is never disclosed -- and is immediately cryogenically frozen. The problem with cryogenics, though, is that you only get one chance to defrost: much more sensible just to scan the frozen brain and upload its connectome, its map of neural connections, to the cloud.
Meanwhile in America, digital terrorists fake atrocities, and the internet has become an addictive, fact-free, mind-altering Miasma that effectively turns humans into zombies. Some of these humans are discovered crucifying a hapless stranger, who turns out to be our old friend Enoch Root. (One of the more satisfactory aspects of this novel is that it explains Enoch Root, though I am not especially keen on the explanation.) Enoch, and his old friend 'Solly', join forces with various of Dodge's old colleagues, relatives et cetera, and helps to instigate the Process -- a kind of digital afterlife in which an amnesiac Dodge creates a new world for himself and other uploaded connectomes.
This world, which begins with a leaf falling -- a splendid and evocative piece of writing -- has everything. Leaves! Wings! Feudalism! Capitalism! A class system! (Dodge is of course at the top.) Then it all gets rather Biblical: and, much later, rather Epic Fantasy.
One of the problems I had with Fall was the unevenness of time. The first chapter spends pages and pages on Richard Forthrast's musings as he wakes, snoozes the alarm, showers, walks to the clinic. At other points, years go past without much indication of relative time. This may well mirror the subjective passage of time in Dodge's afterlife: it's still perplexing to read.
Another problem, and sadly one that's familiar from my previous encounters with Stephenson, is the treatment of female characters. A major female character dies -- well, fair enough, nearly everyone dies in Fall, because death is merely a change of state. But this character is murdered, rather unpleasantly, and as far as I can tell nothing is ever done about it: no justice, no vengeance, no outcry. A relative does suffer PTSD, but that's about it as far as consequences go.
Some of the female characters are outstanding: I especially liked Edda the Giantess, and 'Prim'. And I was charmed, too, by Dodge's old colleague Corvallis -- C-plus -- who has a good, and long, life. But, as in Reamde and other Stephenson novels, I found many of the characters unlikeable.
I would have liked more about the remnants of 'live' humanity, on a world where the population rate is in decline, the living are massively risk-averse, and most of the planet's resources are devoted to maintaining Bitworld, where the dead live (and are watched by the living via VR-style simulations). I would have liked to find out whether there were people who still believed that physical life was better than the alternative -- I mean, they can see some of the terrible abuses to which the newly-deceased are subjected -- and whether the post-truth internet / Miasma evolved or fizzled out.
There are so many good ideas, glorious images and philosophical debates in Fall: but also so many irritations, missed opportunities, shoehorned Biblical / fantasy tropes, characters whose stories just fade to black, and pontificating one-per-centers. And, perhaps, too many words: this novel could have been tightened to half its length and been a better read. Yes, Stephenson is inventive and interesting when he gets going, but sometimes he doesn't seem to know when to stop.
LARB review which examines the technological and social themes in greater depth
The living stayed home, haunting the world of the dead like ghosts. [loc. 8812]
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