Fall; or, Dodge in Hell: A Novel

Neal Stephenson

Jun 2019 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

New York Times Bestseller

A New York Times Notable Book

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Seveneves, Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon returns with a wildly inventive and entertaining science fiction thriller—Paradise Lost by way of Philip K. Dick—that unfolds in the near future, in parallel worlds.

In his youth, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia.

One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong. Dodge is pronounced brain dead and put on life support, leaving his stunned family and close friends with difficult decisions. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Legally bound to follow the directive despite their misgivings, Dodge’s family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived.

In the coming years, technology allows Dodge’s brain to be turned back on. It is an achievement that is nothing less than the disruption of death itself. An eternal afterlife—the Bitworld—is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls.

But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem . . .

Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pure, unadulterated fun: a grand drama of analog and digital, man and machine, angels and demons, gods and followers, the finite and the eternal. In this exhilarating epic, Neal Stephenson raises profound existential questions and touches on the revolutionary breakthroughs that are transforming our future. Combining the technological, philosophical, and spiritual in one grand myth, he delivers a mind-blowing speculative literary saga for the modern age.

Ratings and reviews

Mr. Stephenson’s MO seems to be creating brick-sized books exploring whatever wild, tech-adjacent ideas have caught his attention lately, along with a handful of standard favorites (the stupidity of middle America, the lure of virtual worlds, the relationship between language and thought, religion, etc.). Fall is another in that tradition: long on intriguing speculations, short on fully developed characters, witty dialog, and conclusions or “so what?” moments. You could argue that the lack of “answers” is a feature rather than a bug, but in this book (as in others), it means that there aren’t endings so much as points where Mr. Stephenson has explored an idea to the outer boundaries of his interest and just stops there--regardless of where the characters might be in their semi-arcs, or what questions might be left in the reader’s mind. If you go in expecting a thoughtful and even playful tour through interesting concepts, you’ll be fine. If you go in expecting a smooth plot finishing with all loose ends neatly tied up, you’ll be frustrated. Given that caveat, Fall is a fun, engaging read, from the “nuclear destruction” of Moab, Utah to the details of setting up a virtual reality afterlife from both outside and inside the construct. The main characters first appeared in REAMDE, another sprawling opus on the themes of technology, privacy, and religion, and it’s interesting (though a little disheartening) to find out how things turned out for them. Mr. Stephenson’s sense of humor is subtle but lightens the proceedings nicely. And following some of these half-sketched ideas out to their logical ends was fun for me--like the fate of the common citizen in this story, spending a huge amount of money to have your brain scanned and “connectome” uploaded to a virtual world upon your death, only to find that your eternal fate is being “resurrected” as a deformed, menial-labor goblin in service of a self-proclaimed god, while program-created AI personalities inherit the new, virtual world! In short, this is a brick worth picking up, if you’ve got the time and mental energy for open-ended speculative flights of fancy.

not good techno fantasy, to convoluted, out of sync, the best characters you learn the least about, interesting, but I read whole book but skimmed half of it.I couldn't write a book, I admire the effort and art.

I've read every Stephenson book and really liked (Reamde) or loved all of them, but this one broke me. The first quarter was great and incredibly fascinating but once you get into the meat of the story it just drags. I skimmed the last hundred pages because I realized I didn't care about anything that was going on, and I can't remember ever doing that even in books I wasn't enjoying. Great ideas, bad execution. Skip it.

About the author

Neal Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Termination Shock, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (with Nicole Galland), Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning...Was the Command Line. He lives in Seattle, Washington.