So I’m well aware that there are certain people frustrated with the endings of my books. I can remember at the time I was writing it, I told a friend of mine that the climax of Snow Crash was now longer than : There’s a helicopter that gets brought down; there’s a private jet that blows up; some people die; there’s confrontation and a girl goes home with her mom — so it seems like a to me. [audience laughter]
Once you write a book or two with controversial endings — and that meme gets going, of “Stephenson can’t write endings†— then that gets slapped on everything that you do no matter how elaborate the ending is. I think does OK on that score. I’m sure that I’ll be hearing from some of the “Stephenson can’t write endings†people, but I think that it has a decent enough ending.
Neal Stephenson