Our Discussion of Fall, or Dodge in Hell

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 Phillip 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. Goodreads

Below are a sampling of our comments:

• I enjoyed Dodge building Bitworld
• The beginning road trip through Ameristan and the epic fantasy quest at the end were like separate books
• It was too long and could really have used a good editor
• Why did Dodge speak like the King James edition of the Bible when he created Bitworld?
• The souls that lived in the hive – that didn’t seem good. It was a form of hive mind
• I loved Maeve’s determination to grow wings
• Sophia and her friends had personal editors that made sure they only saw certain things in their feeds which fit into the book’s themes of truth and belief
• Do the dead need religion? They used gods and mythology to help them structure the new world
• Why was the population of earth decreasing? Maybe people who could “live” forever in Bitworld were their own legacy and didn’t need children, also they needed all their funds to buy into Bitworld
• Could AIs really maintain Bitworld forever?
• It was similar to the show Upload and also had elements of The Good Place
• If Adam and Eve were pure AI, why didn’t they have more power to shape their world?
• I will keep the book around and use it to smash walnuts!

Please add any additional thoughts or comments you have about Fall, or Dodge in Hell. We gave this title the codes NFW, HDS, ETH, MYT, LEL & QUE with an average rating of 3.0.