Perhaps, ultimately, that’s why I am still given to reading Stephenson’s experiments, despite liking few enough of them. Regardless of one’s opinion of or enjoyment of this book, it’s definitely an interesting attempt at doing something different. Reader, I applaud Stephenson and Galland for their courage, even as I urge you to fight against the obvious dominion under which they have yolked us. No doubt it required the coordination of many a KCW, across multiple DTAPs, and countless DEDEs pushing the Strands every which way. In one sense, this is an AGU (ambitious and grand undertaking). Just as writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century departed more and more from the epistolary style of narration and broadened our understanding of novel narrative, Galland and Stephenson are almost returning that more primitive form, while simultaneously expanding the channels of information. One might argue that Stephenson and Galland are intentionally experimenting with what makes a book a novel. As such, I can understand some of the influences on the structure of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Stephenson and Galland (whose work I’m not familiar with) have previously collaborated on The Mongoliad, a cross-platform, intertextual storytelling experience. Alas, since I am not a witch, I have no ability to sense the GLAAMR that might surround each and every copy of these pernicious texts. Either it’s Stockholm syndrome or there are temporal shenanigans afoot. Stop and think for a moment: is there really any reason you would willingly sit down and read nearly-thousand page books full of extraneous exposition? And this particular example is, actually, one of the shorter Stephensons I’ve read. I believe that a concerted time-travel project (or “diachronic operation”) has been carried out, in secret, for years, for the express purpose of rewriting our timeline (Strand) to the betterment of the authors Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. But if you are reading this and scratching your head, then perhaps all our efforts have come to naught. Reader, I write this with the hope that, one day, we might be successful in undoing (redoing? doing? DOing?) what has already been undone. I say unto you now thrice, look, this isn’t really a novel.

The rise and fall of dodo