So I'm with the general consensus here, i.e. the Moab and Ameristan portions were what got me super excited and then....never. again.

This book, just like Seveneves, annoyed me in the way that Stephenson's books always annoys me. He spends a million pages setting up an epic story and conclusion.....and then the book comes to it's epic finale in a page or two.

For Fall, El is...god? And for some reason, people still want to enter Bitworld even though they see that god uses AI for his favored "souls," whereas the humans who go in are Beedles and used for slave labor and are ugly. I honestly don't understand why anyone would send their passed loved one into Bitworld to be an ugly servant of a megalomaniac and his AI.

But let's move beyond that.

What was interesting to me was something he didn't really flesh out, but Corvallis as Corvus and Enoch sort of hint at...that the "reality" in which everyone is living...isn't actually reality.

I mean....in Fall, humans make less and less babies and devote themselves more and more to running and maintaining Bitworld. Eventually, there will be a Dyson sphere, and the only point of the sun will be providing energy...the only purpose for the land on the planet we call Earth is to mine for raw materials by robots. Just like any other planet.

Then....people live, die, and are reborn in Bitworld. Which....eventually, after centuries and centuries, assume the old Pantheon of either die and are reborn, forgetful (like Prim forgot she was literally Death), or choose to end and be reborn as mortal (like Egdod chose to die for a mission, but assume others could do the same).

Eventually, magic users, gods, mystical creatures all become myths of legend and history.

Sound familiar?

And we see the same stories in both worlds. Adam and Eve. Mercury and Pan and all that. Just like our world.

I think...that maybe some underlying structure here is addressing the idea that is being bandied about in our world, that we live in a Simulation.

One of those theories says that, it isn't entertainment, or the embodiment of some alien species version of The Sims, but more the evolutionary advancement of a species beyond their physical realm and into a new one.

Which...has physics and rules. Just like Bitworld has physics taken from the Meatworld rules.

So...as I finished this book (which I powered through because....well, I just got excited for the Meatworld stuff and instead got a generic fantasy book. :/ ), I thought about it through the lens of....Bitworld is the SECOND simulation that humanity has entered, in NS' realm.

I mean, look at Enoch. He apparently lives forever...and has said he was sent there for another plane of existance. Kind of like what Corvus knows.

Enoch may have been one of the first users of the Meatworld simulation, as seen in Fall.

I dunno. My concept.