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The events take place at a fictitious big university consisting of a single building (a central complex with eight towers containing student housing), making the university an enclosed universe of its own. Stephenson uses this fact to take what starts as a mostly realistic satire and move it further
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The story chronicles the disillusionment of a number of young intellectuals as they encounter the realities of the higher education establishment parodied in the story. Over time their lives and sanity disintegrate in different ways through a series of escalating events that culminates with a
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Told in the first person from the perspective of Bud, a lecturer in Remote
Sensing who is new to the university, the book attacks and makes fun of just about every conceivable group at university, though its portraits of the
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used by
Stephenson in this novel to explain the behavior of some of the cult-like student groups is an important part of the plot of
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Neal
Stephenson states that "The Big U is what it is: a first novel written in a hurry by a young man a long time ago."
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to be republished, saying that the only thing worse than people reading the book was paying that much to read it.
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was out of print and
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and further into the realm of improbability, with giant radioactive rats, hordes of bats and a lab-made
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The idea of institutions of learning also serving as repositories of nuclear waste reappears in
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and the fictional campus is parallel to BU in many ways. The dormitories are similar to
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was published in 1992, the book that became a best-seller and vaulted him to fame,
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Stephenson has said he is not proud of this book. When
Stephenson's
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The Origin of
Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
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tend to be more detailed than those of other factions.
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388:for hundreds of dollars, he relented and allowed
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311:full-scale civil war raging on the campus of
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737:"Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of
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120:Learn how and when to remove this message
787:In the Beginning... Was the Command Line
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795:Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing
396:Connections to Stephenson's later work
20:. For the controlled flood study, see
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58:adding citations to reliable sources
768:"In the Kingdom of Mao Bell" (1994)
370:Literary significance and criticism
22:Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency
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290:) is a novel by American writer
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739:Tribes of the Pacific Northwest
45:needs additional citations for
362:just east of the BU campus in
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754:"Atmosphæra Incognita" (2013)
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27:1984 novel by Neal Stephenson
823:1984 science fiction novels
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732:The Great Simoleon Caper
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628:Fall; or, Dodge in Hell
296:first published novel
818:1984 American novels
313:American Megaversity
275:PS3569.T3868 B5 2001
54:improve this article
325:computer scientists
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484:The New York Times
480:"Murderous Pranks"
461:2011-05-20 at the
16:For the ship, see
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52:Please help
47:verification
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762:Non-fiction
686:Quicksilver
352:John Silber
69:"The Big U"
812:Categories
663:The Cobweb
564:Snow Crash
489:2007-01-09
442:References
411:Snow Crash
377:Snow Crash
298:, it is a
263:813/.54 21
133:The Big U
80:newspapers
655:Interface
612:Seveneves
548:The Big U
527:Works by
390:The Big U
382:The Big U
283:The Big U
215:Paperback
178:Publisher
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459:Archived
428:See also
250:45162137
211:Hardback
160:Language
588:Anathem
472:Sources
420:Anathem
337:railgun
209:Print (
163:English
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300:satire
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193:1984
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