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THE BIG U by Neal Stephenson

THE BIG U

by Neal Stephenson

Pub Date: Aug. 1st, 1984
ISBN: 0380816032
Publisher: Random House

A terminally cute 1980s campus novel—as first-novelist Stephenson blends imitation-Thomas Pynchon with imitation Animal House: Apocalypse Meets the Practical Joke is the primary motif. Sarah Jane Johnson, student-body president, and Casimir Radon, physics major, seem to be the only two authentic humans left at American Megaversity—a metastasized academic plant squeezed vertically into a few great skyscrapers; in the aggregate, this ultra-modern campus is known to all as the "Plex." But the Plex also has rats galore and terrorist fraternities and lesbian/feminist cults and an unlimited supply of stereo-amp wattage. And when actual war—civil revolt—breaks out within the Plex, Stephenson's adolescent jollies go into high gear: there are rat swarms, guns, electronic devices, Dungeons and Dragons, exploding foodstuffs in the cafeteria; mysterious exchange students called Crotobaltislavonians appear; and the ruthless combatants come up with murderously elaborate schemes—involving scalding-in-the-shower as a result of thousands of dorm toilets flushed at the same moment. Some obvious campus appeal—but readers no longer living in dorms (and many of those still on campus) will probably find this merely repetitious, labored, and awfully dumb.