Richard “Dodge” Forthrast –last seen in REAMDE – is puttering through the beginning of another day-after-tomorrow in the early 21st century. It’s an intimate, engaging scene that stands on its own, which is to say that Fall is a follow-on to REAMDE, not a sequel. In short order, he dies, and before readers have belted themselves in, the pages and plot acquire super-sonic speed, hurtling one into a gripping, unsettling and prescient makeover of today as tomorrow. Stephenson does not slow down, and those 880 pages seem more like 320 even as you achieve escape velocity and are hurtled from a visionary science fiction story into an equally visionary fantasy novel.

Stephenson is firing on all cylinders in Fall, handing family tensions, international intrigue, and unfettered imagination with equal ease. Starting with the basics, he demonstrates his power with prose in the opening, where he conjures a palpable…