Plot
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 full scale civil war raging on the campus of American Megaversity.
Told in first person from the perspective of Bud, a lecturer in Remote Sensing new to the university, the book attacks and makes fun of just about every conceivable group at university, though its portraits of the nerds/computer scientists/role players tend to be more detailed than those of other factions.
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 and further into the realm of improbability, with giant radioactive rats, hordes of bats and a lab-made railgun.
Read more about this topic: The Big U
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The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
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““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)