Is this Stephenson at age 18? Few pictures of him exist with hair, let alone that young. Nowadays whenever I see him I think of Prindle.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ahs/36850855373

The Big U (1984) (1 1/2 stars out of 5): Stephenson wrote this mess while he was young, has stated that he’s not proud of it, and that he only brought it back into print to keep people from blowing astronomical sums for it on eBay. It takes place at a university loosely modelled after Boston U but the whole campus is set inside a single giant building, the “Plex,” which is probably Stephenson’s only great idea in the entire book. He satirizes various types from the time, like early 80s computer nerds and Dungeons & Dragons addicts, with the climactic setpiece being a game of real life D&D that turns lethal. But honestly, if you’re not a completist, skip this, it’s his worst book and it’s a fucking mess. I read it twice, once in 2010 and once a couple years ago, because I couldn’t remember what happened, but not much actually did.
BTW, the original cover was pretty funny: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_U#/media/File:Big-u-cover.png

Zodiac (1988) (3 1/2 stars, likely): Okay, this is far better hip underground college lit from the late 80s–in fact, it’s a college noir, with a hacky sack playing eco-hippie type as the detective character. (The title refers to an inflatable brand of raft, not astrology, nor the Zodiac Killer.) Notable for its eco-themes and Stephenson adopting a Pynchon Jr. feel for some of the style. It was the first thing I read by Stephenson, probably around 2008 or so, but I don’t remember very well what happened in it and it needs a re-read. I liked it at the time though.

Snow Crash (1992) (3 stars, cemented): See previous–this is where Stephenson really became the Neal Stephenson we know and love, writing rapid-fire at all times, but I can only give it a good rating for the setup, not the full execution. I agree that it is sort of a landmark, though.

The Diamond Age (1995) (4 stars, probably): He started to get a bit more long-winded with this one, slightly less rapid-fire too as I recall, but first things first, since he got tagged “cyberpunk” for Snow Crash he had to shed his own label so he could invent post-cyberpunk, which I remember this book as very much being. So he starts off with a setpiece, one of his funniest, where he has a character who is a bundle of cyberpunk cliches get totally gorily slaughtered right off the bat. After that, we get an adventure involving two kids, and…okay, I remember this book as being his best and knew right away it was better and more fully realized than Snow Crash but I don’t really remember what happened in it, though I do remember it had a crappy ending. For now, I’m calling it his best, but a re-read would be necessary to prove it.

Cryptonomicon (1999) (4 stars, probably): The first of his books to be really long (all Stephenson novels from here on out would be 800-1100 pages), it flashes back and forth between a modern-day internet-boom company hunting for treasure with a series of WWII code-breaking adventures involving the late-90s characters’ ancestors, as well as those of the Japanese survivor Goto Dengo (get it?) and a lot of real historical figures, such as Alan Turing (though there are many more). He also introduces one of his less successful devices, an ageless character named Enoch Root who pops up in his other books regardless of time period, sort of Stephenson’s Randall Flagg figure. Both the 1940s and 1990s stuff worked pretty well and I remember there being very little fat in the book, albeit maybe not much emotional resonance (not a specialty of Stephenson, obviously.) A contender for his best, and also the first book he wrote that I think one wouldn’t easily be able to trace to the time it was written in, though it does concern the dot-com boom.

Quicksilver (2003) (4 stars, probably): The first of the three lengthy Baroque Cycle novels is also the best, the deepest and definitely the one that covers the most ground, giving us a dazzling range of real and fictional historical events and characters between 1655 and 1713. There’s even a glossary and a list of Dramatis Personae at the end, though it’s probably Newton and Leibniz who Stephenson handles the best. (The fictional characters are mostly, again, ancestors of the ones from Cryptonomicon.) I don’t know that Stephenson is really a “genius” but if I wanted to convince a newcomer that he was, this is the book I’d point to, he obviously did a shit-ton of research to get all of this stuff down. There’s adventure, history, politics, technology, war, social stuff…I think my favorite scene is in here, one where someone spots Oliver Cromwell’s head on a stick from a distance in the middle of the night.

The Confusion (2004) (3 stars, as far as I can remember): A bit of a step down in quality, as Stephenson definitely shot most of his wad with the first book, but the second is good enough, jumping back and forth between an adventure story (“Bonanza”) featuring “Half-Cocked” Jack Shaftoe and a political, rise-through-the-classes story (“Juncto”) concerning the streetwise heroine Eliza, rescued in the first book. I think the jumping back and forth worked, it’s just that this book can’t help but be as impressive as its predecessor.

The System Of The World (2004): (2 1/2 or 3 stars, I forget): This was the weakest of the three Baroque Cycle books but it’s because the whole thing was just running out of steam by now. The story is the least exciting and the ground isn’t being covered as amazingly for sure. I can’t remember much of what happened in this one and I’m not sure who all considers the whole trilogy to be masterful–as far as I know, these books sold well but are overshadowed as “classics” by Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon and Anathem, probably.

Anathem (2008): (3 or 3 1/2 stars): The most ambitious single Stephenson book yet? Probably–he tried to go all Tolkien/Herbert on us with epic nerdy large-scale worldbuilding, detailing the fictional planet Arbre, where young “avouts” (monks–male “fraas” and female “suurs”) study the religion of math, which their whole society is based on. There’s even another glossary in the back. Unfortunately this just means the “great setup, but iffy execution” problem from Snow Crash is rehashed on a bigger scale, as aliens show up to intrude on this amazing math-based world, and…well, guess who the aliens are. String theory and alternate-universe junk pops up and the extensive explaining started to make me roll my eyes. I don’t know that I’d much want to re-read this one–I have to give him points for that setup, yet again…but I don’t remember for the life of me where this plot was going.

Reamde (2011) (3 stars): Ambition? This was the longest Stephenson book I know of, more than 1000 pages, but this time it’s just a thriller, more comparable to Tom Clancy or something than “younger, more humorous, epic-length Michael Crichton.” The main character is a guy who made a fortune designing MMORPGs, and due to a virus called “reamde,” he ends up somehow smuggled off to China, then on an epic chase through the forests of the Pacific Northwest involving…uh, Arab terrorists. Yeeeeaahhh. The book wasn’t bad at all, really, but God knows why this one was so long; there is NOT a thousand pages of material for that plot.

Seveneves (2015) (2 stars): If this is his most ambitious book (remember, the last 300 pages are set FIVE THOUSAND YEARS after humanity almost eats it) it’s also his biggest mess.

Fall (2019)
Termination Shock (don’t remember what year): He’s still cranking out long ass books, but I haven’t read these yet, and I’m not planning on reading his nonfiction, or his collaborations, of which there are several, most notably written as “Stephen Bury”.