Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson
at Science Foo Camp 2008
Pen name	Stephen Bury (with J. Frederick George)
Occupation	novelist, short story writer, essayist
Nationality	American
Genre	Science fiction, essays
Literary movement	Cyberpunk, Postcyberpunk, Maximalism
Website
http://www.nealstephenson.com/

Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his speculative fiction works, which have been variously categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk. He has also written with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym of Stephen Bury.

Stephenson explores areas such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired Magazine, and has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (funded by Jeff Bezos) developing a manned sub-orbital launch system. Stephenson is also Chairman of the Board and cofounder of Subutai Corporation, which is still in stealth mode.

Background

Born in Fort Meade, Maryland, Stephenson came from a family comprised of engineers and hard scientists he dubbed "propeller heads". His father is a professor of electrical engineering whose father was a physics professor; his mother worked in a biochemistry laboratory, while her father was a biochemistry professor. Stephenson's family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in 1960 and then to Ames, Iowa in 1966 where he graduated from Ames High School in 1977. Stephenson furthered his studies at Boston University. He first specialized in physics, then switched to geography after he found that it would allow him to spend more time on the university mainframe. He graduated in 1981 with a B.A. in geography and a minor in physics. Since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Seattle with his family.

Literary works

Fiction

• The Big U (1984) received very little attention when it first came out, and was subsequently out of print until Stephenson allowed it to be reprinted in 2001.
• Zodiac (1988) is an ecothriller.
• Snow Crash (1992) fuses memetics, computer viruses, and other high-tech themes with Sumerian mythology, along with an analysis of the differences between ideologies such as libertarianism, laissez-faire capitalism, and communism.
• The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (1995) deals with a future with extensive nanotechnology and dynabooks.
• Cryptonomicon (1999) is a novel concerned with concepts ranging from computing and Alan Turing's research into codebreaking and cryptography during the Second World War at Bletchley Park, to a modern attempt to set up a data haven. It has subsequently been reissued in three separate volumes in some countries, including in French and Spanish translations.

Discussing Anathem at MIT in 2008     (uncropped)

• The Baroque Cycle is a series of historical novels and is in some respects a prequel to Cryptonomicon. It was originally published in three volumes but has subsequently been republished as eight separate books:
  1. Quicksilver (2003) (containing the novels Quicksilver, King of the Vagabonds, and Odalisque);
  2. The Confusion (2004) (containing the novels Bonanza and Juncto);
  3. The System of the World (2004) (containing the novels Solomon's Gold, Currency, and System of the World).
• Anathem (2008) is a work of speculative fiction set in an Earth-like world
• On July 8, 2009, Publisher's Marketplace released word that a deal had been struck for the publication of REAMDE, a new novel. The deal was made by his lifelong literary agent Liz Darhansoff with publisher Jennifer Brehl at William Morrow. The novel is slated for publication in 2011.

Non-fiction

Stephenson has also written non-fiction. In The Beginning Was The Command Line, an essay on operating systems including the histories of and relationships between DOS, Windows, Linux, and BeOS from both cultural and technical viewpoints and focusing especially on the development of the Graphical User Interface, was published in book form in 1999. Various other essays have been published in magazines such as Wired.

With the 2003 publication of Quicksilver, Stephenson debuted The Metaweb , a wiki (using the same software as Wikipedia) annotating the ideas and historical period explored in the novel. As of April 25, 2007 the metaweb.com site is no longer an active wiki.

The science fiction approach doesn't mean it's always about the future;
it's an awareness that this is different.

–Neal Stephenson, September 1999

Style

In his earlier novels Stephenson deals heavily in pop culture-laden metaphors and imagery, and in quick, hip dialogue, as well as in extended narrative monologues. The tone of his books is generally more irreverent and less self-serious than that of previous cyberpunk novels, notably those of William Gibson.

Stephenson's books tend to have elaborate, inventive plots drawing on numerous technological and sociological ideas at the same time. This distinguishes him from other mainstream science fiction authors who tend to focus on a few technological or social changes in isolation from others. The discursive nature of his writing, together with significant plot and character complexity and an abundance of detail suggests a baroque writing style, which Stephenson brought fully to bear in the three-volume Baroque Cycle. His book The Diamond Age follows a simpler plot, but features "neo-Victorian" characters and employs Victorian-era literary conceits. In keeping with the baroque style, Stephenson's books have become longer as he has gained recognition. (At least one printing of Cryptonomicon is well over one thousand pages long and the novel contains various digressions, including a lengthy erotic story about antique furniture and stockings.)

Bibliography

Stephenson at a book signing in 2004

Novels

• The Big U (1984)
• Zodiac (1988)
• Snow Crash (1992) – British Science Fiction Association Award nominee, 1993 ; Clarke Award nominee, 1994
• Interface (1994) with J. Frederick George, as "Stephen Bury"
• The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (1995) – Hugo and Locus SF Awards winner, 1996 ; Nebula, Campbell and Clarke Awards nominee, 1996
• The Cobweb (1996) with J. Frederick George, as "Stephen Bury"
• Cryptonomicon (1999) – Locus SF Award winner, 2000 ; Hugo and Clarke Awards nominee, 2000
• Quicksilver (2003), volume I:The Baroque Cycle – Clarke Award winner, 2004 ; Locus SF Award nominee, 2004
• The Confusion (2004), volume II:The Baroque Cycle and winner 2005 Locus Award
• The System of the World (2004), volume III:The Baroque Cycle – Locus SF winner, 2005 ; Prometheus Award winner, 2005; Clarke Award nominee, 2005
• Anathem (2008) – British Science Fiction Association Award nominee, 2008 ; Hugo and Clarke Awards nominee, 2009

Short fiction

• "Spew" (1994), in Hackers (1996)
• "The Great Simoleon Caper" (1995), TIME
• "Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of Tribes of the Pacific Northwest" in Full Spectrum 5 (1995)
• "Jipi and the Paranoid Chip" (1997), Forbes

Non-fiction

• "Smiley's people". 1993.
• "In the Kingdom of Mao Bell". Wired. 1994. "A billion Chinese are using new technology to create the fastest growing economy on the planet. But while the information wants to be free, do they?"
• "Mother Earth Mother Board". Wired. 1996. "In which the Hacker Tourist ventures forth across three continents, telling the story of the business and technology of undersea fiber-optic cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth."
• "Global Neighborhood Watch". Wired. 1998. Stopping street crime in the global village.
• In the Beginning...was the Command Line. Harpers Perennial. 1999. ISBN 0-380-81593-1.
• "Communication Prosthetics: Threat, or Menace?". Whole Earth Review, Summer 2001.
• "Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out". Op-Ed piece on Star Wars, in The New York Times, June 17, 2005.
• "It's All Geek To Me". Op-Ed piece on the movie 300 and geek culture, The New York Times, March 18, 2007.

External links

• Neal Stephenson's official website
• Stephenson's personal website
• Neal Stephenson at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Template:Worldcat id
• "Science Fiction as a Literary Genre" Lecture by Stephenson at Gresham College, London in May 2008
• Authors@Google: Neal Stephenson This event took place September 12, 2008, as part of the Authors@google series.