Neal Stephenson
Author of Snow Crash
About the Author
Neal Stephenson, the science fiction author, was born on October 31, 1959 in Maryland. He graduated from Boston University in 1981 with a B.A. in Geography with a minor in physics. His first novel, The Big U, was published in 1984. It received little attention and stayed out of print until show more Stephenson allowed it to be reprinted in 2001. His second novel was Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller was published in 1988, but it was his novel Snow Crash (1992) that brought him popularity. It fused memetics, computer viruses, and other high-tech themes with Sumerian mythology. Neal Stephenson has won several awards: Hugo for Best Novel for The Diamond Age (1996), the Arthur C. Clarke for Best Novel for Quicksilver (2004), and the Prometheus Award for Best Novel for The System of the World (2005). He recently completed the The Baroque Cycle Trilogy, a series of historical novels. It consists of eight books and was originally published in three volumes and Reamde. His latest novel is entitled The Rise and Fall of D. O. D. O. Stephenson also writes under the pseudonym Stephen Bury. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: U.S. novelist Neal Stephenson at Science Foo Camp 2008. Author Bob Lee; cropped by Beyond My Ken
Series
Works by Neal Stephenson
The Great Simoleon Caper {story} 19 copies
Global Neighborhood Watch 10 copies
Spew {story} 6 copies
2006 5 copies
Jipi and the Paranoid Chip {story} 5 copies
In the Kingdom of Mao Bell {essay} 4 copies
Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out {essay} 3 copies
It's All Geek to Me {essay} 3 copies
Stephenson Neal 2 copies
Smiley's People {article} 2 copies
The Future of Ideas 1 copy
Snowcrash 1 copy
Baroque Cycle, including: Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver (novel), The System Of The World (novel), The… (2011) 1 copy
Cryptonomicon 1 copy
Two for the Road 1 copy
Associated Works
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (2003) — Introduction, some editions — 1,525 copies
Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society (2010) — Contributor — 1,029 copies
Twelve Tomorrows - Visionary stories of the near future inspired by today's technologies (2013) — Contributor — 35 copies
Hive of Dreams: Contemporary Science Fiction from the Pacific Northwest (Northwest Readers) (2003) — Contributor — 12 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Stephenson, Neal
- Legal name
- Stephenson, Neal Town
- Other names
- Bury, Stephen (pseudonym)
- Birthdate
- 1959-10-31
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Fort Meade, Maryland, USA
- Places of residence
- Fort Meade, Maryland, USA
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA
Ames, Iowa, USA
Seattle, Washington, USA - Education
- Boston University (BA | Geography | 1981)
- Occupations
- novelist
short story writer
essayist
Subutai Corporation (Chairman of the Board, Co-Founder) - Relationships
- Jewsbury, George Frederick (uncle)
Lackermann, Ellen Marie (wife) - Organizations
- The Clock of the Long Now Project
Subutai Corporation - Awards and honors
- Hugo Award (1996)
Arthur C. Clarke Award (2004)
Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award (1996)
Prometheus Award (2005)
Locus Award (1996, 2000, 2005, 2009) - Agent
- Liz Darhansoff
- Short biography
- Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.
His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque.
Stephenson's work explores subjects such as mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired. He has also written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury.
Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system,[1] and is also a cofounder of Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He is currently Magic Leap's Chief Futurist.
Members
Discussions
purchased the latest Neal Stephenson book yesterday in The Green Dragon (August 2019)
entry point for Neal Stephenson in Science Fiction Fans (June 2013)
Anathem by Neal Stephenson - LinuxLefty tutoring UnrulySun and kgodey in 75 Books Challenge for 2012 (March 2012)
Reviews
This is the first Neal Stephenson novel I have read, and it's a joyful mess of a story.
It's a cyberpunk novel from 1992, and the way it portrays the internet (making it a virtual reality interface) still feels relevant and entertaining today, although some details are off (particularly how Stephenson seems to assume that full access to it will be basically reserved to a technological or social elite, and that most information will cost money). It's also fast-paced, epic and, above all, it has some very interesting speculative ideas about the nature of language and Sumerian mythology. It also has some sharp satire of globalization before it was actually a thing.
Why is it a mess? Well, it is not clear what it wants to be. It has a lot of action, but plot advance often comes in the form of talking heads speculating about ideas. The action part and the deep speculative part just do not seem to mix very well, and although I enjoyed the first I would have liked more of the second. Y.T.'s involvement with the plot is a bit far-fetched. It's just like the author decided the story needed a female protagonist to act as a counterpart to Hiro. And she's a great character and her parts of the novel are a lot of fun to read, it's just that her relationship with the main plot is quite forced.
Despite the problems, the novel was always interesting and entertaining to read. Often a flawed but ambitious effort can have more to offer than a more polished but safer one. So for that reason, even though I probably should give it four stars, I'll give it five.… (more)
It's a cyberpunk novel from 1992, and the way it portrays the internet (making it a virtual reality interface) still feels relevant and entertaining today, although some details are off (particularly how Stephenson seems to assume that full access to it will be basically reserved to a technological or social elite, and that most information will cost money). It's also fast-paced, epic and, above all, it has some very interesting speculative ideas about the nature of language and Sumerian mythology. It also has some sharp satire of globalization before it was actually a thing.
Why is it a mess? Well, it is not clear what it wants to be. It has a lot of action, but plot advance often comes in the form of talking heads speculating about ideas. The action part and the deep speculative part just do not seem to mix very well, and although I enjoyed the first I would have liked more of the second. Y.T.'s involvement with the plot is a bit far-fetched. It's just like the author decided the story needed a female protagonist to act as a counterpart to Hiro. And she's a great character and her parts of the novel are a lot of fun to read, it's just that her relationship with the main plot is quite forced.
Despite the problems, the novel was always interesting and entertaining to read. Often a flawed but ambitious effort can have more to offer than a more polished but safer one. So for that reason, even though I probably should give it four stars, I'll give it five.… (more)
se volevo leggere 1200 pagine di formule matematiche non sceglievo un romanzo
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Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 79
- Also by
- 15
- Members
- 108,994
- Popularity
- #79
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 2,569
- ISBNs
- 629
- Languages
- 23
- Favorited
- 777
Written in a hip, punk style with attitude to spare, the two main characters are Hiro Protagonist, a super hacker and swordsman, and his business partner Y.T., a spunky 15-year old skater-courier girl. Together they unravel a plot that relies on ancient Sumerian myth to strip mankind of any individual thought.
The book was released in the early 1990s and yet feels fresh and new due to so many of the author's concepts about the internet and privatization of society coming true. This a thrill-ride of a book with multiple high-octane action scenes and is just a blast to read.… (more)