Neal Stephenson

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.

Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson in 2019
Born	Neal Town Stephenson (1959-10-31) October 31, 1959 (age 63) Fort Meade, Maryland, U.S.
Pen name	Stephen Bury (with J. Frederick George)
Occupation	Novelist short story writer essayist
Citizenship	United States
Education	Ames High School Boston University (BA)
Period	1984–present
Genre	Science fiction, speculative fiction, historical fiction, essays
Literary movement	Cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, maximalism
Notable awards	Hugo Prometheus
Website
nealstephenson.com

Stephenson's work explores 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 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 was Magic Leap's Chief Futurist from 2014 to 2020.^[2]

Early life

Born on October 31, 1959, in Fort Meade, Maryland,^[3] Stephenson came from a family of engineers and scientists; his father is a professor of electrical engineering while his paternal grandfather was a physics professor. His mother worked in a biochemistry laboratory, and her father was a biochemistry professor. Stephenson's family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1960 and then in 1966 to Ames, Iowa. He graduated from Ames High School in 1977.^[4]

Stephenson studied at Boston University,^[4] first specializing in physics, then switching to geography after he found that it would allow him to spend more time on the university mainframe.^[5] He graduated in 1981 with a B.A. in geography and a minor in physics.^[4] Since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently lives in Seattle with his family.^[4]

Writing

 

Discussing Anathem at MIT in 2008

Stephenson's first novel, The Big U, published in 1984, is a satirical take on life at American Megaversity, a vast, bland, and alienating research university beset by chaotic riots.^[6][7] His next novel, Zodiac (1988), is a thriller following a radical environmentalist in his struggle against corporate polluters.^[6] Neither novel attracted much critical attention on first publication, but showcased concerns that Stephenson would further develop in his later work.^[6]

Stephenson's breakthrough came in 1992 with Snow Crash, a cyberpunk or post-cyberpunk novel fusing memetics, computer viruses, and other high-tech themes with Sumerian mythology, along with a sociological extrapolation of extreme laissez-faire capitalism and collectivism.^[7][8] Stephenson at this time would later be described by Mike Godwin as "a slight, unassuming grad-student type whose soft-spoken demeanor gave no obvious indication that he had written the manic apotheosis of cyberpunk science fiction."^[9] In 1994, Stephenson joined with his uncle, J. Frederick George, to publish a political thriller, Interface, under the pen name "Stephen Bury";^[10] they followed this in 1996 with The Cobweb.

Stephenson's next solo novel, published in 1995, was The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. The plot involves a weapon implanted in a character's skull, near-limitless replicators for everything from mattresses to foods, smartpaper, and air and blood-sanitizing nanobots. It is set in a world with a neo-Victorian social structure.

This was followed by Cryptonomicon in 1999, a novel including concepts ranging from Alan Turing's research into codebreaking and cryptography during the Second World War, to a modern attempt to set up a data haven. In 2013, Cryptonomicon won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.

The Baroque Cycle is a series of historical novels set in the 17th and 18th centuries, and is in some respects a prequel to Cryptonomicon. It was originally published in three volumes of two or three books each – Quicksilver (2003), The Confusion, (2004) and The System of the World (2004) – but was subsequently republished as eight separate books: Quicksilver, King of the Vagabonds, Odalisque, Bonanza, Juncto, Solomon's Gold, Currency, and System of the World. (The titles and exact breakdown vary in different markets.) The System of the World won the Prometheus Award in 2005.

Following this, Stephenson wrote Anathem (2008), a long and detailed novel of speculative fiction. It is set in an Earthlike world, deals with metaphysics, and refers heavily to Ancient Greek philosophy. Anathem won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2009.

In May 2010, the Subutai Corporation, of which Stephenson was named chairman, announced the production of an experimental multimedia fiction project called The Mongoliad, which centered upon a narrative written by Stephenson and other speculative fiction authors.^[11][12]

Stephenson's novel REAMDE was released on September 20, 2011.^[13] The title is a play on the common filename README. This thriller, set in the present, centers around a group of MMORPG developers caught in the middle of Chinese cyber-criminals, Islamic terrorists, and Russian mafia.^[14]

On August 7, 2012, Stephenson released a collection of essays and other previously published fiction entitled Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing.^[15] This collection also includes a new essay and a short story created specifically for this volume.

In late 2013, Stephenson stated that he was working on a multi-volume work of historical novels that would "have a lot to do with scientific and technological themes and how those interact with the characters and civilisation during a particular span of history". He expected the first two volumes to be released in mid-to-late 2014.^[16] However, at about the same time, he shifted his attention to a science fiction novel, Seveneves, which was completed about a year later and was published in May 2015.^[17] On June 8, 2016, plans were announced to adapt Seveneves for the screen.^[18]

In May 2016, as part of a video discussion with Bill Gates, Stephenson revealed that he had just submitted the manuscript for a new historical novel—"a time travel book"—co-written with Nicole Galland, one of his Mongoliad coauthors.^[19] This was released as The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. on June 13, 2017.^[20]

In June 2019 his novel Fall; or, Dodge in Hell was published. It is a near-future novel that explores mind uploading into the cloud, and contains characters from 2011's Reamde, 1999's Cryptonomicon, and other books.^[21]

Termination Shock, published in November 2021, is a climate fiction novel about solar geoengineering.^[22]

Writing style

Stephenson's books tend to have elaborate plots drawing on numerous technological and sociological ideas at the same time. 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.^[23]

Outside of writing

 

Stephenson at the Starship Century Symposium at UCSD in 2013

Stephenson worked at Blue Origin—Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company—for seven years in the early 2000s when its focus was on "novel alternate approaches to space, alternate propulsion systems, and business models", but left after Blue became a more standard aerospace company.^[24]

In 2012, Stephenson launched a Kickstarter campaign for CLANG, a realistic sword-fighting fantasy game. The concept was to use motion control to provide an immersive experience. The campaign's funding goal of $500,000 was reached by the target date of July 9, 2012, on Kickstarter, but funding options remained open and the project continued to accept contributions on its official site.^[25] The project ran out of money in September 2013.^[26] This, and the circumstances around it, angered some backers^[27] with some threatening a class action lawsuit.^[28] The CLANG project ended in September 2014 without being completed. Stephenson took part of the responsibility for the project's failure, stating, "I probably focused too much on historical accuracy and not enough on making it sufficiently fun to attract additional investment".^[29]

In 2014, Stephenson was hired as Chief Futurist by the Florida-based augmented reality company Magic Leap.^[30] Stephenson left the company in April 2020 as part of a layoff.^[2] In June 2021, Stephenson and colleagues Sean Stewart and Austin Grossman released New Found Land: The Long Haul, an Audible audio drama based on the intellectual property they developed at Magic Leap.^[31]

In 2022, Stephenson launched Lamina1 to build an open source metaverse that would utilize smart contracts^[32] on a blockchain.^[33]

Influence

Stephenson's writing is influential in technology circles. Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, John Carmack, and Peter Thiel are all fans of his work.^[34] In Snow Crash Stephenson coined the term Metaverse^[35] and popularized the term avatar in a computing context.^[36] The Metaverse inspired the inventors of Google Earth^[34] and Snow Crash was required reading on the Xbox development team under Microsoft executive J Allard.^[16] According to academic Paul Youngquist, Snow Crash also dealt the cyberpunk genre a "killer blow".^[37] According to Publishers Weekly, Cryptonomicon is "often credited with sketching the basis for cryptocurrency."^[38]

Bibliography

 

Stephenson at the National Book Festival in 2004

Novels

• The big U. New York: Vintage Books. 1984.
• Zodiac (1988)
• Snow Crash (1992) – British Science Fiction Association Award nominee, 1993; Clarke Award nominee, 1994^[39]
• 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^[39]
• The Cobweb (1996) with J. Frederick George, as "Stephen Bury"
• Cryptonomicon (1999) – Locus SF Award winner, 2000;^[39] Hugo and Clarke Awards nominee, 2000;^[39] 2013 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
• Quicksilver (2003), volume I of The Baroque Cycle – Clarke Award winner, 2004;^[39] Locus SF Award nominee, 2004^[39]
• The Confusion (2004), volume II of The Baroque Cycle – Locus SF Award winner, 2005
• The System of the World (2004), volume III of The Baroque Cycle – Locus SF Award winner, 2005; Prometheus Award winner, 2005; Clarke Award nominee, 2005^[39]
• Anathem (2008) – Locus SF Award winner, 2009; British Science Fiction Association Award nominee, 2008; Hugo and Clarke Awards nominee, 2009^[39]
• The Mongoliad (2010–2012)
• Reamde (2011)^[40]
• Seveneves (2015)^[17] Hugo Award for Best Novel nominee
• The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (2017) with Nicole Galland^[41]
• Fall; or, Dodge in Hell (2019)^[42]
• New Found Land: The Long Haul (2021) with Austin Grossman and Sean Stewart. Audible Original audiobook.^[43]
• Termination Shock (2021)^[44]

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 Coast" in Full Spectrum 5 (1995)
• "Jipi and the Paranoid Chip" (1997), Forbes
• "Crunch" (1997), in Disco 2000 (edited by Sarah Champion, 1998) ("Crunch" is a chapter from Cryptonomicon)
• "Atmosphæra Incognita" (2013), in Starship Century: Toward the Grandest Horizon (edited by Gregory Benford and James Benford)

Other fiction projects

• Project Hieroglyph, founded in 2011, administered by Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination since 2012. Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, ed. Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer, which includes contributions by Stephenson (preface and chapter "Atmosphæra Incognita"), was published by William Morrow in September, 2014.

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. HarperPerennial. 1999. ISBN 0-380-81593-1.
• "Communication Prosthetics: Threat, or Menace? August 21, 2011, at the Wayback Machine" 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 film 300 and geek culture, The New York Times, March 18, 2007.
• "Atoms of Cognition: Metaphysics in the Royal Society 1715–2010", chapter in Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society, edited by Bill Bryson. Stephenson discusses the legacy of the rivalry between Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, November 2, 2010.
• "Space Stasis". Slate. February 2, 2011. "What the strange persistence of rockets can teach us about innovation."
• "Innovation Starvation". World Policy Journal, 2011.
• Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing. William Morrow. 2012. ISBN 0062024434.

Critical studies, reviews and biography

• Lewis, Jon, ed. (2008). Tomorrow through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4438-0270-3.

In the beginning

• De Lint, Charles (June 2000). "Review of In the Beginning ... Was the Command Line". Books to Look For (column). F&SF. Vol. 98, no. 6. pp. 39–40. Retrieved February 17, 2016.

Snow crash

• Handrahan, Matthew (2015). "Essential Read: Snow Crash". Book Club (column). SciFiNow. Vol. 104. pp. 84–87. Retrieved October 27, 2020.

Termination shock

• Rogers, Adam (November 2021). "Apocalypses now". Wired. 29.11: 78–87.

References

1. Wenz, John (June 19, 2018). "How Neal Stephenson Got Book Ideas by Moonlighting at Blue Origin". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved August 4, 2022.
2. Alcorn, Ted (July 10, 2020). "Writer Neal Stephenson Thinks We've Gotten Dystopia All Wrong". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved June 26, 2021.
3. Fisher, Lawrence M. (April 17, 1994). "SOUND BYTES; Orwell – Class of 1994". The New York Times. from the original on December 6, 2012. Retrieved December 13, 2010.
4. Stephenson, Neal. . Neal Stephenson's Site (MobileMe). Archived from the original on June 28, 2012. Retrieved August 7, 2010.
5. "Neal Stephenson – Biography". ElectricInca.com. from the original on February 20, 2010. Retrieved August 7, 2010. He began his higher education as a physics major, then switched to geography when it appeared that this would enable him to scam more free time on his university's mainframe computer.
6. Booker, M Keith; Thomas, Anne-Marie, eds. (2009). "Neal Stephenson (1959–)". The Science Fiction Handbook. Chichester, UK ; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 173. ISBN 978-1-4051-6205-0. OCLC 263498124.
7. Grassian, Daniel (2003). "From modernists to Gen Xers". Hybrid fictions: American fiction and Generation X. Jefferson: McFarland & Co. pp. 29–30. ISBN 978-0-7864-1632-5. OCLC 52565833.
8. Westfahl, Gary (2005). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders, Vol. 3. Greenwood Publishing. p. 1235. ISBN 0-313-32953-2. Retrieved December 5, 2009.
9. Godwin, Mike (February 2005). "Neal Stephenson's Past, Present, and Future". Reason. Reason Foundation. from the original on May 3, 2011. Retrieved December 13, 2010.
10. "Neal Stephenson: Cryptomancer". Locus Online. August 1, 1999. Archived from the original on August 16, 2011. Retrieved August 7, 2010. ...a thriller written in collaboration with his uncle, George Jewsbury, under pseudonym Stephen Bury...
11. Eaton, Kit (May 26, 2010). "The Mongoliad App: Neal Stephenson's Novel of the Future?". Fast Company. from the original on June 11, 2010. Retrieved July 4, 2010.
12. . subutai.mn (Subutai Corporation). Archived from the original on October 7, 2010. Retrieved August 7, 2010. Neal Stephenson, Chairman
13. Anders, Charlie Jane (July 14, 2009). "Neal Stephenson Gets Half A Million Dollars, But Did He Have To Switch Genres To Get It?". io9. Gawker Media. from the original on March 29, 2010. Retrieved August 7, 2010.
14. . Archived from the original on August 5, 2011.
15. Upcoming4.me. . Upcoming4.me. Archived from the original on June 29, 2012. Retrieved June 26, 2012.
16. Kelion, Leo. (2013-09-17) BBC News - Neal Stephenson on tall towers and NSA cyber-spies January 26, 2014, at the Wayback Machine. Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved on 2014-01-14.
17. Neal Stephenson. "Seveneves". Nealstephenson.com. from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved April 5, 2015.
18. Fleming, Mike (June 8, 2016). "Skydance Reunites 'Apollo 13' Team For Neal Stephenson Sci-Fi Novel 'Seveneves'". Deadline Hollywood. from the original on June 10, 2016. Retrieved June 10, 2016.
19. Gates, Bill. "The Day the Moon Blew Up". gatesnotes. Starting at 1:19. from the original on May 19, 2016. Retrieved June 10, 2016.
20. . HarperCollins Publishers. Archived from the original on June 24, 2017. Retrieved October 27, 2020.
21. Sheehan, Jason (June 4, 2019). "Sometimes Fascinating, Sometimes Excruciating, 'Fall' Hums With Energy". NPR. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
22. El Akkad, Omar (November 16, 2021). "Neal Stephenson's Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". The New York Times. Retrieved November 18, 2021.
23. Giuffo, John (October 1, 2004). "Book Capsule Review: The System of the World". Entertainment Weekly. Time Warner. from the original on October 10, 2008. Retrieved September 22, 2008.
24. Foust, Jeff (March 19, 2018). "A changing shade of Blue". The Space Review. Retrieved May 31, 2018. 'For the first seven years or so, I worked there when it was in more of an exploratory stage of trying to figure out what the landscape looked like and what are some possibly novel alternate approaches to space, alternate propulsion systems and business models and so on,' [Stephenson] recalled. That lasted, he said, until the company became more focused on specific technologies (which feature propulsion systems not very alternate from what's been, and is being, done elsewhere.) 'Once it became a more kind of directed aerospace engineering entity, that's when I amicably peeled off,' he said.
25. Twitter / subutaicorp: @LordBronco We're still taking September 21, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Twitter.com. Retrieved on 2014-01-14.
26. Famous Kickstarter Turns Into Complete Disaster September 21, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Kotaku.com. Retrieved on 2014-01-14.
27. THUD: Development Of Neal Stephenson’s CLANG Halted September 25, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved on 2014-01-14.
28. Narcisse, Evan (September 28, 2013). "Neal Stephenson Says His Dream Of Making A Video Game Isn't Dead". Kotaku. from the original on September 29, 2013. A vocal contingent of Clang backers have seethed with anger after the Pause Button update, with some demanding their money back and others making threats of legal action. When I spoke with him earlier this week, he told me he understands where they're coming from, but wants everyone to know that the journey to making Clang a reality isn't over.
29. Stephenson, Neal (September 19, 2014). "Final Update". CLANG by Subutai Corporation. Kickstarter. from the original on October 18, 2014. Retrieved October 18, 2014.
30. Davey Alba (December 16, 2014). "Sci-Fi Author Neal Stephenson Joins Mystery Startup Magic Leap as 'Chief Futurist'". Wired. from the original on May 18, 2015. Retrieved May 20, 2015.
31. "Neal Stephenson & Co. turn failed Magic Leap AR project into an Audible drama". VentureBeat. June 10, 2021. Retrieved November 23, 2021.
32. Zenou, Theo (June 30, 2022). "A novel predicted the metaverse (and hyperinflation) 30 years ago". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 2, 2022.
33. Levy, Stephen (September 16, 2022). "Neal Stephenson Named the Metaverse. Now, He's Building It". Wired. Retrieved December 2, 2022.
34. Rogers, Adam (October 26, 2021). . Wired. Archived from the original on October 29, 2021. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
35. Grimshaw, Mark (2014). The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 702. ISBN 9780199826162.
36. Gerhard, Michael; Moore, David; Hobbs, Dave (2004). "Embodiment and copresence in collaborative interfaces". International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 61 (4): 453–480. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2003.12.014. ISSN 1071-5819. It was first used in the context of virtual worlds in the pioneering Habitat system of the mid 1980s (Morningstar and Farmer, 1991) and popularized by Stephenson's (1992) science-fiction novel Snow Crash.
37. Youngquist, Paul (2012). "Cyberpunk, War, and Money: Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon". Contemporary Literature. 53 (2): 319. doi:10.1353/cli.2012.0011. ISSN 1548-9949. S2CID 163021465.
38. Ages, Alyssa (September 17, 2021). "Neal Stephenson's 'Shock' Doctrine". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved November 20, 2021.
39. Kelly, Mark R. . Locusmag.com (Locus Publications). Archived from the original on December 20, 2010. Retrieved January 18, 2011.
40. "Reamde". HarperCollins. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
41. "The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O." HarperCollins. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
42. "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell". HarperCollins. Retrieved December 24, 2018.
43. New Found Land: The Long Haul. Retrieved June 11, 2021 – via Audible.
44. "Termination Shock". HarperCollins. Retrieved March 31, 2021.

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Neal Stephenson.

 

Wikiquote has quotations related to Neal Stephenson.

• Official website  
• Neal Stephenson at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
• Works by Neal Stephenson at Open Library  
• – lecture by Stephenson at Gresham College, London in May 2008
• Neal Stephenson at authors@Google, September 12, 2008.
• Stephen Bury at LC Authorities, two records