Neal Stephenson | |
|---|---|
 Neal Stephenson in 2019 | |
| Born | Neal Town Stephenson (1959-10-31)October 31, 1959 (age 66) Fort Meade,Maryland, U.S. |
| Pen name | Stephen Bury (withJ. Frederick George) |
| Occupation |
|
| Education | Boston University (BA) |
| Period | 1984–present |
| Genre | Science fiction,speculative fiction,historical fiction,essays |
| Notable awards | Hugo Prometheus Locus Clarke |
| Website | |
| nealstephenson | |
Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works ofspeculative fiction. His novels have been categorized asscience fiction,historical fiction,cyberpunk, andbaroque.
Stephenson's work exploresmathematics,cryptography,linguistics,philosophy,currency, and thehistory of science. He also writes nonfiction articles about technology in publications such asWired. 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 forBlue Origin, a company (founded byJeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system,[1] and also co-founded the Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is theinteractive fiction projectThe Mongoliad. He wasMagic Leap's chief futurist from 2014 to 2020.[2]
Born on October 31, 1959, inFort Meade,Maryland,[3] Stephenson came from a family of engineers and scientists; his father is a professor ofelectrical engineering and his paternal grandfather was aphysics professor. His mother worked in abiochemistry laboratory and her father was abiochemistry professor. Stephenson's family moved toChampaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1960, and toAmes, Iowa, in 1966. He graduated fromAmes High School in 1977.[4]
Stephenson studied atBoston 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 aB.A. ingeography and a minor in physics.[4]
Since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in thePacific Northwest and as of 2012 lived inSeattle with his family.[4]
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 both showcased concerns that Stephenson developed in his later work.[6]
Stephenson's breakthrough came in 1992 withSnow Crash, acyberpunk orpostcyberpunk novel fusingmemetics,computer viruses, and other high-tech themes withSumerian mythology, along with a sociological extrapolation of extremelaissez-faire capitalism andcollectivism.[7][8]Mike Godwin described Stephenson at this time 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 and his uncle,J. Frederick George, published a political thriller,Interface, under thepen name "Stephen Bury";[10] they followed this in 1996 withThe Cobweb.
Stephenson's next solo novel, published in 1995, wasThe 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 byCryptonomicon in 1999, a novel including concepts ranging fromAlan Turing's research intocodebreaking and cryptography duringWorld War II, to a modern attempt to set up adata haven.Cryptonomicon won thePrometheus Hall of Fame Award in 2013.
The Baroque Cycle is a series ofhistorical novels set in the 17th and 18th centuries, and in some respects aprequel toCryptonomicon. It was originally published in three volumes of two or three books each—Quicksilver (2003),The Confusion (2004), andThe 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, andSystem of the World. (The titles and exact breakdown vary in different markets.)The System of the World won thePrometheus Award in 2005.
Next, Stephenson wroteAnathem (2008), a long, detailed work ofspeculative fiction. It is set in an Earthlike world, deals with metaphysics, and refers heavily toAncient Greek philosophy.Anathem won theLocus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2009.
In 2010, the Subutai Corporation, of which Stephenson was named chairman, announced the production of an experimental multimedia fiction project,The Mongoliad, which centered on a narrative by Stephenson and other speculative fiction authors.[11][12]
Stephenson's novelReamde was released in 2011.[13] The title is a play on the common filenameREADME. A thriller set in the present, it centers around a group ofMMORPG developers caught in the middle of Chinese cyber-criminals, Islamic terrorists, and Russian mafia.[14]
In 2012, Stephenson released a collection of essays and other previously published fiction,Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing.[15] It also includes a new essay and a short story written specifically for this volume.
In 2013, Stephenson said 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 2014.[16] But at about the same time, he shifted his attention to a science fiction novel,Seveneves, which was completed about a year later and published in May 2015.[17] On June 8, 2016, plans were announced to adaptSeveneves for the screen.[18]Seveneves won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel in 2016.
In May 2016, during a video discussion withBill Gates, Stephenson said he had just submitted the manuscript for a new historical novel—"a time travel book"—co-written withNicole Galland, one of hisMongoliad coauthors.[19] This book,The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., was released in 2017.[20]
In 2019, his novelFall; or, Dodge in Hell was published. It is a near-future novel that exploresmind uploading into the cloud, and contains characters fromReamde,Cryptonomicon, and other books.[21]
Termination Shock, published in 2021, is aclimate fiction novel aboutsolar geoengineering.[22]
Stephenson's books tend to have elaborate plots that draw on numerous technological and sociological ideas. The discursive nature of his writing together with significant plot and character complexity and an abundance of detail suggests abaroque writing style, which Stephenson brought fully to bear in hisBaroque Cycle.[23]
Stephenson worked atBlue Origin,Jeff Bezos's spaceflight company, for seven years in the early 2000s while its focus was on "novel alternate approaches tospace,alternate propulsion systems, and business models." He left after Blue became a more standard aerospace company.[24]
In 2012, Stephenson launched aKickstarter campaign forClang, 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, 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] and some threatened aclass action lawsuit.[28] TheClang project ended in September 2014 without being completed. Stephenson took some responsibility for the project's failure, saying, "I probably focused too much on historical accuracy and not enough on making it sufficiently fun to attract additional investment".[29]
In 2014, the Florida-basedaugmented reality companyMagic Leap hired Stephenson as chief futurist.[30] He left the company in 2020 as part of a layoff.[2] In 2021, Stephenson and colleaguesSean Stewart andAustin Grossman releasedNew Found Land: The Long Haul, anAudible audio drama based on the intellectual property they developed at Magic Leap.[31]
In 2022, Stephenson launchedLamina1 to build anopen sourcemetaverse that will usesmart contracts[32] on ablockchain.[33]
Stephenson's writing is influential in technology circles.Bill Gates,Sergey Brin,John Carmack, andPeter Thiel are all fans of his work.[34] InSnow Crash, Stephenson coined the termMetaverse[35] and popularized the termavatar in a computing context.[36] The Metaverse inspired the inventors ofGoogle Earth,[34] andSnow Crash was required reading on theXbox development team under Microsoft executiveJ Allard.[16] According to academic Paul Youngquist,Snow Crash also dealt thecyberpunk genre a "killer blow".[37] According toPublishers Weekly,Cryptonomicon is "often credited with sketching the basis forcryptocurrency".[38]
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.
...a thriller written in collaboration with his uncle, George Jewsbury, under pseudonymStephen Bury...
Neal Stephenson, Chairman
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)'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.
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.
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.
