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In Diamond Age the character Miss Matheson alludes to her past in a reminiscence concerning the 'smart wheels' on her wheel chair. She likens them to those on skateboards and then talks about how she was once a 'thrasher'.
This strongly suggests that Miss Matheson is YT from Snow Crash.

This is mentioned in the following Wikipedia article Wikipedia - Diamond Age and repeated in this answer to a previous SFF question.

This is obviously speculation on the part of Wikipedia although it makes perfect (and poetic) sense - I love the idea that an ex-thrasher 'wild child' became a prim and proper neo-Victorian school mistress in her later years.

The question is, has this ever been confirmed by Neal Stephenson?

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    I've never seen official confirmation, but it certainly appears so. This is hearsay, but a commenter on Slashdot said "Yes, YT is Miss Matheson...or near enough it doesn't matter. Someone asked Stephenson about this at a reading in Boston, and Stephenson said that it's certainly okay to think so."
    – pooter03
    Commented May 6, 2015 at 16:21
  • @pooter03 - I think that's as close as we're going to get - post your comment as an answer . . .
    – Pat Dobson
    Commented May 6, 2015 at 16:56

1 Answer 1

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I've never seen official confirmation, but it certainly appears so. This is hearsay, but a commenter on Slashdot said (comment removed due to account deletion and can't find an archive for it at the moment):

Yes, YT is Miss Matheson...or near enough it doesn't matter. Someone asked Stephenson about this at a reading in Boston, and Stephenson said that it's certainly okay to think so.

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