Neal Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction, which have been variously categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and post-cyberpunk.
Neal Stephenson is an American writer born in 1959 and known for his works of speculative fiction, which have been variously categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and post-cyberpunk.
- The Big U (1984) was a satirical take on life at American Megaversity, a vast, bland and alienating research university beset by chaotic riots.
- Zodiac (1988), was a thriller following the exploits of a radical environmentalist protagonist in his struggle against corporate polluters.
- Snow Crash (1992), Stephenson's breakthrough, a novel in the late cyberpunk or post-cyberpunk tradition fusing memetics, computer viruses, and other high-tech themes with Sumerian mythology, along with a sociological extrapolation of laissez-faire capitalism and collectivism.
- Interface (1994), a political thriller written with his uncle under the pen name Stephen Bury.
- The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (1995), deals with a future with extensive nanotechnology and dynabooks.
- The Cobweb (1996), also written with his uncle, using the name Stephen Bury.
- Cryptonomicon (1999), 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.
- The Baroque Cycle is a series of long historical novels set in the 17th and 18th centuries, in some respects a prequel to Cryptonomicon. It was originally published in three volumes:
- Quicksilver (2003)
- The Confusion (2004)
- The System of the World (2004)
- Anathem (2008), a very long and detailed work set in an Earthlike world, dealing with metaphysics, and refers heavily to Ancient Greek philosophy, while at the same time being a complex commentary on the insubstantiality of today's contemporary society.
- Reamde (2011), a thriller set in the present with a plot that involves a medley of game developers, Chinese cyber-criminals, Russian mafia, and other stranger inhabitants of the new global village.
- Seveneves (2015), a science fiction drama, set around the 21st century and into the future, which details the plight of the human race as it tries to survive the catastrophic destruction of the Moon.
Stephenson is also known for having written the non-fiction essay In the Beginning… Was the Command Line (1999), a commentary on why the proprietary operating systems business is unlikely to remain profitable in the future because of competition from free software.
Source: Neal Stephenson on the English Wikipedia.
