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]
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[vague] lives in Seattle 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 showcased concerns that Stephenson would further develop in his later work.[6]
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.
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.
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]
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 while its focus was on "novel alternate approaches to space, alternate propulsion systems, and business models." He 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]
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]
"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.
"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."
"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."
Rogers, Adam (November 2021). "Apocalypses now". Wired. Vol.29, no.11. pp.78–87.
Related Research Articles
Cryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson, set in two different time periods. One group of characters are World War II–era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park (UK), and disillusioned Axis military and intelligence figures. The second narrative is set in the late 1990s, with characters that are descendants of those of the earlier time period, who employ cryptologic, telecom, and computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency, with a long-term objective to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare.
The Prometheus Award is an award for libertarian science fiction given annually by the Libertarian Futurist Society. American author and activist L. Neil Smith established the Best Novel category for the award in 1979, but it was not awarded regularly until the newly founded Libertarian Futurist Society revived it in 1982. The Society created a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 1983, and also presents occasional one-off Special Awards.
Vernor Steffen Vinge was an American science fiction author and professor. He taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University. He was the first wide-scale popularizer of the technological singularity concept and among the first authors to present a fictional "cyberspace". He won the Hugo Award for his novels A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999), and Rainbows End (2006), and novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High (2001) and The Cookie Monster (2004).
Gregory Dale Bear was an American writer and illustrator best known for science fiction. His work covered themes of galactic conflict, parallel universes, consciousness and cultural practices, and accelerated evolution. His last work was the 2021 novel The Unfinished Land. Greg Bear wrote over 50 books in total.
Glen David Brin is an American science fiction author. He has won the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards. His novel The Postman was adapted into a 1997 feature film starring Kevin Costner.
Snow Crash is a science fiction novel by the American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's novels, its themes include history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy.
Michael Swanwick is an American fantasy and science fiction author who began publishing in the early 1980s.
Quicksilver is a historical novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 2003. It is the first volume of The Baroque Cycle, his late Baroque historical fiction series, succeeded by The Confusion and The System of the World. Quicksilver won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was nominated for the Locus Award in 2004. Stephenson organized the structure of Quicksilver such that chapters have been incorporated into three internal books titled "Quicksilver", "The King of the Vagabonds", and "Odalisque". In 2006, each internal book was released in separate paperback editions, to make the 900 pages more approachable for readers. These internal books were originally independent novels within the greater cycle during composition.
Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis, commonly known as Connie Willis, is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards for particular works—more major SF awards than any other writer—most recently the "Best Novel" Hugo and Nebula Awards for Blackout/All Clear (2010). She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Science Fiction Writers of America named her its 28th SFWA Grand Master in 2011.
John Joseph Vincent Kessel is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He is a prolific short story writer, and the author of four solo novels, Good News From Outer Space (1989), Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997), The Moon and the Other (2017), and Pride and Prometheus (2018), and one novel, Freedom Beach (1985) in collaboration with his friend James Patrick Kelly. Kessel is married to author Therese Anne Fowler.
Neal Asher is an English science fiction writer. He lives near Chelmsford.
The Baroque Cycle is a series of novels by American writer Neal Stephenson. It was published in three volumes containing eight books in 2003 and 2004. The story follows the adventures of a sizable cast of characters living amidst some of the central events of the late 17th and early 18th centuries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Central America. Despite featuring a literary treatment consistent with historical fiction, Stephenson has characterized the work as science fiction, because of the presence of some anomalous occurrences and the work's particular emphasis on themes relating to science and technology. The sciences of cryptology and numismatics feature heavily in the series, as they do in some of Stephenson's other works.
"Jipi and the Paranoid Chip" is a science fiction short story by Neal Stephenson that appeared in Forbes magazine's July 7, 1997 issue. It is part of the Baroque Cycle/Cryptonomicon universe.
Jon Courtenay Grimwood is a Maltese born British science fiction and fantasy author. He also writes literary fiction as Jonathan Grimwood, and crime fiction and thrillers as Jack Grimwood.
Ian McDonald is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.
The Fortunate Fall is the debut and only novel by Cameron Reed, published by Tor Books in 1996. The title comes from the Christian theological concept of felix culpa.
The Aurealis Awards are presented annually by the Australia-based Chimaera Publications and WASFF to published works to "recognise the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy, horror writers". To qualify, a work must have been first published by an Australian citizen or permanent resident between 1 January and 31 December of the corresponding year; the presentation ceremony is held the following year. It has grown from a small function of around 20 people to a two-day event attended by over 200 people.
The Mongoliad is a fictional narrative set in the Foreworld Saga, a secret history transmedia franchise developed by the Subutai Corporation. The Mongoliad was originally released in a serialized format online, and via a series of iOS and Android apps, but was restructured and re-edited for a definitive edition released via the Amazon Publishing imprint 47North, both in print and in Kindle format. Fan-submitted Foreworld stories were published via Amazon's Kindle Worlds imprint.
Mark Teppo is an American author of contemporary fantasy and science fiction. His work is strongly peppered with references to occult concepts, most commonly those of Hermeticism and Alchemy. Prior to his current tenure as a fiction writer Teppo was a music journalist working both as a staff reviewer and editor for various publications such as Earpollution, Igloo Magazine, Earplug, and OPi8.com. Teppo is also Chief Creative Officer of Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad.
↑ "Neal Stephenson – Biography". ElectricInca.com. Archived 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.
↑ "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...
↑ 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.
↑ Narcisse, Evan (September 28, 2013). "Neal Stephenson Says His Dream Of Making A Video Game Isn't Dead". Kotaku. Archived 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.
↑ Stephenson, Neal (September 19, 2014). "Final Update". CLANG by Subutai Corporation. Kickstarter. Archived from the original on October 18, 2014. Retrieved October 18, 2014.
↑ Grimshaw, Mark (2014). The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. New York: Oxford University Press. p.702. ISBN9780199826162.
↑ 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. ISSN1071-5819. 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.
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