Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk and baroque.
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 Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a science fiction novel by American writer Neal Stephenson. It is to some extent a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story, focused on a young girl named Nell, set in a future world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. The novel deals with themes of education, social class, ethnicity, and the nature of artificial intelligence. The Diamond Age was first published in 1995 by Bantam Books, as a Bantam Spectra hardcover edition. In 1996, it won both the Hugo and Locus Awards, and was shortlisted for the Nebula and other awards.
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.
Genre fiction, also known as formula fiction or popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.
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.
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.
Charles Chowkai Yu is an American writer. He is the author of the novels How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Interior Chinatown, as well as the short-story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You. In 2007 he was named a "5 under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation. In 2020, Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award for fiction.
Bruno P. Maddox is a British literary novelist and journalist who is best known for his novel My Little Blue Dress (2001) and for his satirical magazine essays.
Anathem is a science fiction novel by American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 2008. Major themes include the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and the philosophical debate between Platonic realism and nominalism.
The Mongoliad is a collaborative work of transmedia historical adventure fiction by a group known as the Subutai Corporation which was founded by Neal Stephenson and others. Set in the Foreworld Saga, the story was originally released in a serialized format online, and via a series of iOS and Android apps from 2010 until 2012. It was restructured and re-edited for a definitive edition published by 47North in multiple volumes in 2012 as The Mongoliad. Fan-submitted Foreworld stories were published via Amazon's Kindle Worlds imprint starting in 2013.
Nicole Galland is an American novelist, initially known for her historical fiction. She has written The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. in collaboration with Neal Stephenson. She wrote the contemporary comedic novel Stepdog. Under the name E.D. deBirmingham she wrote Siege Perilous, the fifth novel of the Mongoliad cycle.
The Spy: a Tale of the Neutral Ground is a novel by American writer James Fenimore Cooper. His second novel, it was published in 1821 by Wiley & Halsted. The plot is set during the American Revolution and was inspired in part by the family friend John Jay. The Spy was successful and began Cooper's reputation as a popular and important American writer.
Ellis Amdur is a writer, an American practitioner of martial arts and as of 2024, retired crisis intervention trainer. He has published a number of books on martial arts, on crisis intervention, hostage negotiation, and fiction.
Susan Elia MacNeal is an American author best known for her Maggie Hope mystery series of novels, which are set during World War II, mainly in London.
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. is a science fiction novel by American writers Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland, published in 2017. A secret U.S. government agency known as the Department of Diachronic Operations (D.O.D.O.) attempts to change history through the use of magic. Stephenson and Galland had previously written together on The Mongoliad.
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), English playwright and poet, has appeared in works of fiction since the nineteenth century. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare, and has been suggested as an alternative author of Shakespeare's works, an idea not accepted in mainstream scholarship. Marlowe, alleged to have been a government spy and frequently claimed to have been homosexual, was killed in 1593.
Fall; or, Dodge in Hell is a 2019 speculative fiction novel by American author Neal Stephenson. The book explores mind-uploading to the Cloud, from the perspective of Richard "Dodge" Forthrast, a character introduced in Stephenson's 2011 Reamde.
Seventy-Six is a historical fiction novel by American writer John Neal. Published in Baltimore in 1823, it is the fourth novel written about the American Revolutionary War. Historically distinguished for its pioneering use of colloquial language, Yankee dialect, battle scene realism, high characterization, stream of consciousness narrative, profanity, and depictions of sex and romance, the novel foreshadowed and influenced later American writers. The narrative prose resembles spoken American English more than any other literature of its period. It was the first work of American fiction to use the phrase son-of-a-bitch.
Termination Shock is a science fiction novel by American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 2021. The book is set in a near-future when climate change has significantly altered human society and follows the attempts of a solar geoengineering scheme. The novel focuses on the geopolitical and social consequences of the rogue fix for climate change, themes common in the growing climate fiction genre.
