Neal Stephenson

  • On the eve of the publication of Anathem, Wired just posted the first profile I've seen in a long while on author Neal Stephenson. Highlights: the steel helmet he's constructing in his basement, his extracurricular research on brain surgery tools, and the influence of the Long Now Foundation on his new novel:
    "I could never get that idea, the notion that society in general is becoming aliterate, out of my head," [Stephenson] says. "People who write books, people who work in universities, who work on big projects for a long time, are on a diverging course from the rest of society. Slowly, the two cultures just get further and further apart."
    (3) #
    8/18/2008
  • A two-month-old video of Neal Stephenson giving a talk at Gresham College on "Science Fiction versus Mundane Culture." (19) #
    7/7/2008
  • According to Al Billings, who received an advanced reader copy of Anathem, Neal Stephenson's upcoming new novel, the book came with a CD of seven musical tracks with titles like "Proof Using Finite Projective Geometry" and "Sixteen Color Prime Generating Automation." Writes Al:
    [F]rankly, this is some weird shit... The musical styles are all over the map except that they all only use human voices (and occasionally hands).
    I wonder if they are algorithmic compositions of some sort. I'm once again anxious to read the next 1,000 page Stephenson novel. (6) #
    6/24/2008
  • In a rather mundane news announcement that Neal Stephenson is changing publishers to Atlantic Books, the existence and title (Anathem) of his new novel has been revealed. Says his new editor:
    Anathem manages to remind the reader of H G Wells, Umberto Eco and Mervyn Peake and yet be entirely and gloriously itself.
    (1) #
    3/18/2008
  • With the recent large-scale Internet outages in much of the Middle East and Southeast Asia due to the severing of undersea fiber optic links, it's a good time to go back and read "Mother Earth Mother Board," an essay by Neal Stephenson written for Wired in 1996. In the piece, Stephenson travels to several continents to chronicle the laying of undersea fiber optic cables, including the repair process:
    Clearly, submarine cable repair is a good business to be in. Cable repair ships are standing by in ports all over the world, on 24-hour call, waiting for a break to happen somewhere in their neighborhood.
    (0) #
    1/31/2008
  • A new Neal Stephenson interview has been published, conducted in 2006 but still the most recent one out there. Unfortunately, it's part of Tomorrow through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization, an academic book going for $80 on Amazon. Dr. Jonathan Lewis, the author and an English professor at UNCP, also studies the works of David Foster Wallace:
    “I am looking at Wallace and Stephenson and how their storytelling techniques have been influenced by the Web,” Dr. Lewis said. “It is a style with multi-threaded stories that may be moving at different speeds in a way that is similar to the way people use the Web.”
    Sounds interesting, but I always thought Infinite Jest's multi-threaded narrative was more influenced by Tom Clancy (and fractals) than the Web.

    Update: I was able to read the interview thanks to a library and a friend. Nothing revelatory, but we're currently in a Stephenson void so it was good to read something. The best line, in reference to why his old pen name books have been republished with his real name:
    [The] perception of secrecy or furtiveness tends to make people behave irrationally.
    (4) #
    12/20/2007
  • Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's up until now secret project, is finally beginning to reveal more details about their plans. Writes Bezos:
    We’re working, patiently and step-by-step, to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go and so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system.
    Last November, they had their first publicized and successful test launch. And incidentally, author Neal Stephenson is a part-time advisor for the company. (I assume that he still is, since that link is three years old.) (via bb) (0) #
    1/3/2007
  • Neal Stephenson, the author of Snow Crash, has finally publicly commented on Second Life, the real-life manifestation of the virtual world he presciently wrote about in his aforementioned novel:
    Stephenson said he's never used Second Life and has requested that "Snow Crash" site builders make clear that he has no affiliation with the world. "I have nothing negative to say about it," Stephenson said. "There are lots of unread books on my shelves and many interesting parts of the real world I haven't visited yet. Every hour I spend in a virtual reality is an hour I'm not spending reading Dickens or visiting Tuscany."
    (23) #
    11/13/2006
  • The Guardian on the growing literary subculture of Second Life, the online virtual world. Penguin has created a Snow Crash area, introducing avatars to the famous Neal Stephenson novel that popularized the idea of virtual worlds, and another user has created a painstaking recreation of The Shakespare and Co, a legendary Parisian bookshop. (Where the books currently link to Amazon, but will eventually be in-world e-books.) (7) #
    10/24/2006
  • Neal Stephenson has published his first piece of fiction since 2004's The System of the World in November's Wired magazine. Alas, it is part of their "Very Short Stories" collection, featuring 33 6-word stories by 33 different writers. Here is Stephenson's:
    Tick tock tick tock tick tick.
    Quite a change from the 2,700-page Baroque Cycle, but not as good as Joss Whedon's:
    Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.
    (11) #
    10/21/2006
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