Neal Stephenson

Novelist

Birthday October 31, 1959

Birth Sign Scorpio

Birthplace Fort Meade, Maryland, U.S.

Age 64 years old

Nationality United States

Height 180 cm

#14782 Most Popular

1959

Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.

His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque.

Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science.

He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired.

He has written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury.

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, and is also a cofounder of Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad.

Born on October 31, 1959, in Fort Meade, Maryland, Stephenson came from a family of engineers and scientists; his father is a professor of electrical engineering while his paternal grandfather was a physics professor.

His mother worked in a biochemistry laboratory, and her father was a biochemistry professor.

1960

Stephenson's family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1960, and then in 1966 to Ames, Iowa.

1977

He graduated from Ames High School in 1977.

Stephenson studied at Boston University, first specializing in physics, then switching to geography after he found that it would allow him to spend more time on the university mainframe.

1981

He graduated in 1981 with a B.A. in geography and a minor in physics.

1984

Since 1984, Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently lives in Seattle with his family.

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.

1988

His next novel, Zodiac (1988), is a thriller following a radical environmentalist in his struggle against corporate polluters.

Neither novel attracted much critical attention on first publication, but showcased concerns that Stephenson would further develop in his later work.

1992

Stephenson's breakthrough came in 1992 with Snow Crash, a cyberpunk or postcyberpunk novel fusing memetics, computer viruses, and other high-tech themes with Sumerian mythology, along with a sociological extrapolation of extreme laissez-faire capitalism and collectivism.

Stephenson at this time would later be described by Mike Godwin as "a slight, unassuming grad-student type whose soft-spoken demeanor gave no obvious indication that he had written the manic apotheosis of cyberpunk science fiction."

1994

In 1994, Stephenson joined with his uncle, J. Frederick George, to publish a political thriller, Interface, under the pen name "Stephen Bury"; they followed this in 1996 with The Cobweb.

1995

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.

1999

This was followed by Cryptonomicon in 1999, a novel including concepts ranging from Alan Turing's research into codebreaking and cryptography during the Second World War, to a modern attempt to set up a data haven.

2003

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.

2005

(The titles and exact breakdown vary in different markets.) The System of the World won the Prometheus Award in 2005.

2008

Following this, Stephenson wrote Anathem (2008), a long and detailed novel of speculative fiction.

It is set in an Earthlike world, deals with metaphysics, and refers heavily to Ancient Greek philosophy.

2009

Anathem won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2009.

2010

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.

2011

Stephenson's novel Reamde was released on September 20, 2011.

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.

2012

On August 7, 2012, Stephenson released a collection of essays and other previously published fiction entitled Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing.

This collection also includes a new essay and a short story created specifically for this volume.

2013

In 2013, Cryptonomicon won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.

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".

2014

He was Magic Leap's Chief Futurist from 2014 to 2020.

He expected the first two volumes to be released in mid-to-late 2014.

2015

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.

2017

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.