Neal Stephenson

Primarily a science-fiction writer, who, although principally writing about computer and computer-related technologies such as nanotechnology, does not belong to the cyberpunk school of writers such as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Although he wrote earlier novels such as the eco-thriller Zodiac, he came to fame in the early 1990s with the deeply funny novel Snowcrash which fuses hi-tech themes with Babylonian mythology. He has written two subsequent novels The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer which deals with a future with extensive nanotechnology, and Cryptonomicon, a novel concerned with computing and codebreaking from the second World War codebreakers to a modern attempt to set up a data haven. (Though the title is reminiscent of the Necronomicon, a fictional work detailed within the works of the writer H. P. Lovecraft, Stephenson has stated that this is because he liked the sound of the name; he had not read any Lovecraft at that time, and the novel has no connection with Lovecraft's themes.)

Works:

fiction:

• The Big U (1984)
• Zodiac (1988)
• Snow Crash (1992)
• The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (1995)
• Cryptonomicon (1999)

non-fiction:

• In the Beginning ... was the Command Line (1999)

He has also written fiction as Stephen Bury together with J. Frederick George - at least two novels, Cobweb and Interface

Links: http://www.cryptonomicon.com