Neal Stephenson

"One of my grandfathers was a physics professor, the other was a biochemistry professor, my father's an electrical engineering professor, several of my uncles are in engineering or hard sciences. I grew up in a university town, Iowa State University of Science and Technology..." --Neal Stephenson (in Interzone , July 1996).

"Neal Stephenson issues from a clan of rootless, itinerant hard-science and engineering professors. 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. When he graduated and discovered, to his perplexity, that there were no jobs for inexperienced physicist-geographers, he began to look into alternative pursuits such as working on cars, agricultural labour and writing novels. His first novel, The Big U , was published in 1984 and vanished without a trace. His second, Zodiac: The Eco-thriller , came out in 1988 and quickly developed a cult following among water-pollution-control engineers. It was also enjoyed, though rarely bought, by many radical environmentalists. The highly successful Snow Crash , also available in Roc, was written between 1988 and 1991 as the author listened to a great deal of loud, relentless, depressing music.

"Neal Stephenson now resides in a comfortable home in the western hemisphere where he spends his time -- when not side-tracked by his computer, rollerblading or parenting -- attempting to write more books." [publisher's bumpf, The Diamond Age , UK pbk, 1996]

"The Big U was campus comedy, somewhat soft-mark satirical humour about a big, nasty university. That one had its moments." --Neal Stephenson (in Interzone , July 1996).

Neal Stephenson also wrote a couple of unpublished fantasy novels and one unpublished science fiction novel.

"Between these [The Big U and Zodiac ] I spent a few years trying to write a pretty big science-fiction book that never really fell together, you know, it didn't coalesce; it kept morphing into different forms. There were a couple of ideas from that that eventually made their way into Snow Crash ." --Neal Stephenson (in Interzone , July 1996).

His novel The Diamond Age was winner of the 1996 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. And was shortlisted for the 1996 Arthur C.Clarke Award...and was finalist for the 1996 Prometheus Award.

"The first second-generation, native cyberpunk science-fiction writer. Unlike most of the original '80s cyberpunks, he grew up in the new technoculture and, with a hacker's background, knows how it really works." --Bruce Sterling.

Neal Stephenson lives in Seattle, Washington, USA.