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Neal Stephenson is the author of eight novels, including the cult successes Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon. He has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award six times, winning with Quicksilver. Four of his last five novels have been number one New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Seattle.
Maxim Jakubowski's view on CRYPTONOMICON...
From the author of the major cyberpunk opus SNOW CRASH, a massive tales of conspiracies that span the ages and the globe as wheels within wheels of clandestine espionage and secret history unfurl. Wide screen baroque at its best and what Pynchon would write if he were a science fiction author.
Quite simply astonishing. Labeled as speculative science fiction, this is actually an all inclusive, wonderful colossus of a read so if you haven't tried sci/fi before, please don't be put off by the genre. The first sentence, so simple and yet so shocking, grabs your attention and plunges you straight into the story. Not too far in the future, the earth learns it’s on the brink of life extinction and there is a comparatively short length of time to prepare. Set in three parts, the first two deal with before and immediately after the crisis, the third book speeds forward to five thousand years later. It feels as though the author has seen the future and is allowing the reader to bear witness to this cataclysmic event in human history. Not only is this story a widescreen mega blockbuster, with great dexterity the author zooms in and concentrates on individuals lives and feelings. The techy and scientific elements are understandable, stimulating and weave through the story making for a fascinating read. Although this is a large book and offers a setting on an epic scale, it doesn't feel as though this should be the final curtain, there is plenty still to offer in this breathtaking and arresting new world.
June 2015 eBook of the Month. Quite simply astonishing. Labeled as speculative science fiction, this is actually an all inclusive, wonderful colossus of a read so if you haven't tried sci/fi before, please don't be put off by the genre. The first sentence, so simple and yet so shocking, grabs your attention and plunges you straight into the story. Not too far in the future, the earth learns it’s on the brink of life extinction and there is a comparatively short length of time to prepare. Set in three parts, the first two deal with before and immediately after the crisis, the third book speeds forward to five thousand years later. It feels as though the author has seen the future and is allowing the reader to bear witness to this cataclysmic event in human history. Not only is this story a widescreen mega blockbuster, with great dexterity the author zooms in and concentrates on individuals lives and feelings. The techy and scientific elements are understandable, stimulating and weave through the story making for a fascinating read. Although this is a large book and offers a setting on an epic scale, it doesn't feel as though this should be the final curtain, there is plenty still to offer in this breathtaking and arresting new world. ~ Liz Robinson
Shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2012. CWA Judges' comment: “A remarkable confection centred on a global computer game, it encompasses every conceivable aspect of thrillerdom. Admirable plotting, wit, characters and ambition.” The Lovereading view... A huge (1,042 pages), techno thriller full of hackers, viruses, mobsters and terrorists which his fans will lap up. It is also his most commercial and accessible since Cryptonomicon, so a great place to start if you haven’t read any Stephenson before. The central character Richard Forthrast has created a massive on-line gaming enviroment T’rain which is hijacked by a virus that can be used to get the players handing over ‘real’ money. A deadly war ensues that he is at the centre of. A complex but highly rewarding read.
I must wax lyrical a moment. If you are a lover of the sprawling epic, if you appreciate an historical novel steeped in ideas, speculation and fact, if you love a good swashbuckling read or if you just want to lose yourself in another world, then this magnificent trilogy is for you. But you must start at the beginning. They are called The Baroque Cycle and cover European history during the years of enlightenment, covering much of the late 17th and early 18th centuries and they are truly stunning. Begin with Quicksilver, move on to The Confusion and feel bereft when you finish this one.Comparison: None. Unique but try Iain Pears and Andrew Miller.Similar this month: None but historically you’ll love Steven Pressfield and for a mystery try Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
Probably one of the most impressive historical works of 17th century life, adventure and scholarship ever, this is the second volume in his Baroque Cycle, the more swashbuckling of the three, but you must start with the first, Quicksilver. They are huge in length (nearly a thousand pages), scope and detail but you certainly don’t feel it as you race through the pages of dashing heroes, dastardly plotting and cunning manipulation. Quite wonderful. I cannot recommend them highly enough. The sort of books you want to curl up and live inside.Comparison: Susanna Clarke, Alexandre Dumas, Bernard Cornwell.Similar this month: Jules Watson for historical, Ian McDonald for huge scope.
A massive historical tour de force (926 pages!) of staggering scope and invention about the founding of the Royal Society. It features a huge cast of characters and is quite simply stunning. So, if you are into reading massive tomes then this one is definitely for you.
From the author of the major cyberpunk opus SNOW CRASH, a massive tales of conspiracies that span the ages and the globe as wheels within wheels of clandestine espionage and secret history unfurl. Wide screen baroque at its best and what Pynchon would write if he were a science fiction author.
Fusing historical events with a gripping fictional narrative, this first book in the Mongoliad trilogy reveals a secret history of Europe in the thirteenth century.As the Mongols swept across Asia and were poised to invade Europe in 1241, a small band of warriors, inheritors of an ancient secret tradition, conceived a desperate plan to stop the attack. They must kill the Khan of Khans; if they fail, all of Christendom will be destroyed.In the late nineteenth century a mysterious group of English martial arts aficionados provided Sir Richard F. Burton, well-known expert on exotic languages and historical swordsmanship, a collection of long-lost manuscripts to translatethe lost chronicles of this desperate fight to save Europe. Burtons translations were lost, until a team of amateur archaeologists discovered them in the ruins of a mansion in Trieste. From the translations and from the original source material, the epic tale of The Mongoliad was recreated.
In 1972, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, fled to the mountains of British Columbia to avoid the draft. A skilled hunting guide, he eventually amassed a fortune by smuggling marijuana across the border between Canada and Idaho. As the years passed, Richard went straight and returned to the States after the U.S. government granted amnesty to draft dodgers. He parlayed his wealth into an empire and developed a remote resort in which he lives. He also created TRain, a multibillion-dollar, massively multiplayer online role-playing game with millions of fans around the world.But TRains success has also made it a target. Hackers have struck gold by unleashing REAMDE, a virus that encrypts all of a players electronic files and holds them for ransom. They have also unwittingly triggered a deadly war beyond the boundaries of the games virtual universeand Richard is at ground zero.Racing around the globe from the Pacific Northwest to China to the wilds of northern Idaho and points in between, Reamde is a swift-paced thriller that traverses worlds virtual and real. Filled with unexpected twists and turns in which unforgettable villains and unlikely heroes face off in a battle for survival, it is a brilliant refraction of the twenty-first century, from the global war on terror to social media, computer hackers to mobsters, entrepreneurs to religious fundamentalists. Above all, Reamde is an enthralling human storyan entertaining and epic page-turner from the extraordinary Neal Stephenson.
A new look for cult author Stephenson's unstoppable sci-fi classic The future is small. The future is nano . . . And who could be smaller or more insignificant than poor Little Nell - an orphan girl alone and adrift in a world of Confucian Law, Neo-Victorian values and warring nano-technology? Well, not quite alone. Because Nell has a friend, of sorts. A guide, a teacher, an armed and unarmed combat instructor, a book and a computer: the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is all these and much much more. It is illicit, magical, dangerous. And it isn't Nell's. It was stolen. And now some very powerful people want to get their hands on this highly desirable object. Nell is about to discover that the world can feel very small indeed . . . Neal Stephenson is the author of the three-volume historical epic 'The Baroque Cycle' (Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World) as well as the novels Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age (winner of a Hugo Award), Snow Crash, Zodiac, Anathem and Reamde. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
After the Internet, what came next? Enter the Metaverse - cyberspace home to avatars and software daemons, where anything and just about everything goes. Newly available on the Street - the Metaverse's main drag - is Snow Crash, a cyberdrug. Trouble is Snow Crash is also a computer virus - and something more. Because once taken it infects the person behind the avatar. Snow Crash bleeds into reality. Which is really bad news for Hiro - freelance hacker and the Metaverse's best swordfighter (he wrote the code) - and Y. T. - skateboard kourier, street imp and mouthy teenage girl - because reality was shitty enough before someone started messing with it . . . Exploring linguistics, religion, computer science, politics, philosophy, cryptography and the future of pizza delivery, Snow Crash is a riveting, brake-neck adventure into the fast-approaching future.
Sangamon Taylor's a New Age Sam Spade who sports a wet suit instead of a trench coat and prefers Jolt from the can to Scotch on the rocks. He knows about chemical sludge the way he knows about evil - all too intimately. And the toxic trail he follows leads to some high and foul places.Before long, Taylor's house is bombed, his every move followed, he's adopted by reservation Indians, moves onto the FBI's most wanted list, makes up with his girlfriend, and plays a starring role in the near-assassination of a presidential candidate. Closing the case with the aid of his burnout roomate, his tofu-eating comrades, three major networks, and a range of unconventional weaponry, Sangamon Taylor pulls off the most startling caper in Boston Harbor since the Tea Party.As he navigates this ecological thriller with hardboiled wit and the biggest outboard motor he can get his hands on, Taylor reveals himself as one of the last of the white-hatted good guys in a very toxic world.
Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century.In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detatchment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces.Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "e;data haven"e; in Southeast Asia - a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails grandaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat.But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy, with its roots in Detachment 2702, linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty...or to universal totalitarianism reborn.A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought, and creative daring.
Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside "e;saecular"e; world by ancient stone and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls, yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe.Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn't seen since he was "e;collected."e; But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand on the brink of cataclysmic change.Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros. Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his worldas he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.A multi-cast recording, this program also features a cameo by the author and original music inspired by the story. Composer David Stutz says of the writing process, "e;I was excited by the creative possibilities opened up by Neal's imagination. These ideas, realized, are the music that you hear on this audiobook."e;
I must wax lyrical a moment. If you are a lover of the sprawling epic, if you appreciate an historical novel steeped in ideas, speculation and fact, if you love a good swashbuckling read or if you just want to lose yourself in another world, then this magnificent trilogy is for you. But you must start at the beginning. They are called The Baroque Cycle and cover European history during the years of enlightenment, covering much of the late 17th and early 18th centuries and they are truly stunning. Begin with Quicksilver, move on to The Confusion and feel bereft when you finish this one.Comparison: None. Unique but try Iain Pears and Andrew Miller.Similar this month: None but historically you’ll love Steven Pressfield and for a mystery try Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
Probably one of the most impressive historical works of 17th century life, adventure and scholarship ever, this is the second volume in his Baroque Cycle, the more swashbuckling of the three, but you must start with the first, Quicksilver. They are huge in length (nearly a thousand pages), scope and detail but you certainly don’t feel it as you race through the pages of dashing heroes, dastardly plotting and cunning manipulation. Quite wonderful. I cannot recommend them highly enough. The sort of books you want to curl up and live inside.Comparison: Susanna Clarke, Alexandre Dumas, Bernard Cornwell.Similar this month: Jules Watson for historical, Ian McDonald for huge scope.
A massive historical tour de force (926 pages!) of staggering scope and invention about the founding of the Royal Society. It features a huge cast of characters and is quite simply stunning. So, if you are into reading massive tomes then this one is definitely for you.
Two centuries after the Boston Tea Party, harbour dumping is still a favourite local sport, only this time it's major corporations piping toxic wastes into the water. Environmentalist and professional pain in the ass Sangaman Taylor is Boston's modern -day Paul Revere, spreading the word from a 40-horsepower Zodiac raft. Embarrassing powerful corporations in highly telegenic ways is the perfect method of making enemies, and Taylor has a collection that would do any rabble-rouser proud.After his latest exploit, he's wanted by the FBI, possibly by the Mafia, and definitely by a group of Satanist angel-dust heads who think he's looking for a PCP factory, not PCB contamination. Pretty soon dodging bullets is the least of Taylor's problems - because somewhere out there are an unhinged genetic engineer and a lab-concocted bacterium that could destroy all ocean life and that's just for appetizers.Frightening, funny, fast and furious, Zodiac is thrilling speculative fiction torn straight from today's headlines.
From the author of the major cyberpunk opus SNOW CRASH, a massive tales of conspiracies that span the ages and the globe as wheels within wheels of clandestine espionage and secret history unfurl. Wide screen baroque at its best and what Pynchon would write if he were a science fiction author.
The only relief from the sea of logos is within the well-guarded borders of the Burbclaves. Is it any wonder that most sane folks have forsaken the real world and chosen to live in the computer-generated universe of virtual reality? In a major city, the size of a dozen Manhattans, is a domain of pleasures limited only by the imagination. But now a strange new computer virus called Snow Crash is striking down hackers everywhere, leaving an unlikely young man as humankind's last best hope.