Anathem Launch Event on Fora.tv

At an event hosted by the Long Now Foundation, science fiction author Neal Stephenson reads from his latest novel ANATHEM. Afterwards he participates in a conversation with Stewart Brand and Danny Hillis.

Marco Kaltofen: Ecology sleuth

The Boston Globe has a profile of Marco Kaltofen who was the inspiration for the character of Sangamon Taylor in Neal Stephenson's novel Zodiac.

The Natick resident is a renowned expert on pollution who travels the world to perform tests on air, soil, and water. Providing proof of environmental destruction has been his business since graduating from Boston University in the 1980s.

He's also active in his own town, bringing his expertise to bear for more than a decade on the all-volunteer Restoration Advisory Board that oversees the federal Superfund cleanup at Natick's Soldiers Systems Center.

"He really knows his stuff," said Robert Becnel, a New Orleans lawyer who worked with Kaltofen recently to document a major oil spill caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Steampunk desktop

This Steampunk Desktop is the kind of faux Victoriana that The Diamond Age's John Hackworth and his ilk would have.

Snow Crash inspired virtual worlds

In the CNET Newsblog Weigh in on sci-fi to technology inspirations posted by Daniel Terdiman he suggest that virtual worlds were inspired by Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash.

I think it is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario as Stephenson extrapolated Snow Crash's metaverse from primitive virtual worlds of the time and now Snow Crash itself has inspired the creation of a new generation of virtual worlds.

The Salon Interview: Neal Stephenson

From the archives comes this April 2004 Salon interview with Neal Stephenson on the release of The Confusion volume two of The Baroque Cycle.

Stephenson makes the "Baroque Cycle" a weirdly effective mix of high-octane tutorial and ripping yarn. To balance such cerebral characters as Newton and Daniel Waterhouse (Puritan ancestor of the Waterhouses, crack mathematicians and programmers, in "Cryptonomicon"), he introduces Jack Shaftoe, aka the King of the Vagabonds and his sometime-paramour turned countess and financial whiz, Eliza.

Shaftoe, like his descendant Bobby in "Cryptonomicon," skips from one outlandish but irresistibly entertaining exploit to the next, barely escaping with his skin intact: war, thieves, prison, pirates -- you name it. As for Eliza, well, she's the kind of girl who encrypts top-secret military information in her cross-stitch embroidery and surreptitiously handles the investments of half the court of Louis XIV.

The second volume in the "Cycle," "The Confusion," published on April 19, continues the saga, with an even more lavish serving of the feats of Jack and Eliza.

Very interesting interview that is worth a read if you didn't catch it when it was first published and worth a re-read even if you did.

Book Review: Interface

Review of Interface by Stephen Bury at Brooders.net

I hesitate to call this cyberpunk. It’s not hardcore black leather clad, hacking with mirrorshades type novel. It does, however, have brain implants placed strategically in politicians by a large faceless corporation manipulating society theme. So it probably rates on cyberpunk themes, more than stylistic imagery.

Book review: Cryptonomicon.

Review by themusicgod1 of Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon.

Just finished my library borrowed copy of Neal Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon'. I do not, in my mind, really differentiate it from 'The Baroque Cycle'; it seems like the ending that cycle deserved, for the most part.

It is a story that is spun from two eras and circles; one revolves around Alan Turing and a secret part of the british war effort, the other venture capitalists building a data center. It drips of late 1990's thought.