Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson
Neal Town Stephensonis an American writer and game designer known for his works of speculative fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth31 October 1959
CountryUnited States of America
Neal Stephenson quotes about
oxygen atmosphere trying
For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.
clutter basements universe
A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.
technology failing cases
It is commonly the case with technologies that you can get the best insight about how they work by watching them fail.
stupid intelligent differences
The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent.
talent ability
Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was.
two alternatives compromise
And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all.
strong writing character
At the beginning of the project, I wasn't certain that I could come up with an engaging storyline and cast of characters in this world, so I had a strong bias toward actually writing, and worrying about research later. In other words, I was afraid that I'd devote a year or two of my life to grinding through Kant and Husserl, then discover that there simply was no novel to be written here.
annoying courses
Technically, of course, he was right. Socially, he was annoying us.
powerful thinking two
Hostility towards Microsoft is not difficult to find on the Net, and it blends two strains: resentful people who feel Microsoft is too powerful, and disdainful people who think it's tacky. This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments. Microsoft is the very embodiment of modern high-tech prosperity--it is, in a word, bourgeois--and so it attracts all of the same gripes.
running style trying
I was trying to run something to ground that had come to my attention when I was working on the Baroque Cycle. That series, of course, was about the conflict between Newton and Leibniz. Leibniz developed a system of metaphysics called monadology, which looked pretty weird at the time and was promptly buried by Newtonian-style physics.
facts nuance vapor
To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.
sound noise barriers
Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.
powerful world ifs
See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places,
class water doe
Middle class prosperity is lapidary; the flow of cash rounds and smooths a person like water does riverbed stones.