Stephenson On His Novel In Progress

Nathaniel Wice writes: "The latest newsstand issue of TIME Digital includes a Lev Grossman interview with Neal Stephenson but the full text is online. Lev tries to push Stephenson on how he feels about the sci-fi ghetto, yielding my favorite line: Stephenson says the best-selling Cryptonomicon was 'an experiment... Can you make a Unix systems administrator into a fictional character who people will find compelling?' There's also some hints about his 'related' follow-up, Quicksilver."

Comments

Re:It takes a village of tech support?

[Bad Mojo]

Well, I would take it with a grain of reality. Linux is more difficult for most people out there to understand and work with. It's also his opinion about Linux in a very short, very shallow interview. It's like when JWZ said "Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing." I can't say I totally disagree with that idea. But the issue and intent are always more complex than a sound bite can ever convey.


Bad Mojo

Stephenson

[ajs]

I know this has been posted to previous N.S. threads, but check out this Stephenson article titled "In the Beginning was the Command Line". It gives a little more background on his thought process for a few of the things in this interview.