Salon Interviews Neal Stephenson

edibleplastic writes "Salon has a great interview with Neal Stephenson, author of such science fiction favorites as Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and Quicksilver. He discusses his views on the scientific community (both past and present), the world of science fiction, and writing in general. "I think there are common threads between writing and programming... All I'm saying is that the thing you're making -- the novel or the computer program -- has got a very complicated and finely wrought hierarchical structure to it. The structure has to work right or the whole thing fails. But the only way you can work on it is by hitting one character at a time...""

Comments

Re:Quicksilver

[drinkypoo]

Each work of fiction penned under the name "Stephenson, Neal" has been basically a self-indulgent orgiatic wankfest in which a single displaced geek (The Baroque cycle leads us to believe that Stephenson himself might choose the words Natural Philosopher) triumphs, saves the day, et cetera. Zodiac featured a tree-hugging chemistry geek. Snow Crash featured a programming geek. Diamond Age featured a nanotech engineering geek. Cryptonomicon featured another programming geek, who is also a math geek, and his grandfather, who was also a mathematician, not to mention Gogo Dengo, who is an engineer - another kind of geek. Finally we have Quicksilver which finally breaks the mold, as one of our primary characters is a vagabond (his specialties are social engineering and sticking sharp things into people.) The woman doesn't count as a deviation from the formula however, as she is just discovering geekdom just as happened formerly in Diamond Age with Nell. And of course, we still have a geek character.

What I'm trying to get across is that these are all hero-worship titles. You can see elements of the same thing in his other books but they are much more loosely tied to the Stephenson formula. The settings have become steadily deeper, I can't wait to read Confusion - maybe I can get a start on it this weekend.