Slashdot Mirror
Ask Neal Stephenson
Our latest Slashdot interview victim... err... guest... is Neal Stephenson, author of (among others) Snow Crash, CRYPTONOMICON, the much-discussed essay, In the Beginning was the Command Line, and more recently a series of books he calls The Baroque Cycle. (Last month Slashdot reviewed the series' third volume, The System of the World.) Now you can ask Neal whatever you want. As usual, we'll send him 10 -12 of the highest-moderated questions and post his answers verbatim when we get them back.
*Exactly* the question I wanted to ask and very well stated. Thanks.
Okay. What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Hiro Protagonist - it's a pun. The hero/protagonist is the main character of the book.
Hi Neal!
Not a big fiction reader, but have consumed a few of your works this year.
You and I are similar in age I would guess, though I'm a little too young to have used paper tape. I bought a Commodore around '81 or so.
You are obviously interested in computing machine history, and are comfortable with the idioms of shells, ttys, and UNIX. At least you showed some insight in such things as Randy Waterhouse decrypting the punch cards by hiding his C++ code using X, job control, etcetera.
Also, the cryptography concepts presented in Cryptonomicon were my first more advanced exposures to crypto theory, and I found them fascinating. I recently have been trying to solve a problem using something similar to Turing's bicycle chain theories.
So, two questions:
Do you still study things like Perl and C?
Do you do any cryptography coding and tinkering?
Keep writing, and may I also cast a vote for more modern or futuristic material. Also the WWII threads in Cryptonomicon I found particularly rich, both the storytelling and the historical depth. I could read another 1,000 pages.