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Neal Stephenson: Biography

Among Gibson1 and Sterling2 Stephenson is one of the most renowned writers of cyberpunk3 fiction. Born Halloween (October 31st) 1959, Neal Town Stephenson spent the first six months of his life in Fort Meade, Maryland, home of the NSA (National Security Agency), where his father was working at the time.4 His family background features many scientists. His father is an electrical engineer and his father’s father was a physicist. His mother worked as a biochemist and her father had taught biochemistry. In 1960 the family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and again in 1966 to Ames, Iowa. Here Stephenson first learned to program computers — with teletype interface — as he describes in In the Beginning was the Command Line (1999). After school he moved to Boston to study physics, which he changed to geography, because that allowed him to use more clock cycles on the universities mainframe computer. In 1981 he got a BA in geography (with physics being his minor). Stephenson recently gave an interview in which he reflected on how he then moved on to become a writer:

”I was in a little hiatus between finishing my unmarketable B.A. and possibly going to grad school, so I thought since I’ve always been interested in writing, why don’t I try that really hard for a couple of years and see if I can make a go of it. I tried it, and I managed to get a novel published, so that was that.“5

He currently lives in Seattle, Washington, with his wife and two children and is befriended with many people in the tech-industry. Currently Stephenson acts as an advisor for Blue Origin LLC — a space project funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.6 Stephenson has also written some interesting articles for Wired magazine.7 Although he used Apple Macs, the BeBox and Linux, his latest novels were written with a fountain pen.8

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson_%28novelist%29

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Sterling

3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk

4 http://www.well.com/user/neal/cypherFAQ.html#8

5 http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=16310

6 http://www.well.com/user/neal/myrelationship.html

7 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/people/neal_stephenson/

8 http://www.nealstephenson.com/content/meta_photos.htm