Neal Stephenson
Goodreads Author
Born
in Fort Meade, MD, The United States
Website
Twitter
Genre
Member Since
May 2015
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Snow Crash
155 editions
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published
1992
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Cryptonomicon
82 editions
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published
1999
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Seveneves
59 editions
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published
2015
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The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
83 editions
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published
1995
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Anathem
72 editions
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published
2008
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Reamde
48 editions
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published
2011
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Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, #1)
91 editions
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published
2003
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The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (D.O.D.O., #1)
by
34 editions
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published
2017
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The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, #2)
52 editions
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published
2004
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The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, #3)
45 editions
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published
2004
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Neal’s Recent Updates
Neal Stephenson
wrote a new blog post
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“See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places,”
― Snow Crash
― Snow Crash
“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”
―
―
“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”
― Cryptonomicon
― Cryptonomicon
Polls
What would you like to read in July to discuss in August? Please only vote if you WILL return to discuss - you can put it on your calendar for August 1st, when the discussion will open.
Poll will close Sunday June 23rd, at which time the selected book will be added to our group shelves.
Recommendation: If you're using the library, go ahead and reserve any interesting books here now.
Poll will close Sunday June 23rd, at which time the selected book will be added to our group shelves.
Recommendation: If you're using the library, go ahead and reserve any interesting books here now.
Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds
2019, 192 pages, rating 4.04
Kindle $3.99, paperback from $9.59
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.gr-assets.com/books/1537475196l/40048442.jpg)
2019, 192 pages, rating 4.04
Kindle $3.99, paperback from $9.59
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.gr-assets.com/books/1537475196l/40048442.jpg)
"Fix the past. Save the present. Stop the future. Alastair Reynolds unfolds a time-traveling climate fiction adventure in Permafrost.
2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment. Their goal: to make a tiny alteration to the past, averting a global catastrophe while at the same time leaving recorded history intact. To make the experiment work, they just need one last recruit: an ageing schoolteacher whose late mother was the foremost expert on the mathematics of paradox.
2028: a young woman goes into surgery for routine brain surgery. In the days following her operation, she begins to hear another voice in her head... an unwanted presence which seems to have a will, and a purpose, all of its own – one that will disrupt her life entirely. The only choice left to her is a simple one.
Does she resist... or become a collaborator?"
Gather the Daughters by Jennie Melamed
2017, 353 pages, 3.76 stars
$17.08 paperback, $13.99 Kindle, $5.01 and up in used print, probably at the library
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.gr-assets.com/books/1482132452l/31933102.jpg)
2017, 353 pages, 3.76 stars
$17.08 paperback, $13.99 Kindle, $5.01 and up in used print, probably at the library
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.gr-assets.com/books/1482132452l/31933102.jpg)
"Never Let Me Go meets The Giver in this haunting debut about a cult on an isolated island, where nothing is as it seems.
Years ago, just before the country was incinerated to wasteland, ten men and their families colonized an island off the coast. They built a radical society of ancestor worship, controlled breeding, and the strict rationing of knowledge and history. Only the Wanderers--chosen male descendants of the original ten--are allowed to cross to the wastelands, where they scavenge for detritus among the still-smoldering fires.
The daughters of these men are wives-in-training. At the first sign of puberty, they face their Summer of Fruition, a ritualistic season that drags them from adolescence to matrimony. They have children, who have children, and when they are no longer useful, they take their final draught and die. But in the summer, the younger children reign supreme. With the adults indoors and the pubescent in Fruition, the children live wildly--they fight over food and shelter, free of their fathers' hands and their mothers' despair. And it is at the end of one summer that little Caitlin Jacob sees something so horrifying, so contradictory to the laws of the island, that she must share it with the others.
Born leader Janey Solomon steps up to seek the truth. At seventeen years old, Janey is so unwilling to become a woman, she is slowly starving herself to death. Trying urgently now to unravel the mysteries of the island and what lies beyond, before her own demise, she attempts to lead an uprising of the girls that may be their undoing."
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
2019, 880 pages, rating 3.99 NOTE PAGE LENGTH
Kindle $11.49, cheap used paperback, should be at library
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.gr-assets.com/books/1449142000l/22816087.jpg)
2019, 880 pages, rating 3.99 NOTE PAGE LENGTH
Kindle $11.49, cheap used paperback, should be at library
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.gr-assets.com/books/1449142000l/22816087.jpg)
"What would happen if the world were ending?
A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.
But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . .
Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.
A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant."
On the Beach by Nevil Shute
1957, 296 pages, rating 3.93
Kindle $0.99, cheap used paperback, at library
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.gr-assets.com/books/1327943327l/38180.jpg)
1957, 296 pages, rating 3.93
Kindle $0.99, cheap used paperback, at library
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.gr-assets.com/books/1327943327l/38180.jpg)
"After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud that is heading their way and bringing certain death to everyone in its path. Among them is an American submarine captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and children in the United States must be dead. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from somewhere near Seattle, and Captain Towers must lead his submarine crew on a bleak tour of the ruined world in a desperate search for signs of life. On the Beach is a remarkably convincing portrait of how ordinary people might face the most unimaginable nightmare."
Wastelands 3: The New Apocalypse anthology
2019, 512 pages, rating 3.73
Kindle $9.99, cheap used paperback, probably is not at library
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.gr-assets.com/books/1549556094l/42774046.jpg)
2019, 512 pages, rating 3.73
Kindle $9.99, cheap used paperback, probably is not at library
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.gr-assets.com/books/1549556094l/42774046.jpg)
"New short fiction by many of the edgiest modern authors, offering tales of life after the apocalyptic event or events that end society as we know it today. In addition to a selection of newly reprinted works, WASTELANDS 3 will feature original, never-before-published stories by a group of writers hand-picked by master editor John Joseph Adams. Original stories by Veronica Roth, Hugh Howet, Elizabeth Bear, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Wendy N. Wagner and many more. Reprints will include works by Carmen Maria Machado, Charlie Jane Anders, Paolo Bacigalupi, Ken Liu and Cat Valente amongst others."
Topics Mentioning This Author
topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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SciFi and Fantasy...: Anathem | 29 | 423 | Dec 14, 2008 06:08AM | |
The Book Challenge: Meghan's 2008 Challenge - COMPLETED | 66 | 486 | Feb 19, 2009 08:31AM | |
Fantasy Book Club:
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72 | 362 | Mar 29, 2009 05:36PM | |
Beyond Reality: Hugo Awards! | 9 | 148 | Apr 05, 2009 07:09PM | |
Goodreads Librari...: Librarian Notes are Live | 35 | 191 | Apr 21, 2009 11:38PM | |
SciFi and Fantasy...: Sequel to Cryptonomicon? | 3 | 366 | Apr 26, 2009 07:59PM | |
SciFi and Fantasy...: What I am also reading in April | 40 | 397 | Jun 30, 2009 07:43PM | |
Beyond Reality:
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180 | 506 | Jul 01, 2009 01:34AM |
“The human race might be about to disappear, but not before putting on a two-year frenzy of recreational sex.”
― Seveneves
― Seveneves
“the federal government needs to be scaled back to a size where he can personally stomp it to death with steel-toed boots.”
― Seveneves
― Seveneves
“This was governed entirely by Newtonian mechanics. Each piece of the moon attracted every other piece more or less strongly depending on its mass and its distance. It could be simulated on a computer quite easily. The whole rubble cloud was gravitationally bound. Any shrapnel fast enough to escape had done so already. The rest was drifting around in a loose huddle of rocks. Sometimes they banged into one another. Eventually they would stick together and the moon would begin to re-form.”
― Seveneves
― Seveneves
“boys had been programmed by Darwinian selection to run around in the open chucking spears at wild animals—something”
― Seveneves
― Seveneves