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American speculative fiction writer (born 1959)

Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque. Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired. He has written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury. Stephenson has worked part time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and is also a cofounder of Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He was Magic Leap's Chief Futurist from 2014 to 2020.

Born on October 31, 1959, in Fort Meade, Maryland, Stephenson at this time would later be described by Mike Godwin as "a slight, unassuming grad student type whose soft spoken demeanor gave no obvious indication that he had written the manic apotheosis of cyberpunk science fiction." On August 7, 2012, Stephenson released a collection of essays and other previously published fiction entitled Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing. This collection also includes a new essay and a short story created specifically for this volume. In late 2013, Stephenson stated that he was working on a multi volume work of historical novels that would "have a lot to do with scientific and technological themes and how those interact with the characters and civilisation during a particular span of history". He expected the first two volumes to be released in mid to late 2014. However, at about the same time, he shifted his attention to a science fiction novel, Seveneves, which was completed about a year later and was published in May 2015. On June 8, 2016, plans were announced to adapt Seveneves for the screen. In May 2016, as part of a video discussion with Bill Gates, Stephenson revealed that he had just submitted the manuscript for a new historical novel—"a time travel book"—co written with Nicole Galland, one of his Mongoliad coauthors. This was released as The Rise and Fall of D. O. D. O. on June 13, 2017. In June 2019, his novel Fall; or, Dodge in Hell was published. It is a near future novel that explores mind uploading into the cloud, and contains characters from 2011's Reamde, 1999's Cryptonomicon, and other books. Termination Shock, published in November 2021, is a climate fiction novel about solar geoengineering.

Stephenson's books tend to have elaborate plots drawing on numerous technological and sociological ideas at the same time. The discursive nature of his writing, together with significant plot and character complexity and an abundance of detail suggests a baroque writing style, which Stephenson brought fully to bear in the three volume Baroque Cycle. In 2012, Stephenson launched a Kickstarter campaign for CLANG, a realistic sword fighting fantasy game. The concept was to use motion control to provide an immersive experience. The campaign's funding goal of $500,000 was reached by the target date of July 9, 2012, on Kickstarter, but funding options remained open and the project continued to accept contributions on its official site. The project ran out of money in September 2013. This, and the circumstances around it, angered some backers with some threatening a class action lawsuit. The CLANG project ended in September 2014 without being completed. Stephenson took part of the responsibility for the project's failure, stating, "I probably focused too much on historical accuracy and not enough on making it sufficiently fun to attract additional investment". In 2014, Stephenson was hired as Chief Futurist by the Florida based augmented reality company Magic Leap. Stephenson left the company in April 2020 as part of a layoff. In 2022, Stephenson launched Lamina1 to build an open source metaverse that would use smart contracts on a blockchain.

Stephenson's writing is influential in technology circles. Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, John Carmack, and Peter Thiel are all fans of his work. In Snow Crash Stephenson coined the term Metaverse and popularized the term avatar in a computing context. The Metaverse inspired the inventors of Google Earth According to Publishers Weekly, Cryptonomicon is "often credited with sketching the basis for cryptocurrency."

Project Hieroglyph, founded in 2011, administered by Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination since 2012. Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, ed. Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer, which includes contributions by Stephenson (preface and chapter "Atmosphæra Incognita"), was published by William Morrow in September, 2014.

"Smiley's People". 1993. "In the Kingdom of Mao Bell". Wired. 1994. "A billion Chinese are using new technology to create the fastest growing economy on the planet. But while the information wants to be free, do they?" "Mother Earth Mother Board". Wired. 1996. "In which the Hacker Tourist ventures forth across three continents, telling the story of the business and technology of undersea fiber optic cables, as well as an account of the laying of the longest wire on Earth." "Global Neighborhood Watch". Wired. 1998. Stopping street crime in the global village. In the Beginning Was the Command Line. Harper Perennial. 1999. "Communication Prosthetics: Threat, or Menace? " Whole Earth Review, Summer 2001. "Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out". Op ed piece on Star Wars, in The New York Times, June 17, 2005. "It's All Geek To Me". Op ed piece on the film 300 and geek culture, The New York Times, March 18, 2007. "Atoms of Cognition: Metaphysics in the Royal Society 1715–2010", chapter in Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society, edited by Bill Bryson. Stephenson discusses the legacy of the rivalry between Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, November 2, 2010. "Space Stasis". Slate. February 2, 2011. "What the strange persistence of rockets can teach us about innovation." "Innovation Starvation". World Policy Journal, 2011. Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing. William Morrow. 2012. .