Neal Stephenson

Biography

American novelist, born in Maryland in 1959 and educated at Boston University, where he studied physics and geography. He became widely known with Snow Crash (1992) and has since written across cyberpunk, historical fiction and the history of technology, including Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle and Seveneves. The Diamond Age (1995), fully titled The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, turns on an illustrated primer that rewrites itself in response to its reader in a nanotechnological age, and uses it to ask about the engineering of education, class and agency. It won the 1996 Hugo Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Novel in the same year. He has also written non-fiction essays on computing, technology and science.