Monday night: Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson (who reads Monday at the Seminary Co-Op) is part of a handful of science-fiction authors who, after helping build the cyberpunk genre in the ’80s, took a huge step backward—by diving into historical fantasy. Hardwired, über-tech novels like Snowcrash and The Diamond Age gave way to Stephenson’s opus, the 3000-page-long The Baroque Cycle, a trilogy that took threads from his 1999 novel, the World War II thriller Cryptonomicon, and stretched them back to the political, cultural, and scientific upheavals of the 17th century. Like his contemporary, Tim Powers, Stephenson is a master of cramming dense, conspiracy-laden plots and plenty of magic into the nooks of crannies of extant history—although his new book, Anathem, is a space opera that takes place on an entirely fictional and technologically advanced world.
Stephenson explaining how "we're all geeks":


Neal Stephenson does a free, all-ages reading at the Seminary Co-Op at 6 p.m.