Neal Stephenson Books In Order

Baroque Cycle Books In Publication Order

  1. Quicksilver (2003)
  2. The Confusion (2004)
  3. The System of the World (2004)

Foreworld Saga Books In Publication Order

  1. The Mongoliad: Book One (2012)
  2. The Mongoliad: Book Two (2012)
  3. The Mongoliad: Book Three (2013)
  4. Tyr’s Hammer: A Foreworld SideQuest (By:Michael Tinker Pearce,Linda Pearce) (2013)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Big U (1984)
  2. Zodiac (1988)
  3. Snow Crash (1992)
  4. Interface (1994)
  5. The Diamond Age (1995)
  6. The Cobweb (1996)
  7. Cryptonomicon (1999)
  8. Anathem (2008)
  9. Reamde (2011)
  10. Seveneves (2015)
  11. The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (2017)
  12. Fall or, Dodge in Hell (2019)
  13. Termination Shock (2021)

Graphic Novels In Publication Order

  1. Cimarronin (2015)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. In the Beginning… Was the Command Line (1999)
  2. Some Remarks (2012)

Bruce Sterling Collections In Publication Order

  1. Globalhead (By:Bruce Sterling) (1992)
  2. A Good Old-Fashioned Future (By:Bruce Sterling) (1999)
  3. Visionary in Residence (By:Bruce Sterling) (2005)
  4. Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling (By:Bruce Sterling) (2007)
  5. Gothic High-Tech (By:Bruce Sterling) (2011)
  6. Robot Artists and Black Swans: The Italian Fantascienza Stories (With: Bruce Sterling) (2021)

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Foreworld Saga Book Covers

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Neal Stephenson Books Overview

Quicksilver

Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver is here. A monumental literary feat that follows the author’s critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller Cryptonomicon, it is history, adventure, science, truth, invention, sex, absurdity, piracy, madness, death, and alchemy. It sweeps across continents and decades with the power of a roaring tornado, upending kings, armies, religious beliefs, and all expectations. It is the story of Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, pursuing knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque era Europe, in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight. It is a chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of ‘Half Co*cked Jack’ Shaftoe London street urchin turned swashbuckling adventurer and legendary King of the Vagabonds risking life and limb for fortune and love while slowly maddening from the pox…
and Eliza, rescued by Jack from a Turkish harem to become spy, confidante, and pawn of royals in order to reinvent a contentious continent through the newborn power of finance. A gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive novel that brings a remarkable age and its momentous events to vivid life a historical epic populated by the likes of Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, William of Orange, Benjamin Franklin, and King Louis XIV Quicksilver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most original and important literary talents of our time. And it’s just the beginning…

The Confusion

In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves including one Jack Shaftoe, a.k.a. King of the Vagabonds, a.k.a. Half Co*cked Jack, lately and miraculously cured of the pox devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues, rife with battles, chases, hairbreadth escapes, swashbuckling, bloodletting, and danger a perilous race for an enormous prize of silver…
nay, gold…
nay, legendary gold that will place the intrepid band at odds with the mighty and the mad, with alchemists, Jesuits, great navies, pirate queens, and vengeful despots across vast oceans and around the globe. Meanwhile, back in Europe…
The exquisite and resourceful Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, master of markets, pawn and confidante of enemy kings, onetime Turkish harem virgin, is stripped of her immense personal fortune by France’s most dashing privateer. Penniless and at risk from those who desire either her or her head or both, she is caught up in a web of international intrigue, even as she desperately seeks the return of her most precious possession her child. While…
Newton and Leibniz continue to propound their grand theories as their infamous rivalry intensifies, stubborn alchemy does battle with the natural sciences, nobles are beheaded, dastardly plots are set in motion, coins are newly minted or not in enemy strongholds, father and sons reunite in faraway lands, priests rise from the dead…
and Daniel Waterhouse seeks passage to the Massachusetts colony in hopes of escaping the madness into which his world has descended.

The System of the World

‘Tis done.

The world is a most confused and unsteady place especially London, center of finance, innovation, and conspiracy in the year 1714, when Daniel Waterhouse makes his less than triumphant return to England’s shores. Aging Puritan and Natural Philosopher, confidant of the high and mighty and contemporary of the most brilliant minds of the age, he has braved the merciless sea and an assault by the infamous pirate Blackbeard to help mend the rift between two adversarial geniuses at a princess’s behest. But while much has changed outwardly, the duplicity and danger that once drove Daniel to the American Colonies is still coin of the British realm.

No sooner has Daniel set foot on his homeland when he is embroiled in a dark conflict that has been raging in the shadows for decades. It is a secret war between the brilliant, enigmatic Master of the Mint and closet alchemist Isaac Newton and his archnemesis, the insidious counterfeiter Jack the Coiner, a.k.a. Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds. Hostilities are suddenly moving to a new and more volatile level, as Half Co*cked Jack plots a daring assault on the Tower itself, aiming for nothing less than the total corruption of Britain’s newborn monetary system.

Unbeknownst to all, it is love that set the Coiner on his traitorous course; the desperate need to protect the woman of his heart the remarkable Eliza, Duchess of Arcachon Qwghlm from those who would destroy her should he fail. Meanwhile, Daniel Waterhouse and his Clubb of unlikely cronies comb city and country for clues to the identity of the blackguard who is attempting to blow up Natural Philosophers with Infernal Devices as political factions jockey for position while awaiting the impending death of the ailing queen; as the ‘holy grail’ of alchemy, the key to life eternal, tantalizes and continues to elude Isaac Newton, yet is closer than he ever imagined; as the greatest technological innovation in history slowly takes shape in Waterhouse’s manufactory.

Everything that was will be changed forever…
The System of the World is the concluding volume in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, begun with Quicksilver and continued in The Confusion.

The Big U

The New York Times Book Review called Neal Stephenson’s most recent novel ‘electrifying’ and ‘hilarious’. but if you want to know Stephenson was doing twenty years before he wrote the epic Cryptonomicon, it’s back to school time. Back to The Big U, that is, a hilarious send up of American college life starring after years our of print, The Big U is required reading for anyone interested in the early work of this singular writer.

Zodiac

Two centuries after the Boston Tea Party, harbour dumping is still a favourite local sport, only this time it’s major corporations piping toxic wastes into the water. Environmentalist and professional pain in the ass, Sangaman Taylor is Boston’s modern day Paul Revere, spreading the word from a 40 horsepower Zodiac raft. Embarrassing powerful corporations in highly telegenic ways is the perfect method of making enemies, and Taylor has a collection that would do any rabble rouser proud. After his latest exploit, he’s wanted by the FBI, possibly by the Mafia, and definitely by a group of Satanist angel dust heads who think he’s looking for a PCP factory, not PCB contamination. Pretty soon dodging bullets is the least of Taylor’s problems because somewhere out there are an unhinged genetic engineer and a lab concocted bacterium that could destroy all ocean life and that’s just for appetizers. Frightening, funny, fast and furious, ‘Zodiac‘ is thrilling speculative fiction torn straight from today’s headlines.

Snow Crash

From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not too distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate franchise city states, and the Internet incarnate as the Metaverse looks something like last year’s hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex girlfriend asks for his help, what’s a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck paced 21st century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible.

Interface

From his triumphant debut with Snow Crash to the stunning success of his latest novel, Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson has quickly become the voice of a generation. In this now classic thriller, he and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a shocking tale with an all too plausible premise. There’s no way William A. Cozzano can lose the upcoming presidential election. He’s a likable midwestern governor with one insidious advantage an advantage provided by a shadowy group of backers. A biochip implanted in his head hardwires him to a computerized polling system. The mood of the electorate is channeled directly into his brain. Forget issues. Forget policy. Cozzano is more than the perfect candidate. He’s a special effect. Complex, entertaining, frequently funny.’ Publishers Weekly Qualifies as the sleeper of the year, the rare kind of science fiction thriller that evokes genuine laughter while simultaneously keeping the level of suspense cranked to the max.’ San Diego Union Tribune A Manchurian Candidate for the computer age. Seattle Weekly

The Diamond Age

Decades into our future, a stone’s throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken therigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neoVictorians. He’s made an illicit copy of a state of the art interactive device called A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth’s own daughter, the Primer’s purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. It performs its function superbly. Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands. Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetes members of the poor, tribeless class. Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell. When he and his gang waylay a certain neo Victorian John Percival Hackworth in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer. Following the discovery of his crime, Hackworth begins an odyssey of his own. Expelled from the neo Victorian paradise, squeezed by agents of ProtocolEnforcement on one side and a Mandarin underworld crime lord on the other, he searches for an elusive figure known as the Alchemist. His quest and Nell’swill ultimately lead them to another seeker whose fate is bound up with the Primer a woman who holds the key to a vast, subversive informationnetwork that is destined to decode and reprogram the future of humanity. Vividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, The Diamond Age is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time

The Cobweb

From his triumphant debut with Snow Crash to the stunning success of his latest novel, Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson has quickly become the voice of a generation. In this now classic political thriller, he and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a savagely witty, chillingly topical tale set in the tense moments of the Gulf War. When a foreign exchange student is found murdered at an Iowa University, Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks finds that his investigation extends far beyond the small college town all the way to the Middle East. Shady events at the school reveal that a powerful department is using federal grant money for highly dubious research. And what it’s producing is a very nasty bug. Navigating a plot that leads from his own backyard to Washington, D.C., to the Gulf, where his Army Reservist wife has been called to duty, Banks realizes he may be the only person who can stop the wholesale slaughtering of thousands of Americans. It s a lesson in foreign policy he ll never forget.

Cryptonomicon

With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century.

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detatchment 2702 commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe is to keep the Na*zis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy’s fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung ho Shaftoe and his forces.

Fast forward to the present, where Waterhouse’s crypto hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a ‘data haven’ in Southeast Asia a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe’s tough as nails grandaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Na*zi sumarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Na*zi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty…
or to universal totalitarianism reborn.

A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson’s most accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day after tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought, and creative daring; the product of a truly icon

Anathem

Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside ‘saecular’ world by ancient stone and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent’s walls, yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe. Now, in celebration of the week long, once in a decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn’t seen since he was ‘collected.’ But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand on the brink of cataclysmic change. Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros. Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet…
and beyond.A multi cast recording, this program also features a cameo by the author and original music inspired by the story. Composer David Stutz says of the writing process, ‘I was excited by the creative possibilities opened up by Neal’s imagination. These ideas, realized, are the music that you hear on this audiobook.’

Reamde

Neal Stephenson, author of the 1 New York Times bestseller Anathem, returns to the terrain of his groundbreaking novels Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon to deliver a high intensity, high stakes, action packed adventure thriller in which a tech entrepreneur gets caught in the very real crossfire of his own online war game. In 1972, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, fled to the mountains of British Columbia to avoid the draft. A skilled hunting guide, he eventually amassed a fortune by smuggling mari*juana across the border between Canada and Idaho. As the years passed, Richard went straight and returned to the States after the U.S. government granted amnesty to draft dodgers. He parlayed his wealth into an empire and developed a remote resort in which he lives. He also created T Rain, a multibillion dollar, massively multiplayer online role playing game with millions of fans around the world. But T Rain’s success has also made it a target. Hackers have struck gold by unleashing Reamde, a virus that encrypts all of a player s electronic files and holds them for ransom. They have also unwittingly triggered a deadly war beyond the boundaries of the game s virtual universe and Richard is at ground zero. Racing around the globe from the Pacific Northwest to China to the wilds of northern Idaho and points in between, Reamde is a swift paced thriller that traverses worlds virtual and real. Filled with unexpected twists and turns in which unforgettable villains and unlikely heroes face off in a battle for survival, it is a brilliant refraction of the twenty first century, from the global war on terror to social media, computer hackers to mobsters, entrepreneurs to religious fundamentalists. Above all, Reamde is an enthralling human story an entertaining and epic page turner from the extraordinary Neal Stephenson.

In the Beginning… Was the Command Line

This is ‘the Word’ one man’s word, certainly about the art and artifice of the state of our computer centric existence. And considering that the ‘one man’ is Neal Stephenson, ‘the hacker Hemingway’ Newsweek acclaimed novelist, pragmatist, seer, nerd friendly philosopher, and nationally bestselling author of groundbreaking literary works Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, etc., etc. the word is well worth hearing. Mostly well reasoned examination and partial rant, Stephenson’s In the Beginning…
was the Command Line is a thoughtful, irreverent, hilarious treatise on the cyber culture past and present; on operating system tyrannies and downloaded popular revolutions; on the Internet, Disney World, Big Bangs, not to mention the meaning of life itself.

Globalhead (By:Bruce Sterling)

This second collection of short fiction by Bruce Sterling, set in such disparate environments as ancient Assyria and posthuman France, provides a stimulating and entertaining glimpse inside the ‘global head’ of one of imaginative fiction’s most exciting talents.

A Good Old-Fashioned Future (By:Bruce Sterling)

From the subversive to the antic, the uproarious to the disturbing, the stories of Bruce Sterling are restless, energy filled journeys through a world running on empty the visionary work of one of our most imaginative and insightful modern writers. They live as strangers in strange lands. In worlds that have fallen or should have. They wage battles in wars already lost and become heroes and sometimes martyrs in their last ditch efforts to preserve the dignity and individuality of humanity.A hack Indian filmmaker takes the pulse of a wounded and declining civilization 21st century Britain. A pair of swashbuckling Silicon Valley entrepreneurs join forces to make a commercial killing in organic underground slime and computer generated jellyfish. A man in a Japanese city takes orders from a talking cat while pursuing a drama of danger and adventure that has become the very essence of his life. From ‘The Littlest Jackal’, a darkly hilarious thriller of mercs and gunrunners set in Finland, to a stark vision of a post atomic netherworld in his haunting tale ‘Taklamakan’, Bruce Sterling once again breaks boundaries, breaks icons, and breaks rules to unleash the most dangerously provocative and intelligent science fiction being written today.

Visionary in Residence (By:Bruce Sterling)

I’m a science fiction writer. This is a golden opportunity to get up to most any mischief imaginable. With this fourth collection of my stories, I’m going to prove this to you. With these words, Bruce Sterling author of New York times Notable Books of the Year and one of the great names in contemporary fiction introduces his latest collection of thirteen tales. If you’re familiar with his cyberpunk creations you won’t be disappointed, but these stories range far beyond the limits of future technology. Visionary in Residence takes the reader to places never imagined and certainly where no one has ever been.

Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling (By:Bruce Sterling)

‘I’m an entertainer in the military entertainment complex.’ Bruce Sterling Polemicist, provocateur, futurist, ‘visionary in residence’, Bruce Sterling has been out there, personally sharpening the cutting edge of science fiction for more than thirty years. From his first story ‘Man Made Self’ in 1976 to his latest ‘Kiosk’ in 2007, Sterling has written science fiction that is fast moving, sharply extrapolated, technologically literate, and as brilliant and coherent as a laser, as he himself once said of William Gibson. His ‘Shaper/Mechanist’ stories were an essential part of the cyberpunk movement of the ’80s, just as his ‘Leggy Starlitz’ and ‘Chattanooga’ stories wrangled the near future of the ’90s better than anyone else. Whether writing about the deep future in Schismatrix or the deep present in Holy Fire, he has developed into the best science fiction writer working in the world today. Born in Texas in 1954, Sterling has traveled the globe writing and working for The New York Times, Nature, Wired, Newsday, and a number of industrial design magazines. His short fiction has appeared in almost every major publication in the science fiction field. His novels include far future adventures Involution Ocean and The Artificial Kid, Schismatrix, John W. Campbell Memorial Award winner Islands in the Net, The Difference Engine, Heavy Weather, Holy Fire, Distraction, and The Zenith Angle.

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