Neal Stephenson
Doug Brown, Powells.com
 Neal Stephenson has been a staple name in science fiction ever since his incandescent opus Snow Crash appeared. What separated Snow Crash from the other cyberpunk novels of the world was, first, Stephenson's knowledge of computers and programming and, second, his wealth of research on topics as obscure as Sumerian mythology. This theme of in-depth research has continued through his other books, especially Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle. Technology and how we interact with it is an ever-present theme, particularly in his collection of nonfiction essays In the Beginning... Was the Command Line. When you read Neal Stephenson, expect to learn as well as be entertained. In his latest work, Anathem, the topics include mathematical philosophy, clocks, and quantum mechanics. Stephenson has lived in Seattle for over 20 years, writing, playing with computers, and dabbling in sword fighting.
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"Stephenson has quickly established himself as an A-list writer of epic-length fantasy....The novel is beautifully written...and, even though it runs to nearly 1,000 pages, it feels somehow too short....A magnificent achievement." Booklist (Starred Review)
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"Anathem pulls off what most writers would never dare attempt —l it is simultaneously a page turner and a philosophical argument, an adventure novel and an extended existential meditation, a physics lesson, sermon and ripping good yarn." Salon.com
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"[T]he great trick of Quicksilver is that it makes you ponder concepts and theories you initially think you'll never understand, and its greatest pleasure is that Stephenson is such an enthralling explainer....[A] wonderment to behold. (Grade: A-)" Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly
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"The Confusion becomes a brawny, barrel-chested work of beauty...[it] is unparalleled geek literature — deeply moving, painfully detailed, replete with big laughs and packed with hyperkinetic adventure." Denver Post
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"[A] hell of a way to finish things off....Learned, violent, sarcastic, and profound: a glorious finish to one of the most ambitious epics of recent years." Kirkus Reviews
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Doug Brown: First off, what is the pronunciation of your new book's title?
Neal Stephenson: I say ANNA-them, but I'm not being a stickler about it. It just makes people self conscious, and I kind of like the sound of an-A-them the more I hear it.
Doug: Did you intentionally want to get away from the world that you'd been spending some time in with Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle?
Stephenson: I don't know if I would put it that strongly, but I felt that I'd spent a long time there, and if I had another idea in a different place it might be wise to pursue that other idea. It's very easy to get stuck in a rut, and I just thought it might be healthy to do a little change.
Doug: The advance reader came with a CD [Iolet by David Stutz] of vocal chants with titles like "Approximating Pi" and "Deriving the Quadratic Equation." Do they actually contain mathematical concepts?
Stephenson: Yes. All the ones with mathematical titles are pieces in which David Stutz, the composer, took a mathematical proof — or in the case of "Pi," just a string of digits — and then came up with a way to encode that information into a piece of music. The music always reflects in some way the underlying structure of the math. He's put up a detailed explanation of one of them, called "Mascheroni Circles," on his website, but there are explanations for all of them.
Doug: Is that music going to be generally available to people?
Stephenson: The CD is for sale. You can get it through cdbaby.com, or I think there will be a link on the Long Now Foundation website. It is also downloadable from the publisher's book website, and all profits from the sale of the CD are going to the Long Now Foundation.
Doug: Now that's something that's tied in with this book, the idea of a long-running clock. Can you talk about that a bit?
Stephenson: The original idea for this book came out of conversations that I had in the mid-1990s with Danny Hillis and Stewart Brand about Danny's idea for a clock that would run for 10,000 years, which is a project that the Long Now Foundation is currently pursuing. In 1999, they asked me and a few other people to contribute sketches for their website — not as serious proposals, but just, "Here's how different people are thinking about this." So I contributed such a sketch; it's still up on their website as far as I know. It contains some of the germs of the idea that later developed into the concents that are described in the book [Editor's note: the concents in Anathem are mathematical monasteries where the gates are part of a giant clock mechanism.]. After that, the idea sat fallow for a number of years. Then around 2005-ish, when I was ready to start writing another novel, that idea kept bobbing to the surface, and I decided I would try to go with it.
Doug: Quantum mechanics is one of the components of Anathem, particularly the many worlds interpretation. Is that an interpretation that you particularly favor, or was it just a useful scaffold for the story?
Stephenson: I didn't at the beginning of writing the book. I was always really suspicious of that interpretation — not that I'm qualified really to have an opinion; I'm not that level of a physicist. But I had a hard time with the idea that every time anything happens that two entirely separate universes fork off from each other. It just didn't seem very economical. But there's another way of looking at it that comes out of a state space argument that Julian Barbour explains really well in his books The Discovery of Dynamics and The End of Time. If you look at it from that point of view, it becomes a much more plausible and economical sort of argument. From that point of view, looking at it that way, I'm now pretty favorably disposed toward it, for what that's worth.
Doug: I was surprised to learn the electrodynamic tether that's described in Anathem is an actual invention that someone is working on. How did you come across that concept?
Stephenson: Those guys are a Seattle company. I've known them for a number of years. I knew the late Bob Forward, who was a co-inventor of that idea, as well as of many, many other brilliant inventions [Editor's note: Robert L. Forward was also a successful science fiction author.]. He passed away around 2002. But the company that he co-founded with Rob Hoyt is still going under the name Tethers Unlimited, and they're developing the technology and sending it up on small test satellites to see if it can be made practical. Rob was very generous with his time in helping me sketch out the scenario that's described in the book.
Doug: You have mentioned both Roger Penrose and Kurt Gödel as Platonists being influential in the philosophy in Anathem. Are you a Platonist, and can you briefly describe what that philosophy entails?
Stephenson: A mathematical Platonist is someone who believes that mathematics is discovered and not invented. So, for example, if you believe that the number three was a prime number a billion years ago, before there were any people around to say it was a prime number, then you're a Platonist. Whereas a non-Platonist would say, "No, the concept of being prime had no meaning until people came along and defined it." Platonism fell out of favor a long time ago with a lot of people in the humanities, but among mathematicians and physicists it is a quite widely held belief, whether they're conscious about holding it or not. Gödel and Penrose are two who are quite conscious about it, and thought about it, and have written about it in a lot of detail trying to explore the concept and come up with explanations for how it might be true.
Doug: Where do you stand?
Stephenson: I'm one of those who thinks mathematics is discovered and not invented. I guess that makes me a Platonist.
Doug: On your website, there's an amazing picture of The Baroque Cycle manuscript, this amazing tower of paper. Are those actual handwritten pages, or printouts?
Stephenson: I think in the case of that one, they're almost all handwritten pages. There might be a few printouts stuck in here and there when I was editing, but it's essentially all handwritten.
Doug: It's surprising that a hacker like you still uses papyrus and quill. Is it an aesthetic choice, do you just like the feel of the pen, or do you find it easier to write?
Stephenson: It yields a higher quality first draft because I can type very quickly, so if some idea comes into my head I can blast it out on the keyboard and have it on the screen in no time at all — even if it's not a very good idea. Whereas when you're writing more slowly, the sentence spends a longer time in the buffer, to use a technical term, and while it's in that buffer it is very easy to edit it, or just reconsider altogether and not write it down at all.
Doug: Is there any particular type of pen or paper that you prefer to use?
Stephenson: I use 100% cotton paper because my accountant is after me to claim more business deductions, and what I have to offer in that department is pretty pathetic. But a $20 box of 100% cotton paper is a little bit better than a $12 box of 25% cotton paper. And then I use a variety of pens. I have a Jorg Hysek pen which is pretty fancy, but someone gave it to me, so I use it. I've also got a couple of Watermans and a Rotring.
Doug: At the end of In the Beginning... Was the Command Line, you had just switched from Linux to Be. What's your operating system these days?
Stephenson: Mac OS 10.
Doug: Ah, so you did go back.
Stephenson: Yes, I did go back.
Doug: Have you thought of doing a sequel or update to In the Beginning...?
Stephenson: No. I know it needs it, I know it's obsolete, but it's not on my agenda right now.
Doug: The descriptions of sword fighting in Snow Crash seem a bit more detailed than mere imagination allows. Are you a sword fighting or martial arts avout? [Editor's note: avout is another term from Anathem, meaning one who follows a discipline]
Stephenson: I don't know about avout, but I do practice some western martial arts, which means western style sword fighting. The descriptions of sword fighting in all of my published books are probably wrong, because I wrote them before I started seriously getting into this. I've even published a retraction on my website of one sword fighting scene in The Confusion, because I feel now that I got it completely wrong. But it is a hobby of mine; I do pursue it.
Doug: Are there any authors that you feel particularly influenced your writing?
Stephenson: The great prolific serial novel writers of the Victorian era, Dickens and Dumas. I'm interested in those people and how they operated. I probably shouldn't blow this opportunity to mention the late David Foster Wallace, who I think was the best we had, and who influenced me in the sense of making me try harder and wanting to do better.
Doug: Any particular favorite books, ones you're read more than once, or 10 times?
Stephenson: Not more than 10 times. Well, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon. That is something I go back to pretty frequently.
Doug: Have you read any good books lately?
Stephenson: I liked The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist quite a bit. It came out last year, I think. It's a Victorian kind of steampunk novel.
Doug: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Stephenson: Keep writing. Don't write something and then stop writing while you try to sell it. Just keep writing.
I spoke with Neal Stephenson before his reading at the Bagdad Theater on September 16, 2008.
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