Showing results by author "Neal Stephenson" in All Categories

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

Neal Stephenson is a blazing new force on the sci-fi scene. With the groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, he has "vaulted onto the literary stage." It weaves virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility - in short, it is the gigathriller of the information age.

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the US 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 Detachment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. In the present, Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia....

Fraa Erasmus 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 "Saecular" world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities, and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent's walls. Three times during history's darkest epochs, bloody violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community.

In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves, including one “Half-Cocked Jack” Shaftoe, devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues 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.

In which Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and courageous Puritan, pursues 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.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Termination Shock and Cryptonomicon, the first installment in a monumental new series—an expansive historical epic of intrigue and international espionage, presaging the dawn of the Atomic Age.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Neal Stephenson is continually rocking the literary world with his brazen and brilliant fictional creations - whether he’s reimagining the past (The Baroque Cycle), inventing the future (Snow Crash), or both (Cryptonomicon).

Neal Stephenson, "the hottest science fiction writer in America", takes science fiction to dazzling new levels. The Diamond Age is a stunning tale; set in 21st-century Shanghai, it is the story of what happens what a state-of-the-art interactive device falls into the hands of a street urchin named Nell. Her life, and the entire future of humanity, is about to be decoded and reprogrammed.

A chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of "Half-Cocked Jack" Shaftoe - London street urchin-turned-legendary swashbuckling adventurer - 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.

The year is 1714. Daniel Waterhouse has returned to England, where he joins forces with his friend Isaac Newton to hunt down a criminal gang attempting to blow up Natural Philosophers with "Infernal Devices," or time bombs. Unbeknownst to Daniel, however, Newton has an ulterior motive: to wrest the Solomonic Gold from the control of his arch-enemy, the master counterfeiter Jack the Coiner, a.k.a Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds.

An untested group of Shield-Brethren initiates stand before the sprawling Mongol army in a bloody circus of sadistic violence, while a hardened company of their finest roam the desolate wasteland of the Mongol empire, wrapping their dead in blood-soaked soil and struggling to find the strength to fight even as they mourn. The warrior-monks, both in the East and the West, sharpen their swords for a final battle. The Khan of Khans must be slain if Christendom is to survive.

Daniel Waterhouse finds himself 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.

In his youth, Richard “Dodge” Forthrast founded Corporation 9592, a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. Now in his middle years, Dodge appreciates his comfortable, unencumbered life, managing his myriad business interests, and spending time with his beloved niece Zula and her young daughter, Sophia. One beautiful autumn day, while he undergoes a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong.

Cuando un hecho catastrófico convierte la Tierra en una bomba de relojería, se inicia una carrera desenfrenada contra lo inevitable. Las principales naciones del mundo elaboran un ambicioso plan para garantizar la supervivencia de la humanidad más allá de nuestra atmósfera. Pero los intrépidos pioneros sufren todo tipo de peligros imprevistos, hasta que solo queda un puñado de supervivientes...

The trials of Dr. Daniel Waterhouse and the Natural Philosophers increase one-hundred fold in an England plagued by the impending war and royal insecurities - as the beautiful and ambitious Eliza plays a most dangerous game as double agent and confidante of enemy kings.

One man—visionary billionaire restaurant chain magnate T. R. Schmidt, Ph.D.—has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as “elemental.” But will it work? Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the sunbaked Chihuahuan Desert, Termination Shock brings together a disparate group of characters from different cultures and continents who grapple with the real-life repercussions of global warming.

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 20 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 30-year-old junior Casimir Radon.

Freeman Dyson is a world-renowned astrophysicist who dreams of exploring the heavens and has designed a spaceship to take him there. His son, George, a brilliant high-school dropout, lives in a tree house and is designing a giant kayak to explore the icy coastal wilderness of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

Sangamon Taylor's a New Age Sam Spade who sports a wet suit instead of a trench coat and prefers Jolt from the can to Scotch on the rocks. He knows about chemical sludge the way he knows about evil - all too intimately. And the toxic trail he follows leads to some high and foul places. Before long, Taylor's house is bombed, his every move followed, he's adopted by reservation Indians, moves onto the FBI's most wanted list, makes up with his girlfriend, and plays a starring role in the near-assassination of a presidential candidate.