Neal Stephenson
Author
Language
English
Description
A billionaire has an idea for reversing global warming, but will it work? And what will the consequences for the planet be? A disparate group of characters from around the globe fight to solve the problem of global warming, but some of their ideas may be worse than climate change itself.
The greenhouse effect has resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, and deadly pandemics. Visionary billionaire...
Author
Series
D.O.D.O volume 1
Language
English
Description
"When Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, accidentally meets military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons in a hallway at Harvard University, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will alter their lives and human history itself. The young man from a shadowy government entity approaches Mel, a low-level faculty member, with an incredible offer. The only condition: she must sign a nondisclosure agreement in return for the...
Author
Series
Dodge novels volume 2
Language
English
Description
"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. Dodge is pronounced brain dead...
4) Seveneves
Author
Language
English
Description
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. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain ... Five thousand years later,...
7) Zodiac
Author
Publisher
Grove Atlantic
Pub. Date
2007
Language
English
Formats
Description
The second novel from the “hottest science fiction writer in America” and New York Times–bestselling author of Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon (Details).
Meet Sangamon Taylor, 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....
Meet Sangamon Taylor, 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....
8) Anathem
Author
Language
English
Description
Raz, a mathematician, is among a cohort of secluded scientists and philosophers who are called upon to save the world from impending catastrophe.
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don't dare leave their mansions. Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30 U-Stor-It. He spends most of his time goggled in to the Metaverse,...
10) Quicksilver
Author
Series
Baroque cycle (Neal Stephenson) volume 1
Language
English
Description
"Quicksilver 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-Cocked Jack" Shaftoe--London street urchin turned swashbuckling...
Author
Publisher
Random House Worlds
Pub. Date
2003
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
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
Decades into our future, a stone’s throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art...
Decades into our future, a stone’s throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art...
12) The confusion
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves — including one Jack Shaftoe, aka King of the Vagabonds, aka Half-Cocked Jack — devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues — a perilous race for an enormous prize of silver ... nay, gold ... nay, legendary gold.
In Europe, the exquisite and resourceful Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, is stripped of her immense personal fortune by France's most
...13) Reamde
Author
Series
Dodge novels volume 1
Publisher
William Morrow
Pub. Date
c2011
Language
English
Description
When his own high-tech start up turns into a Fortune 500 computer gaming group, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa family who has amassed an illegal fortune, finds the line between fantasy and reality becoming blurred when a virtual war for dominance is triggered.
Author
Series
Baroque cycle (Neal Stephenson) volume 3
Language
English
Description
In the wake of a power struggle between the throne-seeking Tories and Whigs in early eighteenth-century England, Daniel Waterhouse teams up with Isaac Newton to hunt down a shadowy group that uses time bombs to kill Natural Philosophers.
15) The big U
Author
Publisher
Perennial
Pub. Date
2001
Language
English
Description
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. The Big U is required reading for anyone interested in the early work of this singular writer.
Author
Series
Publisher
Bantam Books
Pub. Date
c1995
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
The story of an interactive book, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, written by John Hackworth, a nano engineer. It helps a girl become a princess and educates an army of girls who eventually save his life. The setting is a world where molecular machines create any object desired and where nations have been replaced by cultural enclaves, in this case the neo-Victorians of coastal China. Part-science fiction, part-political thriller.
Author
Language
English
Description
Sangamon Taylor is spreading the word about corporations piping toxic wastes into the water from his 40-horsepower Zodiac raft. Now, he's wanted by the FBI, the Mafia, and a group of Satan-worshipping drug dealers--the least of his problems. Because somewhere out there is an unhinged genetic engineer and a lab concocted bacterium that could destroy all ocean life.
Author
Publisher
Avon Books
Pub. Date
c1999
Language
English
Description
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 -- 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...
19) The diamond age
Author
Series
Publisher
Bantam Books
Pub. Date
©2000
Language
English
Description
The story of an interactive book, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, written by John Hackworth, a nano engineer. It helps a girl become a princess and educates an army of girls who eventually save his life. The setting is a world where molecular machines create any object desired and where nations have been replaced by cultural enclaves, in this case the neo-Victorians of coastal China. Part-science fiction, part-political thriller.
Author
Series
Foreworld saga volume 1
Publisher
Brilliance Audio, Inc
Pub. Date
p2012
Language
English
Description
Fusing historical events with a gripping fictional narrative, this first book in the Mongoliad trilogy reveals a secret history of Europe in the thirteenth century. As the Mongols swept across Asia and were poised to invade Europe in 1241, a small band of warriors, inheritors of an ancient secret tradition, conceived a desperate plan to stop the attack. They must kill the Khan of Khans; if they fail, all of Christendom will be destroyed. In the late...