Showing results by author "Neal Stephenson" in All Categories

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 #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).

Polostan follows the early life of the enigmatic Dawn Rae Bjornberg. Born in the American West to a clan of cowboy anarchists, Dawn is raised in Leningrad after the Russian Revolution by her Russian father, a party line Leninist who re-christens her Aurora. She spends her early years in Russia but then grows up as a teenager in Montana, before being drawn into gun running and revolution in the streets of Washington, D.C. during the depths of the Great Depression.

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.

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.

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.

The astounding new novel from the master of science fiction. What would happen if the world were ending? When a catastrophic event renders the Earth a ticking time bomb, it triggers a feverish race against the inevitable. An ambitious plan is devised to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere. But unforeseen dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain....

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.

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....

Neal Stephenson’s sweeping, prescient new novel transports listeners to a near-future world where the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves and virulent, deadly pandemics. One man has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as 'elemental'. But will it work? And just as important, what are the consequences for the planet and all of humanity should it be applied?

In the aftermath of the Mongolian invasion of 1241, beleaguered Christians struggle with the presence of a violent horde and a world turned upside down. Apocalyptic fever sweeps through Europe, infecting even the most rational individuals, leaving all to wonder if they are seeing the end times - or an hour when new heroes will emerge from the ruins of cataclysmic defeat.

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.

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.

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 this concluding volume of Neal Stephenson’s epic work, “Half-Cocked Jack” Shaftoe must escape the noose of Jack Ketch; the rivalry between Newton and Leibniz comes to a head; and Daniel Waterhouse pursues his dream to build the Logic Mill

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.

You think you know how the world works? Think again. From best-selling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed historical and contemporary novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller that questions the very foundations of the modern world. Magic has faded from the minds of mankind, until an encounter between Melisande Stokes, linguistics expert at Harvard, and Tristan Lyons, shadowy agent of government, leads to the uncovering of a distant past.

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.

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.

We are entering a new technological age in which artificial intelligence and immersive media will transform society at all levels. If managed well, this could unleash a new age of abundance. If managed poorly, this technological revolution could easily go astray, deeply compromising our privacy, autonomy, agency, and even our humanity. In Our Next Reality, two industry veterans provide a data-driven debate on whether the new world we're creating will be a technological utopia or an AI-powered dystopia and gives guidance on how to aim for the best future we can.