Neal Stephenson (nonfiction)
Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque.
Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired. He has written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury.
Historical versus fictional characters
Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Trilogy) talks about how he treats historical versus fictional characters in an interview or essay which I can't find now.
Some of his real historical people include Alan Turing (Cryptonomicon) and Isaac Newton (Baroque Trilogy).
In the interview (or perhaps it was an essay), he talks about the limitations he places on himself when ascribing speech and behavior to historical characters.
Apart from occasional literal quotations, speech that he writes for historical characters (HC) is of course imaginary.
He tries to limit this speech to what he is fairly confident that the characters actually would have said, based on the public record.
Conversely he tries to avoid speculative interpretations of the HC's speech and actions. If I recall correctly, he excludes the HC's inner thoughts, arguing that this goes too far.
In other words, he tries to keep it real.
For speculative interpretations of historical characters, he uses fictional characters (FCs).
Example: no speculative interpretations of Isaac Newton's inner thoughts. Stephenson uses Daniel Waterhouse (FC) to speculate on Newton's thoughts.
- Post @ Twitter (19 October 2023)
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
Nonfiction cross-reference
Categories
External links
- Neal Stephenson @ Wikipedia
- Meaning of Life | Neal Stephenson and Lex Fridman @ YouTube