Talk:Neal Stephenson

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Neal Stephenson article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1: 3 months

This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.

If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page.

This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Biography: Arts and Entertainment

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
	This article is supported by the arts and entertainment work group (assessed as Mid-importance).

Journalism Low‑importance

	Journalism portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Journalism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of journalism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.JournalismWikipedia:WikiProject JournalismTemplate:WikiProject JournalismJournalism
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Science Fiction High‑importance

	Speculative fiction portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Science Fiction, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of science fiction on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Science FictionWikipedia:WikiProject Science FictionTemplate:WikiProject Science Fictionscience fiction
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

United States: Washington / Seattle Low‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Washington.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Washington - Seattle.
	This article has been automatically rated by a bot or other tool because one or more other projects use this class. Please ensure the assessment is correct before removing the `\|auto=` parameter.

The entire "Writing Section" appears to have been written by contributors without clear grasp of the material.

This section is rife with misrepresentations and inaccuracies.

It omits notable mentions of actual scientific theories and problems that are clearly very important to Stephenson, as they recur throughout his work.

For instance, his use of waste heat in computing (Diamond Age), and cost of training a neural network (The Fall) are notable.

I am going to look to make minor edits to correct and clarify, as opposed to major, and others with a science or philosophy background, or, ideally both, should do the same.

Dukezhou (talk) 23:11, 4 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm wondering, are there now sources covering this type of content? I'll admit that I haven't looked for a while, but as of several years ago, nobody was writing about the technology, philosophy, references, meanings, etc. in Stephenson's works. So if there are sources, I'm interested in checking them out. If there aren't sources, then unfortunately that sort of content would be inappropriate per WP:V and WP:OR. Woodroar (talk) 00:44, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Dukezhou and Woodroar. There is a 2006 collection of academic essays about Neal Stephenson and his fiction up through the Baroque Cycle, Tomorrow Through the Past: Neal Stephenson and the Project of Global Modernization edited by Jonathan Lewis, an English professor at Troy University (Alabama, not Çanakkale Province). I've linked to the Google Books preview, which has a detailed ToC and part of the index, as well as a helpful Preface containing a biography of Stephenson and detailed descriptions of each essay. The essays are not visible in the GB preview, but if this looks like a useful source of notable/reliable secondary research sources, I can contact the editor about making it available to you. We will need to agree on a file-sharing scheme. (You can ask @Root2702 on Twitter for a character reference.) Bridgman (talk) 21:35, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Bridgman! Thanks for finding this! I should also mention that I recently got access to JSTOR through The Wikipedia Library to verify a sourced claim, and I now see that there are dozens of scholarly articles about Stephenson's works. I guess I just wasn't looking in the right place(s) before. The problem is that I currently don't have much free time to read them and summarize for this article. So I'm theoretically interested in Tomorrow Through the Past, but if I'm honest, I don't think I'd actually do anything with it. Sorry! Woodroar (talk) 22:19, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Building the metaverse with Lamina1

See [1] Doug Weller talk 15:16, 16 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Influences

By itself, this statement is meaningless: "According to academic Paul Youngquist, Snow Crash also dealt the cyberpunk genre a killer blow." There is no reference to Paul Youngquist or his credentials/accomplishments anywhere else in the article. The statement should be removed or explained. 0gravitytampabay (talk) 23:39, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Youngquist is a Professor Emerita/Emeritus of English at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is widely published in books and journals. This specific article is from Contemporary Literature, a peer-reviewed journal published by the University of Wisconsin Press. This is the very definition of a high-quality, scholarly source and is presumed reliable for content like this—though we're attributing the content simply because we're not citing multiple sources. Woodroar (talk) 03:09, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]