Author Neal Stephenson Answers Reader Questions

Author Neal Stephenson (The Diamond Age, Snow Crash) speaks Wednesday night at as part of the Writers at Wright Series. Last week, Stephenson talked to Patch about his new novel Reamde, alternate universes and .

We also solicited questions from readers to ask Stephenson, and thanks to all of you for sending in such thoughtful responses. We didn’t have time to ask them all, but the questions we chose Stephenson answered with humor and insight.

Question from Chris O’Connor:
Is your basement loaded with shotguns for the impending apocalypse? Or are you optimistic about our system dependant on just-in-time food delivery?

Stephenson: My gut instinct is that the system we’ve got is more robust than people give it credit for. Disruptions, if they happen, are going to last for days—or weeks at the most.

The fashion for a couple of decades now has been to write science fiction that’s in a more skeptical tone. I know why that is, and obviously been a part of that trend, but now I’m sort of actively regretting it. Because it seems that this has coincided with the stoppage in our ability to innovate on a large scale.

It would be narcissistic to think we’re not innovating because science fiction writers are writing the wrong stuff, but it’s just interesting to me that we stopped building fundamentally new things and stopped writing techno-optimistic science fiction at around the same time. I’m trying to turn myself around and start writing in a somewhat different tone. It’s a small contribution but it’s the only contribution I can make.

Question from Shannon Reel:
Several decades ago a man was denied a patent on a waterbed because it had previously been described in Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. More recently, Samsung cited 2001: A Space Odyssey in its patent fight with Apple over tablet computers.  Can you foresee anyone citing an object or invention from one of your books in a similar fight in the future?

Stephenson: I think this has more to do with legal tactics than with true invention. I suppose the argument that they’re making is it’s obvious, in some sense. So you can’t get credit for inventing it.

But is there something you would find helpful were it invented?

Stephenson: My current bugaboo is that people sit down too much. An understandable mistake, but it’s becoming clear now from serious medical research that sitting down isn’t just bad for you in the passive sense, because you’re not moving, but it’s actively bad for you.

So I’m interested in any invention that enables people to walk around, or just to walk in place as they carry out their day-to-day work. There are people who work in call centers who answer calls all day long. Equipped with right input devices, they could easily do their jobs while wandering around.

Question from Lydia Lazar:
What trends to do see you see as most dangerous to democratic forms of self-government?

Stephenson: The politicization of everything, including where you get your facts. I think I’ll just leave it at that.

Question from Kari Sanderson:
Are you interested in adapting your work into screenplay form, or do you have an idea for a screenplay?

Stephenson: I have written some original screenplays and gotten paid in at least on case. Apparently they’re up to snuff. The one I got paid for was one of a slate of screenplays about volcanoes. Mine did not get produced but it was the same time as Dante’s Peak and another one, which is why I think it never got made. I don’t have a burning need to see my stuff up on a screen. I think it would be an interesting process to go through if I did it with the right people. I am talking to people in the film industry about those kinds of projects, but we’re taking our sweet time.

Question from David Klein:
How do you see e-books affecting you work, but also publishing and culture generally?

Stephenson:  Let me step back and give a deeper version of this first.

The thing about fiction is it has a competitive kind of edge that’s different than all other forms of media. It has the ability to tell big stories with a lot of scope and lot of depth, and nothing else really has the power to do that aside from maybe a mini-series on TV. It’s been the case for a long time that there’s big works of fiction that are enjoyed by a large number of fans. The serialized novels from the 19^th century are huge. When you combine them into one book, they become an unwieldy size.

You can point to many other examples like Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series where these are works of huge scope that become physically uncomfortable to carry around. And yet the people who are reading these books couldn’t be happier. You don’t see people complaining about George R. R. Martin that his books are too long, they just complain that he hasn’t written more of this stuff yet.

One of the things e-books can do is liberate works of fiction from the limitations imposed by the thickness of a sheet of paper; basically how many you can sew together into a carry-able object. This has already been noted by Sony. They put up ads in airports for their e-book reader featuring a stack of great big, big books, including one of mine, as a way of saying “look, instead of carrying these big bulky things around you can just carry this little thing that fits in your coat pocket.”

So I think that that, combined with the social networking features and the ability to communicate with people who are reading the same stuff, and a lot of other tiny little details but important improvements are going to lead to a sort of renaissance in the way people enjoy literature and the amount of social behavior they can engage in around the act of reading. The purpose of what we’re doing with The Mongoliad App and the PULP publishing platform that it runs on is to build a system that can deliver that.

Stephenson will appear at Unity Temple on Sept. 28, as a part of the Writers at Wright program put on by , Midwest Media, Friends of the Oak Park Public Library and Unity Temple Restoration Foundation. Tickets are $10 in advance at the Book Table or here. Your ticket also entitles you to $10 off the cover price of Stephenson's new novel, Reamde.

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