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Neal Stephenson

American science fiction writer (born 1959)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ312853
Source-derived summary

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, and baroque.

Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes nonfiction 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.

Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and also co-founded the Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He was Magic Leap's chief futurist from 2014 to 2020.

Early life

Born on October 31, 1959, in Fort Meade, Maryland, Stephenson came from a family of engineers and scientists; his father is a professor of electrical engineering and his paternal grandfather was a physics professor. His mother worked in a biochemistry laboratory and her father was a biochemistry professor. Stephenson's family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1960, and to Ames, Iowa, in 1966.

Editorial summary

“Neal Stephenson” enters the record as american science fiction writer (born 1959). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Neal, Stephenson and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1959, 2014, 2020, 1960—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1959-10-31. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Neal, Stephenson and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Neal Stephenson” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Neal, Stephenson and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q312853. VIAF identifies the subject as 7524021. The Library of Congress control number is n82269163. 6 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 2014, 2020 and 1960.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Neal Stephenson”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Neal Stephenson primary sources, Neal Stephenson archive and Neal research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Neal Stephenson”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Neal Stephenson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.