Books Appeal To More Than Sci-Fi Fans

Some people think Neal Stephenson knows more about what all this “information highway” babble is about than those who make computers or phones or software or laws.

He is one of a handful of science fiction writers, led by William Gibson (who coined the word “cyberspace”) to get attention beyond the community of hardcore sci-fi fans.

It began with his 1992 book, “Snow Crash,” and climaxed recently with a short story he wrote for Time magazine’s special issue devoted to technology. It was only the third piece of fiction to appear in Time.

The bleak and amazing world portrayed in “Snow Crash” was plausible enough to become required reading in the executive suites of some technology companies. It is set 30 or so years from now in an economy reshaped by computer networks that the United States leads in only four things - music, movies, software and pizza delivery.

The first killer software has been unleashed on the world network, and the book’s hero tries to squelch it. A movie based on the story is under development. The story conveys the potential of digital communication and commerce, both good and bad, in a way that journalists and hyped-up marketing cannot.

“I think the world divides into people who get it and don’t get it,” said Greg Beasley, a manager at Knowledge Adventure Worlds Inc., a developer of software that lets people create a visual representation of themself in cyberspace. “People who read ‘Snow Crash’ definitely get it.”

Now, Stephenson has written “The Diamond Age,” and this time the world is changed not just by computer networks but nanotechnology, microscopic machines measured in billionths of an inch.

They allow ships to be made of diamonds, veils to change from clear to opaque and guns to be hidden in a person’s forehead. The concept of nanotechnology stirs debate among scientists and has inspired several non-fiction books, most recently “Nano” by Ed Regis.

Stephenson said he believes nanotech someday will be a formidable influence on society and hopes his book stirs a broader discussion of it.

“In writing ‘The Diamond Age,’ I put a fair amount of effort into imagining a future scenario in which we could have nanotechnology without everyone in the world being dead,” Stephenson said.

“That took a bit of doing, but what I’ve got is a scenario in which reasonable people get the technology early and set about creating defensive systems from idiots who get it.”

“The Diamond Age” is the story of a girl named Nell who is lifted from poverty after her brother finds a stolen copy of an interactive book.

As in “Snow Crash,” computer-assisted communication and the electronic flow of money has wiped away national boundaries and identity. People live in tribes and the most powerful, the New Victorians, got that way because they mastered nanotechnology to defend themselves from the disease and warfare it can cause.

Stephenson’s books are fast-paced and filled with made-up words. In “Diamond Age,” there’s the “meedfeed” that delivers news and other information into a paper-thin computer. And “Ractor” is short for “interactor,” the name for actors in theater that, because of virtual reality, lets the audience participate rather than just watch.

They also contain pointed commentary, shaped in part by Stephenson’s Midwestern upbringing, on things such as the disconnection of media images from real life and the diminishing power of government, a by-product of the spread of cheap computers that decentralizes control of information.

In “Snow Crash,” Stephenson portrayed the U.S. government as a powerless but self-perpetuating bureaucracy. In “The Diamond Age,” government is invisible.

Stephenson, who lives in Seattle, is an accomplished programmer and started writing “Snow Crash” when an attempt to create a computerized novel failed.

He is generally enthusiastic about the advance of computers but expresses several worries about their effect on people, a principal one being the prospect that private information is becoming less private.

“It’s not necessary to be alarmist about it or view it as some dark Orwellian nightmare,” Stephenson said. “It’s just that one needs to take some precautions and the precautions are there if you look for them.”

He noted that many people, some in companies and some known as “cypher-punks” who act on their own, are working to produce and distribute cheap, effective technology for securing data.