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Stupid question: Who is Neal Stephenson, and why is he famous? Wikipedia suggests that he's a sci-fi author, is there a particular reason for his fame, could you recommend some of his works?
Snow Crash for old school howling-metal cyberpunk. The Baroque Cycle for a semi-fictional view of the beginnings of science - the Newton and Hooke era. Anathem for an interesting take on the philosophy of science disguised as a sci-fi epic.
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It sounds more to me like a direct projection to retina. Has this ever been attempted ? Would that be working with lasers ?
There have been head-mounted "virtual retinal displays" that focus a laser onto the retina. I think they're mostly in patent hell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_retinal_display
This is notable not just because of Neal Stephenson, but because his blog post contains what I think is the most detailed public description of the tech so far: --- Here’s where you’re probably expecting the sales pitch about how mind-blowingly awesome the demo was. But it’s a little more interesting than that. Yes, I saw something on that optical table I had never seen before--something that only Magic Leap, as far…
Stupid question: Who is Neal Stephenson, and why is he famous? Wikipedia suggests that he's a sci-fi author, is there a particular reason for his fame, could you recommend some of his works?
This Gizmodo article does a great job of demystifying MagicLeap's tech by digging into the founder's background, patent filings, and trademark applications: http://gizmodo.com/how-magic-leap-is-secretly-creating-a-new...
That 1mm single fiber endoscope is just amazing, out of a spy/scifi novel.
This sounds so fake it is ridiculous. They hired a sci-fi author...come on.
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Snow Crash for old school howling-metal cyberpunk. The Baroque Cycle for a semi-fictional view of the beginnings of science - the Newton and Hooke era. Anathem for an interesting take on the philosophy of science disguised as a sci-fi epic.
I would also highly recommend: The Mongoliad semi-fictional view of mid-thirteenth century Mongol invasion of Europe Reamde MMO gold farming, social networking, criminal methods of the Russian mafia, Islamic terrorists
Writing aside I've found the plot pretty slow with not much interesting happening for most of the Zula portions (ie. middle half of the book). Maybe Stephenson's level of detail just isn't for me but it really wants for editing.
This sounds so fake it is ridiculous. They hired a sci-fi author...come on.
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Snow Crash for old school howling-metal cyberpunk. The Baroque Cycle for a semi-fictional view of the beginnings of science - the Newton and Hooke era. Anathem for an interesting take on the philosophy of science disguised as a sci-fi epic.
I would also highly recommend: The Mongoliad semi-fictional view of mid-thirteenth century Mongol invasion of Europe Reamde MMO gold farming, social networking, criminal methods of the Russian mafia, Islamic terrorists
Reamde starts off with a lot of interesting ideas, and then morphs into quite possibly the worst watered-down, airport-paperback, fourth-rate-Tom-Clancy-triller nonsense I have ever read. Avoid it at all costs. Unbelievable plot and character motives. ick.
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I would also highly recommend: The Mongoliad semi-fictional view of mid-thirteenth century Mongol invasion of Europe Reamde MMO gold farming, social networking, criminal methods of the Russian mafia, Islamic terrorists
Man I am almost done Reamde and would not recommend that to anyone. I have a massive vocabulary and I was still looking up words every few pages. Every time I suspected it was a synonym for a simpler word, and every time I was right. Writing aside I've found the plot pretty slow with not much interesting happening for most of the Zula portions (ie. middle half of the book). Maybe Stephenson's level of detail just isn…
Anathem and Diamond Age were harder for me because of the depth of ideas. I had to slow down and think to get through them.
Baroque Cycle was harder because of the sheer number of characters with multiple and/or similar names, which is realistic but annoying. There's a list of characters in the back of the first book, which helps, but it's annoying to have to keep the first book handy when you're reading the others.
Stephenson does have a reputation for starting great books and not knowing how to finish them. But I think I've gotten more than my money's worth out of all of them.