About the book: year / Neal Stephenson's first novel, “Big U,” was published in 1984 and went unnoticed. When Stevenson was recently asked what he thought about this book and whether he would like to reprint it, he replied that although the book itself was not bad, there were many other books that were worth reading. The second novel, Zodiac: the Eco-thriller, appeared four years later and attracted much more attention. But what really gave Stevenson cult popularity was his next book, “Avalanche” (“Snow Crash”, 1992), which showed a near future affected by superinflation and the “Snow Crash” virus, which has passed from digital reality to biological reality. A little later, in collaboration with his uncle George, he wrote the novel Interface (1994), and some time later their second joint book, Cobweb, was published under the common pseudonym Stephen Bury. ..In 1995, “The Diamond Age” was published, dedicated to the China of the future and nanotechnology. Critics did not greet it particularly enthusiastically, which did not upset the author at all. He admitted to Seattle music magazine Addicted To Noise that he deliberately tried to write something weirder and less accessible than "Snow Crash" to see how people would react to it. Stevenson's novel "Cryptonomicon" ) critics compare it to Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” and call the author “the Quentin Tarantino of post-cyberpunk science fiction.” Cryptonomicon must be extremely exciting for geeks, which is why the novel's rave reviews are primarily found among Internet users. However, critic Teresa Littleton warns: “if you read this book in one sitting, you risk dying from an information overdose.” Neal Stephenson himself practically does not read science fiction, since, according to him, it interferes with writing novels (he almost never writes stories and envies writers who can do it). However, he highly praises the fantasy books of Sean Russell and Sean Stewart and strongly recommends these authors for reading. Neil also speaks very highly of his senior colleagues William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, who influenced him quite a lot. By the way, unlike Gibson, who - as we know - for a long time did not understand anything about computers, although he wrote about them, Neal Stephenson is not only a good programmer, but also communicates closely with cryptographers and hackers, which he even wrote about one day Sterling himself - they say, unlike the founders of cyberpunk, Stevenson became an adult in a different culture than them, and absorbed its technological background, so he understands the mechanism of how all this works much better. “I love technology. I love computers. “I love science,” Neil himself admits. “So I mostly talk to scientists and hackers...” Critics praise Stevenson for his almost prescient predictions about the development of future technologies. Contents: Baroque cycle: 1. Neal Stephenson: Quicksilver (Translation: Ekaterina Dobrokhotova-Maikova)2. Neal Stevenson: King of the Vagabonds 3. Neal Stevenson: Odalisque (Translation: Ekaterina Dobrokhotova-Maikova) 4-5. Neal Stephenson: Mixture. Books 1-2 (Translation: Ekaterina Dobrokhotova-Maikova)6. Neal Stephenson: Solomon's Gold (Translation: Ekaterina Dobrokhotova-Maikova)7. Neal Stevenson: Movement 8. Neal Stevenson: The World System (Translation: Ekaterina Dobrokhotova-Maikova) Cryptonomicon: 1. Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon, part 1 (Translation: E. Dobrokhotova-Maikova)2. Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon, part 2 (Translation: E. Dobrokhotova-Maikova) Avalanche: 1. Neal Stephenson: Avalanche (Translation: Anna Komarinets)2. Neal Stephenson: The Diamond Age (Translation: Ekaterina Dobrokhotova-Maikova) Selected novels: 1. Neal Stephenson: Anathem (Translation: Catherine)