Neal Stephenson

              The other day, we read Anathem written by Neal Stephenson.

              Neal Stephenson is an American SF writer.  He made his debut as a writer with The Big U in 1984.  Then he published some famous SF stories: Snow Crash (1992), The Diamond age (1995) and Cryptonomicon (1999).  Snow Crash is set in The American near feature.  The scene of The Diamond age is middle of the 21th century.  The Diamond age won Locus Award and Hugo Award.  Cryptonomicon won Locus Award, too.  Locus Award is SF story’s award in the English-speaking world and Hugo Award is SF story’s award in the U.S.  What I thought interesting that In The Diamond age, people are classified by the ways of thinking, and one of the main kinds is called “Nippon”.

              In Neal Stephenson’s works, there are a lot of metaphors and similes.  Similes are easy to understand for using “like” or “as”.  But metaphors are less understandable because the readers have to imagine the meaning.  In addition, his works are SF stories and far apart from the real world, which makes the readers more difficult to imagine the scene.  As to Anthem, it is necessary to know the religious background, so I could hardly understand the story only by myself.