Mike Godwin has interviewed Neal Stephenson, author of The Baroque Cycle trilogy (Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World), Cryptonomicon, In The Beginning Was The Command Line, among many others, for Reason Online.

If you don’t know Neal Stephenson’s work, you should.

Stephenson is one of the most highly acclaimed writers of the 1990s and 2000s. While he published his first novel in the 1980s, it didn’t sell very well at the time and went out of print. As Stephenson’s popularity has grown, so has demand for his early work, and The Big U, a satire on college life, has been reprinted. His first real commercial success was Snow Crash, published in 1992. And from there, the hits just kept on coming…

In the interview, Stephenson talks about The Baroque Cycle, politics, religion, medieval society, technological progress, the history of information technology and a few other surprises (which I won’t spoil for you).

Shout outs to poorly controlled for the link!