It feels like Neal Stephenson has been around forever—or at least for as long as I’ve been reading science-fiction, cyberpunk, and speculative fiction. (My first intro was one of his early works, the coming-of-age intrigue of The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.) He’s won numerous awards, made the New York Times best-seller list many times (for Seveneves, Anathem, Reamde, Cryptonomicon, and The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.), and will be in town behind his latest, Fall: or, Dodge in Hell, a sci-fi thriller about an afterlife of sorts in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. by Leilani Polk