The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day's end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them.

Style
In his earlier novels Stephenson deals heavily in pop culture-laden metaphors and imagery and in quick hip dialogue as well as in extended narrative monologues. Since 1984 Stephenson has lived mostly in the Pacific Northwest and currently resides in Seattle with his family. A.

His novels have been variously categorized as science fiction historical fiction cyberpunk and "postcyberpunk. He has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin a company (funded by Jeff Bezos) developing a manned sub-orbital launch system and is also a cofounder of Subutai Corporation whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. " Other labels such as "baroque" often appear.